Chengo, Chengo Moto

This morning, I woke to the echoing sound of blade against tree. My heart always sinks at that sound. Out my window on a nearby hillside just a few hundred feet away I see several women with little babies strapped to their backs, chopping the brush with machetes and gathering firewood. Each of their tiny one or two room houses has an outdoor kitchen with black smoke stains around the open door. 

 I think of my neighbor squatting near a three stone cooking fire in a smoke filled room cooking dinner, she and her baby breathing in respiratory disease. (You may not know that respiratory disease is a considerably bigger killer than AIDS/HIV or malaria in sub- Saharan Africa.)

I have read enough to know Malawi is being deforested at an alarming rate; faster than almost any other African nation. Do I care about the forest? Of course I do. But, much more than that, I think of the women who can't make choices about the environment because they are busy surviving. In the West, we may choose to recycle and feel good that we are contributing something to the preservation of the environment. Here it's not paper or plastic, it is life and death.

I have it in my heart to teach the women to make the Chengo, Chengo Moto cooking stoves, which in Chichewa means "Quick, Quick Fire." With only 26 bricks and mud mortar, a two burner, clean-burning, fuel-efficient cook stove can be built. A woman using this stove can cut her fuel consumption from three large bundles of wood each week to one.

None of this sounds very spiritual, does it? But it is related to the Gospel. Any time we lighten the load of the women and lift the heavy burden from off their shoulders we represent God's love to them. When people know they are loved and the love we offer comes from God, they open their hearts to receive the Gospel. And that is why we are here.