I think EWEB’s management needs
to be more creative with their budgeting
instead of just lazily proposing across-the-
board rate hikes as a solution.
Perry Blakeley
Eugene
Aprovecho can attest. They deserve well-
earned recognition and support for their
efforts.
Gary Cornelius
Peace Corps Volunteer
KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa
SMOKE KILLS KIDS
LEGAL SLEEPING
One of my Eugene friends just sent
me a copy of EW’s Aug. 30 edition with
the cover story about the two Eugene
organizations, StoveTeam International
and Aprovecho Research Center, that
develop stoves for use in developing
countries. She knows of my interest in
such stoves because I am a Peace Corps
volunteer in rural South Africa.
Here the problem is not so much the
open fi res of Central America or African
refugee camps as it is ordinary wood-
burning cook stoves, much like your
grandmother probably used in the ’30s to
cook family dinners. Here it’s common
for a kitchen to be set up in a separate
building — a mud hut or perhaps a yurt-
like structure called a rondaval that is
usually made of mud or cinderblocks and
has a grass roof. And very poor ventilation.
Just as it is in America, rural African
kitchens often are gathering places for
families to socialize and get caught up on
the day’s events while mom makes dinner.
All the while, all in the room are sucking
down large quantities of cook smoke from
the stove. The women and children are most
affected because they spend the most time
there — many hours a day. According to
StoveTeam, more children under the age of
5 die of respiratory illnesses than die of ma-
laria and AIDS combined. It’s the leading
cause of death in young children in develop-
ing countries. People spend 20 hours a week
gathering fi rewood for cookstoves and fi res
— and depleting the forests.
I’m exploring the possibility of
bringing a stove project to villages in my
part of the Province of KwaZulu-Natal, but
building a stove factory from the ground
up in a rural area in a developing country is
a monumental project, as StoveTeam and
I agree that the new county park
caretaker program is a wonderful step in
the right direction. Helping make our parks
safer for everyone is a great goal, and a way
to provide a legal place to sleep for a few
people. However, as anyone in any social
service agency in town will tell you, it is
simply not enough to meet the immediate
and dire need for legal places to sleep for
people who have no homes. Many don’t
even have a car to sleep in.
Even if we were to expand this program
to include all the city parks that could
benefi t from a caretaker (and wouldn’t it
be nice to have clean open restrooms in
the parks all the time?), it would still be a
drop in the bucket. While over 2,000 were
counted as homeless during the one night
count last year, over 10,000 who accessed
social services indicated that they were or
had been homeless at some point during
the year. Over 700 homeless children
attended 4J schools last year. Without safe
places to sleep, people can do nothing else
to better their lives.
If we cannot provide a safe, dry place to
sleep for everyone who needs it, then we
must fi nd ways of getting out of the way of
people providing for themselves. No more
police and court time wasted levying fi nes
that don’t get paid. No more citations for
life-sustaining activities!
Sabra Marcroft
Eugene
The Shedd Institute
www.theshedd.org - 541-434-7000
Le Vent du Nord
Friday, Nov 9
Sat, Nov 10
Dick Hyman
Lindsay Deutsch
Fritz Gearhart - Leslie Straka
Steven Pologe - Tyler Abbott
RENAME OUR COUNTY
Lane County is named after Joseph
Lane, vice-presidential candidate for the
pro-slavery South, the Confederacy, back
in the mid-1800s. He and many of his like-
spirited friends later moved to this area;
many more racists migrated here during
Sat, Nov 17
Chris Smither
eugeneweekly.com • November 8, 2012
5