Update on Permaculture Pygmies – Introducing Solar Ovens, Water Filter and SODIS
Aid Projects, Biological Cleaning, Community Projects, Energy Systems, Potable Water — by Xavier Fux February 1, 2012
We built a solar oven made out of cardboard, and showed the pygmies how to purify water through a solar disinfection unit (the SODIS System). We also showed them how to make a filter with a bucket full of sand, gravel and active carbon.
by Xavier Fux
Who said last days weren’t productive? Before leaving, we wanted to provide the pygmies with some very useful tools that can greatly simplify things for them:
- Simple, easy-to-build solar ovens (to reduce the need for firewood and all the negative implications that come with it)
- Sand-gravel-charcoal water filter (to clean the water from the 20,000L pond in order to use it for washing and other uses)
- Solar disinfection system for water (to purify water from the 1000L tank)
Permaculture Pygmies
Aid Projects, Biodiversity, Community Projects, Deforestation, Food Shortages, Village Development — by Xavier Fux November 10, 2011
by Xavier Fux
Deep in the jungle of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Pygmy communities had lived for generations as hunter-gatherers. When the Kahuzi Biega National Park was created in 1970 by the Congolese government, the Pygmies and other local communities were expulsed from the forest, their ancestral land, without receiving any compensation or any land to settle in. They were left without a home. Over time, they were allowed to live on private property at the edge of the park, near other local communities but without any right of ownership over the land. This situation created a huge life obstacle for Pygmy communities, because land is the basic means of subsistence in the area. Currently, they rarely have access to the forest that constituted a vital area for their culture and traditions, and where they could collect food, health, means and shelter.
The Pygmies had never farmed before. They were hunters and gatherers and depended on natural resources in the forest for subsistence. Birds and guinea pigs constituted their intake of protein, and they gathered fruits, nuts and collected honey from bee traps they set up in trees.
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