Thirsty in the slums

A reflection on prayer (first written for our church newsletter);

It’s mid-afternoon on another day of seeking to live alongside, learn from, and love our neighbours in a Kolkata slum. At thirty-six degrees and high humidity my clothes are moist and the sweat once again runs down my face. I reach for a drink of warm but still vitally refreshing water. Before putting it to my lips I pause to reflect on the last few hours. Several things flood to mind; my inadequacies communicating in the language, confusion around difficult cultural situations, my lack of physical strength due to the heat, and my struggle to show love and patience to one of the neighbourhood kids. I am reminded of my need for a wisdom, strength and love greater than I find within me.

Inspired by Jesus’ words in John 7:37-38, I pray, “Lord Jesus, I come to you to drink”. Having spent a moment bringing some of my needs to Christ, I spend a moment contemplating him and my thirst for his life to permeate my being. I take a drink and allow the water to refresh my body as his Spirit refreshes my soul. Looking forward to the interactions that will come in the evening ahead, I commit them to him, that through him within me I might be a loving presence to my neighbours. Praying finally, “May rivers of living water flow from within me.”

This little ritual is one expression of a kind of prayer that we have found connecting us deeply with Christ. Spending time in silence, contemplating Jesus, has helped us to soak in his love for us and the people around us. Often this has been through meditation on him through a passage of scripture. Other times we have sought to put our Bibles down, along with our own words, thoughts and petitions, and simply be in his presence, receiving the grace he has for us in that moment. And then there have been times when through an unexpected encounter with a child in the slums, or a beggar on the railway platform we have seen glimpses of the suffering and beauty of Christ.

As Henri Nouwen has written, “In prayer we meet Christ, and in him all human suffering. In service we meet people, and in them the suffering Christ.”

Wood-gas stoves

Cooking dinner for your family should not cause you to contract diseases and die young. And yet according to the World Health Organisation, globally nearly two million deaths per year (mostly women and children) are attributed to respiratory diseases caused by indoor air pollution from open fires and simple stoves.

This affects many families in our community and region, who use simple coal burning stoves. These stoves emit copious amounts of smoke and carbon monoxide, making them a real health concern. Essentially women and children can develop smoker's lungs just through cooking and being around the home.

Preparing food for your family really shouldn't be like this. So we’re excited to see potential for real progress coming within reach of the poor. Over about the last 20 years, the very promising technology of wood-gas stoves (or micro gasifiers) has been developing. These stoves can use any kind of dry chunky biomass as a fuel (such as coconut shells, wood chips, carpentry wastes, manure etc.) But these are gas burning stoves, since instead of burning the biomass in one step, it is first gasified, and then the gas is burnt (all inside one simply constructed portable stove).

The process produces far less harmful air pollutants, and so this kind of stove (among others) is recognized by the WHO as having the potential to dramatically improve the health of some 3 billion people who are still exposed to excessive indoor air pollution.

Another benefit of wood-gas stoves is that the gasified fuel leaves behind a charcoal called biochar. Biochar has excellent properties for boosting soil productivity by retaining moisture and being a perfect home for lots of friendly soil microbes.

Also, when biochar is added to soils, it locks up carbon in the soil. The result is that cooking with these stoves is actually a ‘carbon-negative’ process. This means there is also potential to generate carbon offsets from wood-gas stove projects. Revenue from carbon offsets sold to people in the west can make the stoves financially accessible to the poor by enabling them to pay off their stove through the biochar they produce. Then once they've paid off their stove, families can get on-going economic uplift through using their stove and continuing to produce biochar.

Having thought and prayed about it, we've come to feel that this could be
a good way for us as a foreigners to come alongside our community for its
blessing. So our plan is to start a social business operating in the slums
of our area with the goals of:

* getting clean burning stoves into the community for the health benefit
of the people

* generating employment for people from the slums to manufacture the stoves

* buying back biochar from families using money from carbon offsets sold
to people in the west (thereby making the stoves affordable for the poor)

* helping provide a way for people living in the west to reduce their
carbon footprint and so live a little more responsibly as global citizens

* getting biochar into the soils of urban gardens and farms outside the
city for healthier soils and greater crop yields

* helping establish a small cottage industry in biomass fuel supply
(probably amongst a very poor community that live around and make their
livelihoods from the local dump)

We are excited by a lot of potential good that could come out of all of
this. But we also want to take things slowly. We want to do it in a way
that empowers people in our community, that gives them ownership, helps
them find some of their undiscovered potential, nurtures their gifts and
dreams, and maybe helps cast a vision for business done for the blessing
of the community.