The Greenhouse effect results in the heating of enclosed spaces. In the 16th century, the Europeans used greenhouses to raise tropical plants. And it was this principle that lead to the design of the solar cooker. In 1767 a naturalist by the name of Horace de Saussure first designed the Solar 'box' cooker, in the form of several glass boxes set inside one another and placed on a dark surface.

98% of light energy striking black is absorbed. Once absorbed it lowers its frequency and becomes heat. Heat within a solar box cooker can only be lost in one of three fundamental ways: Conduction, Radiation, and Convection. Heat is efficiently trapped in the glass of the cooker or the nylon roasting bag. Water pasteurizes at 62.8 degrees Celsius. Solar cookers reach temperatures of 130 degrees to 200 degrees.

The biggest solar cooker in the world is in Auroville in Tamil Nadu India. It has fifteen meters in diameter and can cook for two thousand people every day (www.auroville.org). Auroville was once a barren landscape resulting from two hundred years of deforestation. It is now an ecological village and a role model to the developing world.

Solar cooking contributes to a number of major global threats, such as deforestation, soil erosion, unpotable water, destruction of ozone layer, acid rain and poverty!

"A solar cooker saves about one ton of wood per year thereby reducing carbon emissions by 1.8 tons per year."

Roughly half of African people cook on firewood! This is known as an energy trap because firewood is a diminishing resource and therefore more and more energy is spent in the collection of less and less of it.

Take as an example the World Food Programme who provides food for disadvantaged communities such as the Kukuma refugee camp in Kenya. The residents of Kukuma ended up trading their food with neighboring communities for firewood. This became known as a 'vicious cycle'. So much so that in the case of the Osire refugee camp on the border of Angola and Namibia, farmers were shooting the refugees who were coming onto their land to collect firewood.

As in the adage of 'teaching a man to fish', one hundred solar cookers were donated to the Osire refugee camp. And, through the support of the Global Village Energy Partnership the women in Kukuma village were given training on how to make, use and sell solar cookers. This project has now expanded into neighboring communities.

Durban sustainable engineer, Richard Pocock spoke of the hundred monkeys concept as the reason for the limitations in the use of the solar cookers - the knowledge of this has not yet reached a critical mass. It is therefore our respnsibility to start cooking with the sun. The future generation already is. Solar Cooking covers all aspects of learning and is becoming part of the syllabus for the majority of school kids in Grades 7, 8 and 9.

Solar Cooking is a step in the right direction in upgrading our lifestyles to sustainable ways. In the words of artist and sculptor John Jay: "It is more about learning to live with less than replacing your modern energy requirements with renewable sources."

Global warming has quite rightly put the fear of God into our traditional lifestyles. Paraffin stoves are the primary cause of uncontrollable fires in squatter camps and has an annual death toll (in South Africa alone) far greater than the World Trade centre. Electricity has an escalating price and diminishing reliability. In all probability the annual global carbon footprint (if frozen) would measure up to a mountain one kilometer high and twenty kilometers wide.

As Richard says, "Humanity is on the edge of a very steep cliff. Now is the time to stop, think and listen."

I will always recall the dream of spiritualist, sangoma, visionary, musician and medium Stella Chirweshe: "The earths energy has become very angry with our behaviour. I was standing somewhere between the human beings and the earths energy and I saw the earths energy sinking. And as the earths energy was sinking I started to see people dying from strange diseases that could not be cured, from killing each other, from floods, from hunger. And then from my left side came voices of beautiful singing. And the energy of the earth said, 'let me hold on for a second and listen'. And as it listened, it came back and embraced us!"

Humanity is not yet a lost cause!

I was introduced to the concept of solar cooking and the Biophile magazine by artist / photographer / film director and farmer Lianne Cox. Every artwork she sells from her 'beautiful people' exhibition, a solar cooker is donated to a community that will sustain culture. She says, "I felt a lot of compassion towards the women's nurturing of culture: their sense of motherhood and their amazing ability of forgiveness, stability and trust. Solar cookers will be a tool to evolve - move on."

Richard has designed a Pentagon Star Cooker which can be made for next to nothing from cardboard, foil and glue. With practice, care and skill you can turn an average sized cardboard box into a folded parabola with a pasted foil surface that works like a bomb! In fact Richard was delighted to find during a cycling trip in the Drakensburg an old chap cooking his breakfast on a home-made pentagon star cooker!

Solar cooking is fun, free, nutriious and delicious. Solar cooking is a slow cooking that is very convenient because you can set your cooker up in the morning before work with a great roast or stew and take it off after work. It will not burn!

PRODUCTS ON THE MARKET INCLUDE:

The traditional design of the box-cooker or Sun Stove is very convenient. The Portuguese model (Lazola) is top of the range.

They are available from Crosby Sunfire Solutions (011 6242432) for R2000. There is a cheap box cooker on the market for R350

The parabolic reflector is focused and effective. The use of such reflectors requires the constant tracking of the sun.

They are available from Crosby Sunfire Solutions (011 6242432) for R1200.

Panel cookers are simple, cheap and effective. Face North and leave to cook.

They are available from Richard at Solarworks (031 2616881 alternativeworks@gmail.com) for R171

All solar cookers you should use a hot bag: As your dishes finish cooking, keep them warm.

You can make your own with the design of the wonder-box which was simply a cardboard box fitted with cushions. Straw baskets fitted with blankets are popular and classy.

"Solar ovens must surely run up there with the clothes line in making easy and free use of the sun." Stuart Ward: ( HEAVENS FLAME : A guide to solar cooking by Joseph Radabaugh)

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Instructions on how to make your own Pentagon Star Cooker (designed Richard Pocock DURBAN)