How are solar cookers saving lives in Chad and Darfur?

­­Solar cooking is exactly what it sounds like: using the sun's rays to heat food to high temperatures. A solar cooker, depending on the type, can reach anywhere from 180 degrees Fahrenheit to more than 400 degrees F (82-204 degrees Celsius), which is more than hot enough to k­ill microbes and make food and water safe to consume. It's actually hot enough to fry.

There are several different methods used to convert sunlight into heat for cooking (see How Solar Cooking Works for complete information). The box cooker uses a topless cardboard or wood box with either glass or plastic stretched across the top, and sometimes reflective panels (often cardboard coated with aluminum foil) positioned outside the plastic to direct more sunlight inside. There's a cooking pot in the box. When placed in the sun, light pours in through the transparent top and heats up the cardboard, which is black on the inside to absorb as much heat as possible. The cardboard heats up, and the heat is trapped inside by the plastic. This type of cooker can reach about 180 degrees F (82 degrees C).

A parabolic cooker uses curved, reflective panels to catch and concentrate sunlight on a small area where the panels come to a point at the bottom of the cooker. Suspended slightly above that point is a cooking pot. The concentrated sunlight generates tremendous heat beneath the pot -- up to 400 degrees F (204 degrees C).

The solar cookers in the Iridimi camp are a combination of these two types, called panel cookers. Curved reflectors direct sunlight to a flat, reflective cardboard bottom. The cooking pot is covered with plastic to trap heat inside. It only costs about $10, and thousands have been given to the women of Iridimi.

The benefits are tremendous for the Darfur refugees. First, since solar cooking came to Iridimi, firewood needs have decreased by about 75 percent [source: Rawlinson]. Women and girls have to make far fewer trips outside the camp, exposing them to fewer attacks.

­Greater bodily safety may be the most crucial benefit provided by solar cooking, but it's not the only one. Overall, cooking with sunlight is just making life better.

Solar cooking has benefits beyond the central, security-oriented goal of the program. It's also better for health. Now, since women only need to cook the morning meal with firewood (because there's not enough sun yet), they spend far less time hunched over smoky fires. They're inhaling less smoke to damage their lungs.

­They also have a­ whole new set of opportunities to earn money in the solar-cooking industry within the camp. Nonprofits have trained the women to manufacture the solar cookers and to become cooking trainers themselves, for which they're paid a wage. With this new market, women have also started creating their own solar cooking products, like carrying bags for the cookers and warming baskets that keep food that was cooked during high-sun hours warm until it's time to eat the evening meal.

Other entrepreneurial opportunities have sprung up as well. Suddenly, women aren't spending all of their time cooking, since solar cookers don't need to be attended at all. Women have started creating arts and crafts that aid organizations bring back to the West to sell for them. They also have more time to care for their families.

Accompanying this improvement in quality of life is an improvement in environmental friendliness. The air is less smoky around the camp, and trees are being cut down at a slower rate. Some estimates claim that by 2010, western Chad will have no trees left if consumption continues at the current pace [source: Andres]. Widespread solar cooking could postpone that significantly.

While the United Nations had little success in its attempt back in the 1950s to bring solar cooking to poor, firewood-scarce areas, this current program seems to be working. Each of the more than 4,600 families in Iridimi is cooking food with sunlight. And nearby Toulom camp, home to 22,000 refugees, is up next. As of July 2007, 500 women per month are learning to solar cook in Toulom.

For more information on solar cooking, the Darfur crisis and related topics, look over the links on the next page.