Now that I am home from my first mission trip to the Dominican Republic, I want to share a bit of what I experienced.
After a long day of travel from Fargo, ND, to Santo Domingo, the capital of the Dominican Republic, I was met by our in-country coordinator, Erasme Figaro Kelly, his wife Laura, son Ezra and daughter Brianna. We left early the next morning for a meeting with Bishop Miguel Angel Cancú of Iglesia Evangélica Dominicana (Evangelical Church of the Dominican Republic) and his staM. Bishop Cancú greeted us warmly and expressed strong support for the work of Solar Oven Partners in the Dominican.
We traveled to the church camp compound where our container of ovens and supplies were located. There I met Mario who would be our main driver and assistant for the week. We loaded some ovens and supplies into Mario’s van and got everything organized for the next day’s scheduled demonstrations in San Cristobol.
San Cristobol is simply a tarp covering a space of bare ground, while they are constructing their church building. We unloaded our ovens and set them up on the open ground around the church site and started prepping the food for the day. As we waited for the ovens to warm up, cloud cover moved in so the ovens could not reach the optimal temperature to properly cook our prepped food. We decided to use local regular ovens to finish oM the chicken, rice and beans that we had started in our solar ovens. I After Erasme explained the features and benefits of solar cooking and how to use the ovens, everyone enjoyed the meals we shared. Come back for day two of our seminar and cook for yourselves, we said.
The following day turned out to be sunny and hot without a cloud in the bright blue sky—perfect conditions for solar cooking.
Our prep crew set up our ovens under the watchful eyes of Gertrudis Garcia, as seminar participants got busy preparing the day’s food. In addition to the breads and cakes, we also prepared oatmeal and hard boiled eggs.
The ovens were soon up to 300 degrees and everything was placed in the ovens to cook. While the food cooked, we visited with all the attendees and answered questions. Once the food was done cooking everyone enjoyed a taste of all the diMerent things we had made. Imagine banana bread, corn bread and chocolate and vanilla cakes! In
Woman with oven
In an interview for our September newsletter, mission site coordinator Erasme describes the moment when a seminar ends:
I tell those attending our seminars that it’s the reason people come from so far away to share the
good news about cooking with solar ovens. It also helps to spread the word that we are partners…It is saying to our people that we are not alone.”
On day 3 we traveled closer to the Haitian border to the town of San Juan. The purpose of this leg of the trip was to visit with some people who had received ovens previously to be able to see how they were using them and how often. On our visits we learned that one of the oven owners had lost their reflector but was using it with limited results. We assured her that we would get a new reflector to her as soon as we could. Another recipient used hers to cook but also to brew coMee, which was a new way to use the oven.
On my last day, we took a trip to a nearby town to visit Gregoria who uses her oven in her soap making process. She uses the oven to cook the organic ingredients she uses in her soaps. It takes her 2 weeks to make a batch of soap using all natural ingredients and plant sources. Once the soaps are done they have to sit for an additional 6 to 8 weeks until they reach the optimal ph balance.
Overall the trip was very productive, from meeting the team and Erasme, to learning about how we can
make the processes better and move forward with positivity.