Promoting Education, Health and Enterprise in a Maasai Community
Clearing smoke from the Manyattas
and
The Searle Street Cake Club
If you were a young Maasai lady, just married, you, with help from the older women would build your home, a manyatta. Traditionally the manyatta is built on a wooden frame filled in with mud, cow dung and dead grasses. It has a doorway, usually one or two very small windows and a hole in the roof acting as a chimney
Like in many other parts of the world the cooking is either outside in the fresh air or inside with an open fire and a pot supported by three stones. Firewood is collected during the day. The smoke from the fire rises up to the roof and some escapes through the soot encrusted ventilation hole.
The air inside all the manyattas is smoky and smells of wood fire. If you want to know if the souvenir is really made in a Maasai hut, smell it. We know from around the world that not only is the soot on the ceiling and walls it is also in the lungs of those who live in the houses and not only particles but also Carbon Monoxide.
The effect of this is chronic lung disease, higher mother and baby deaths and with chronic carbon monoxide poisoning an effect on the learning ability.
Even if they build an external kitchen the woman of the house still cooks over an open fire in a closed environment.
Solutions are to devise an indoor stove with a ventilating chimney, some of which have fans driven by solar power. There are various solar solutions usually requiring a large initial outlay. In a poor society, which will be even poorer after the pandemic this is not feasible.
In a nearby community a Maasai woman has been experimenting with a chimney constructed from a corrugated iron sheet, construction wire, stones and local clay. Jane tuukou, Simon Tumaka and Alex Kihugu from Namuncha have visited her and have returned with the concept and have already made modifications for the Namuncha manyattas. Jane is a student from the community who has been sponsored by the charity and is doing this work as part of her college project. Elijah is the fundi who was sponsored through the Dry Stone Wall project to gain his building skills. Dominic Solomon Ndigiti, is better known as Kenya’s Junior 10km racewalker champion. He is biding time waiting for the Tokyo Olympics to Restart. He has the skills to build a more efficient floor-level jiko, and will teach Elijah this skill.
A chimney can be constructed for £30 and the fundi, the craftsman, £20 to fit it.
Our plan is to build a demo chimney on the manyatta of the woman who will champion the project. The charity will then pay for the first 10 chimneys of the families whose children we support in the secondary school. The fundi and the community will then take over the project.
As part of a small research project that the school children will do we will be measuring the CO in the breath of the families in the Manyattas before and after the chimneys are fitted.
The money raised from the profits of the Searle Street Cake Club and other fundraising activities will make sure that we can get the smoke out of the manyattas.
Friday 10th July 2020, 
Dominic Ndigiti and Elijah Nakamaa are making the first jiko, oven or stove, and erecting the first chimney in the house of Madam Mary Titayion.
She is a grandmother with many children and grandchildren and a great advocate of cooking without smoke.
Saturday 11th July, second jiko built and the chimney installed.
Saturday 18th July the cement is dry and the chimney is tested. 
The fire glows, the chimney blows out smoke and the air in the kitchen is clear.
And the children can play and live in clean air
20/7/20, Really good news. The first chimney has been installed and tested. Jane Tuukuo has measured the amount of Carbon Monoxide in the breath of Grandma Titayion and her three grandchildren. Inside of a week since the new oven and chimney were installed their CO levels have fallen by between 50% to 80%. That means that not only are the levels of CO are lower but toxic particles will also be lower. This outcome will improve her lungs and for the children their lungs and their brains.
In adults the level of 11 parts per million, ppm, is in the red area for smokers. For children and pregnant women 7 and above is in the red area. That is just taking into account the effect of CO to reduce the amount of oxygen available to the body.
Further drop in breath CO levels at 3 weeks
Now we see a 69% drop across the different reading and in all in the family/
We now go on to install a further 20 Chimneys and measure the before and after measurements.
These will belong to the Community who will promote safer jikos and ventilation when manyattas are built.
They will also share their results with the neighbouring communities.
