Oven Picture

Here I am with a few of the students that dedicated the most time to helping me with the oven.

I have received requests for more information about my oven project. In response I will include a few pictures that look at the structural aspects of the oven, and an updated edition of the article.


Thomas Mosier
28 May 09
Not long after I arrived at site, I began asking the teachers at my school questions such as, “if I build a 'cavern' from this gravel and that cement, and then light a fire inside, do you think that it will explode?” After receiving enough looks of doubt, I instead began to ask if the hardware stores in town sell clay bricks. It was clear that the Kenyans working with me on the project had gaps in their conceptualizations of what I was doing, but they answered all of my questions as best they could and together we succeeded in builing a bread oven.

By the time I pulled the first batch of pizza and bread out of the oven, I had become confident that most of the holes in the understanding had been filled. Seeing the oven made it easy to grasp the concepts involved, especially when explaining thermal physics to my form 2 class. Now that the class has smelled the fresh bread, they perk right up at the mention of heat transfer or applications of the topic we are learning. They have even begun telling me that they are going to build their own ovens, at which point I perk right up and we talk about how to turn this interest into a science congress project.

The teachers have also been watching to understand how the oven works. Following a recent parents' day, I invited the teachers to a pizza party outside of my house. In preparation, Matt Palma and I cooked 8 pizzas and 5 loaves of bread. What pleased me about this party was that it marked one of the first times since I have come to the school that the teachers and staff were all together, enjoying each others company outside of the staff room. The male teachers even asked me to teach them to cook, which made all of the women smile with a mixture of approval and skepticism. In response to which, one male teacher said, “By the way, it is good to gain knowledge about all topics.” His words did more to spread my gospel than my words ever could.

The project is not finished - I am learning as much about building wood ovens and community as my students are. There are changes that the students and I will make to the design, and by the time science congress roles around, maybe the we will have even more ideas. Maybe by then, there will even be some male teachers who are artisan bakers. Matt Palma is hoping that we can invent a pizza delivery system so that I can put a pizza on a matatu and get it to him while it is still hot. I don't think there is any way that it could make it that far without an armed guard, but we all have a right to dream. Even if we can't send you a pizza, you are always still welcome to come to the source and bake it yourself.