Wanted: labor-saving devices

written Sunday, 16 December 2007

 

My latest great idea for developing Senegal: hand-powered labor-saving devices.  Women here spend so many hours each day pounding corn (and other grains, but in my village, mainly corn) mortar and pestle style, sifting flour with little sieves (same style as people panning for gold in the 1800s), and cracking peanuts out of their shells, one by one, by hand.  Surely there's got to be a way to do these chores more quickly, without electricity or a giant machine (my village has an electric corn-grinding machine, but the villagers here can't afford to pay to use it all the time, and it seems to be broken half the time anyway).

 

If the women didn't have to spend so much time on these simple chores, who knows what else they might be doing?  Growing more food to feed their families better, maybe, or engaging in small business to earn money (like selling bean sandwiches and other tasty street foods to me!), or just getting to rest a little more - women here commonly work from 6 am to 8 pm or even later.  Even during their "down time" after lunch they are usually cracking peanuts or something.  And if the women weren't so overburdened that they need help from their kids just to get the daily done, then maybe parents would send more of their kids to school instead of keeping them home to work.  If it were physically possible to have outside employment and still get all the daily chores like cooking and washing done, maybe attitudes would change about women working outside the home, and about women's role in society in general.

 

I may be getting a little carried away here, but I don't think I'm entirely crazy.  So what I want is to find (or build, but I'm not much of an engineer/inventor, and anyway this isn't new technology I'm talking about, it's got to be out there somewhere) some sort of hand-operated grinder that would work for grinding corn and other grains.  Something that would be more efficient than mortar and pestle style pounding.  What did the pioneers use back in the day to grind grain, if they weren't close enough to a big mill?  Somehow I don't think it was the mortar and pestle things they have here.

 

If I could find something that might be the right thing, I'd get the women in my host family to test it out.  And if, miraculously, it was perfect and they loved it, maybe then I could get a bunch to sell to people here (more sustainable than just giving them away).  Or even better, maybe the village blacksmith could start manufacturing them and sell them.  And then, who knows, maybe it would help Senegal (and the rest of Africa, why not) develop.

 

I have a lot of crazy ideas.  But maybe, someday, one of my crazy ideas will be a crazy GREAT idea.  Who knows, maybe this is the one.  Anyway, anyone have any ideas for a corn grinder, or peanut cracker or flour sifter?