Mary E. Trimble

From: Tubob: Two Years in West Africa with the Peace Corps

Mary (Mariama) studying Mankinda

Although it was supposed to be the rainy season, it didn’t last. We’d had a few “frog stranglers” as Bruce called them, but not nearly enough to get many of the local crops toward healthy growth.

After work one afternoon, as I made my way home I came across a man, also walking toward his village. We exchanged greetings and walked together.

The dirt path wound through a field of thin, withering millet. Although this staple grain towered above our heads, it wouldn’t produce much this year.

“This field is dry,” I commented in Mandinka. My walking companion nodded, his black face glistening with sweat. “Yes, we need more rain.”

Although the nights had been cool, daytime temperatures were again climbing. I tried not to think about the heat, now soaring close to 100 degrees. My dress stuck to my back, the long skirt caught at my legs. “It’s too bad we can’t get … water …” I groped for the correct word.

He prompted the Mandinka word for irrigation. “It is too far from the river to irrigate, Mariama.”

We stopped at a snake’s twisting track, its thick impression in the sandy soil still fresh. The Gambian held out his arm, holding me back until he determined we were out of harm’s way.

We resumed our trek. The trail narrowed and I automatically stepped behind my companion. “Couldn’t water from the river be piped in?”

“But how? Irrigation systems need motors and fuel and they are expensive.”

We reached a fork in the footpath. From the village to the right, pungent smoke from cooking fires greeted us. Voices and laughter drifted from behind woven fences.

My new friend gestured to the right. “I will go this way now.”

“Yes. Thank you for walking with me.”

“Mariama,” he called over his shoulder. “Your Mandinka is very good.”

Highly complimented, it was only then I realized my entire conversation had been in Mandinka; his had been in English. Without my realizing it, we had been practicing each other’s language.

Book Review: A Dog Named Boo

Posted on October 7, 2013 by Mary

A Dog Named Boo:The Underdog with a Heart of Gold by Lisa J. Edwards is a moving account of a dog’s achievement despite his many disabilities, or perhaps because of them.

Lisa J. Edwards, a full time professional dog trainer and behavioral consultant, meets her match when she and her husband Lawrence adopt a dog they called Boo. As a dyslectic, Lisa suffers with learning disabilities as well as physical limitations. In addition, Lisa carriies emotional scars stemming from her childhood.

On a quick errand, Lisa encounters a box of puppies for sale. The runt of the litter, Boo is picked on by his siblings and it’s unlikely he’ll ever be adopted. But somehow a chord is struck between Lisa and the pup and she can’t resist taking him home.

Boo is a challenge from the beginning–it takes an entire year to potty train him. In puppy classes, he doesn’t respond to basic commands, which prove difficult and embarrassing for Lisa: a dog trainer who can’t train her own dog.

Still Lisa persists. She puts into practice her belief in gentle and effective positive reinforcement dog training, always reinforcing the good things and looking beyond the negative. Lisa learns that Boo actually has learning disabilities, physical limitations with vision problems and awkward motor skills. Still, in working with him, she finds talents that make Boo an exceptional therapy dog. Together they achieve
heights Lisa never dreamed possible.

For a heart-warming treat, I recommend A Dog Named Boo: The Underdog with a Heart of Gold. You’ll learn about the philosophy of training a dog, about life itself, and the power of persistence and unconditional love.

An Assignment: Nutrition Counseling

Posted on September 30, 2013 by Mary

From: Tubob: Two Years in Africa with the Peace Corps

I have so often found that once I make up my mind to do something, or feel as though I should do something, a door opens to show the way. During that week’s Friday Well Baby Clinic, we saw several malnourished children. Two of them were so seriously endangered that Sister Roberts, the head nurse, admitted them to the hospital.

As Sister and I gathered our papers after a long session in which we saw about 350 children, she said, “Mariama,rather than go on trek to the outlying clinics with the team, what would you think about following up with the malnourished children, those we admit to the hospital? Talk to the mothers while they are here at the hospital with their children, then when they’re released, follow up at their villages?”

There it was. My chance. “Talk to them about nutrition? You bet! I’d love to do that. I could also follow up on the ones we see but don’t admit.” My mind whirled with the possibilities.

I had learned from my reading and then later saw for myself the terrible effects of malnutrition. Malnutrition often doesn’t come from poverty–food was usually available in The Gambia–but from lack of education. Two types of malnutrition commonly seen in The Gambia was kwashiorkor and marasmus. The kwashiorkor child eats enough, but it isn’t the right balance of food. For instance, he eats only starchy food. At first glance, he looks fat, but his muscles are thin, his skin dull and hair reddish. I saw a lot of kids who fit that description.

The marasmus child looks very thin, the typical starving-to-death look. This is often seen among those children who have been suddenly weaned. The child balks at regular food, or he gets diarrhea from an abruptly changing diet, weakens and dies.

Breast feeding is the norm in The Gambia. African women have great quantities of milk. Lack of mother’s milk is rarely a problem. Unfortunately they often breast fed exclusively for too long. Breast feeding is a wonderful, sanitary way to feed infants, but local practice was to breast feed until the child was two years old, or until the mother became pregnant, and the child then suddenly weaned. When offered regular food, the child often balked and quickly became malnourished. Unfortunately, this was not an uncommon scenario. The death rate between birth and five years at that time was 50 percent. This was a terrible statistic and the cause of death often avoidable. There were several reasons for a child’s death, but
due to sudden weaning was one of the most common.

I had my work cut out for me.

Today’s guest: Amy Hale Auker, Author of Winter of Beauty

Posted on September 23, 2013 by Mary

Winter of Beauty by Amy Hale Auker brings readers right into the dust and grit of contemporary ranch life. Shiney, ranch owner since the death of her father, and Monte, the foreman, run a large ranch with the help of a handful of colorful characters, people I came to know and care about. Their motto seems to be “live and let live,” but when there’s trouble, each and everyone puts aside his or her own comfort to give a helping hand. Winter of Beauty is a fine, heart-felt novel of depth. Hale, an award-winning author, knows what she’s talking about. She lives, works, and writes on a large ranch in Arizona where her husband is foreman.

Today, my guest is the author of Winter of Beauty, Amy Hale Auker. Welcome, Amy. Please share your writing philosophy to give us some insight into how you perceive your writing experience.

Amy Hale Auker:
I found out a hard truth about myself in 2006. I found out that while I can write and I love writing, I am terrible at waiting for a manuscript to be published. I am impossible to live with while going through the long slow slog of seeing a book come into print. (And I was great at being pregnant, so go figure!)

When my new husband and I were first together, I was waiting on my first book to go through the academic review process at a university press. The glacial pace was driving me crazy. He suggested that (duh) I write something new. He commented, “I read to be entertained. Go look at our shelves.” We had just combined libraries and we had duplicate copies of several much loved books. I did my survey on a snowy afternoon, and I still remember the light filtering in through the windows. What I found on our shelves were… novels. Fiction. Volume after volume of fiction. Some great, some not so great. So I set out to write a novel. And I did! I wrote a novel called “The Story is the Thing.” “Story” has not found a home yet, but I was hooked. I was hooked on the idea of writing characters who could do and say anything I needed them to, and often, took over the story to say and do what they wanted!

Immediately upon finishing the third or fourth draft of “Story,” I started writing “Winter of Beauty.” I did not know what “Beauty” was going to become, but I knew that I wanted certain elements in it. I wanted the mountain, the land, to be a character in the book. I wanted to explore the idea of belonging. I wanted to write Jody Neil and Delbert Lincoln’s relationship. I wanted to bring Sunshine Angel Lewis to life. I wanted to explore an issue that every novelist encounters: names. The idea of giving characters names and how that shapes them. The first draft of “Winter of Beauty” was terrible. With this book I learned the power of the rewrite. I learned the craft of weaving plot and characters together. I learned the value of research and outside voices to augment authenticity. I learned that I can cut characters completely out and promise them a book of their own. I learned that not everything has to be wrapped up neatly and tied with a bow.

I learned that shifting gears between essays and fiction and poetry is therapeutic, like cross-training is for an athlete.

I learned that I can’t not write.

Thank you, Amy. After reading Winter of Beauty, it’s clear to me that your writing is a passion fulfilled.

Winter of Beauty will be officially released October 15 and available through regular book channels. In the meantime, a Special Author Edition is available through Amy Hale Auker’s website: http://amyhaleauker.com/.

An Unwanted Guest

Posted on September 16, 2013 by Mary

From: Tubob: Two Years in West Africa with the Peace Corps

While Bruce fixed breakfast, I swept the hut. As usual, I swept the bed. Even though we had stretched a cloth over the bed as a canopy, droppings from the grass-thatched roof still landed on the bed sheet. As I stooped my way around the room with my short broom, I picked up the laundry bag and stopped, broom suspended. There, tightly coiled, a small eight-inch snake glared at me.

“Ah, Bruce?” I called.

“Yeah?”

“Would you come here?”

He could tell from my tone that something was up. He bounded over to the hut. I held up my hand in caution, and then pointed to our unwanted guest.

“Oh, boy. I’ll be right back.”

“Bring a jar.”

He came back with a jar and his machete. Setting the jar a distance away from either of us, he carefully slid the flat side of the machete under the snake and slipped it into the jar, then quick as a flash reached over and screwed on the lid. After poking holes in the lid, we admired our catch.

Our neighbor Mosalif stopped by and viewed the snake from a distance.

“Can you get word to Peter Moore to come here?” Peter was a good friend of ours who worked in The Gambia for the British Medical Research Council. “We don’t know what kind of snake this is, do you?”

Mosalif shook his head and hurried off to get someone to tell Peter Moore we wanted him. I couldn’t believe how quickly Peter arrived. Within minutes he pulled up in his Land Cruiser.

He studied our snake. “This is a puff adder. Very deadly. Even though this one is quite young, his bite could kill. What I’m wondering,” he said in his dead-pan British clip, “is where are the other dozen or so? This one is too young to be far from its mother and siblings.”

Gulp! Several of us scoured the compound’s huts and grounds. To our dismay, ours was the only one found.

Peter asked permission to take the snake home to test it for malaria, as part of his research. He brought it back in a neat little specimen jar, pickled for eternity.

News spreads quickly in Africa. For the next several days we had a steady stream of people coming to our door asking to see our pickled puff adder.

Book Review: Forgiving Effie Beck

Posted on September 10, 2013 by Mary

Karen Casey Fitzjerrell has done it again, she’s written another outstanding novel. In her first book, The Dividing Season, the native Texan spins a story set in the early 1900s. In her latest work, Forgiving Effie Beck, Fitzjerrell takes us to the Great Depression years, the decade preceding World War II.

Mike Lemay had been one of those men standing in endless bread lines, hungry, without sustainable work. When he’d left the indignities and human misery in North Carolina, he felt beaten. Through President Roosevelt’s New Deal program, he managed to get a job with the Federal Writer’s Project (FWP) to work as an interviewer. The idea of FWP was to interview people from all over the country and compile the stories into a series of volumes. With the promised pay, Mike would send money home to his younger brother and his family, who were also taking care of their widowed mother.

He walks and hitches cross country to the tiny town of Cooperville, Texas. He manages to find a place to stay at Cora Mae Travis’s place in a separate little building they call the tank house. Cora’s daughter, Jodean, handles the rental business along with their home-based beauty parlor she and her mother operate.

Almost immediately upon Mike’s arrival, an old-time resident, eccentric Effie Beck disappears. Although a recluse with few friends, Effie’s disappearance is a matter of concern and the townspeople organize and begin a search. Mike is drawn into the mystery.

Effie’s disappearance isn’t the only mystery. Mike senses that Jodean carries a secret. Cora Mae’s despicable attitude toward her daughter heightens the mystery. As Mike meets the townspeople, he must sort gossip from fact. There’s always plenty to talk about, but some people are close-lipped and Mike has to skillfully ferret out the truth.

Fitzgerrell draws her characters so clearly, I felt I’d known these people all my life. Each character is fine-tuned and as real as my next door neighbor. Rancher Red and Ada and their love for each other and their children is obvious, but then they, too, have a secret. Everyone knows that the sheriff’s wife has a secret, but really, they don’t have a clue as to the real story. As Mike delves into long-held secrets, all the while trying to solve Effie Beck’s disappearance, he learns about himself and faces his own needs.

For true reading pleasure, read this Depression-era novel. I couldn’t believe how fast the pages flew by. Dinner waited, bedtime waited, my own writing was put aside until I finished this compelling novel. I recommend reading this book straight through, then return to the Prologue for an intriguing full-circle.

Forgiving Effie Beck is available in trade paperback and ebook formats. For more information about the author, visit www.karencaseyfitzjerrell.com

Book Review: Loveland

Posted on August 26, 2013 by Mary

Andrea Downing has crafted a masterpiece with Loveland. Her fast-paced romantic western keep readers wondering how the story can ever be resolved. The novel takes place in the mid-1880s, during the West’s glory days.

When ten-year old Lady Alexandra Calthorpe is wrenched from her uncle’s ranch during the night, she’s heart-broken. She screams for her best friend, Jesse, a ranch hand. But Jesse Makepeace and the others are powerless to help. The decision has been made: Lady Alex is returning to England.

Ten years later, Alex returns to Faringdon, the family ranch run by her uncle, near Loveland, Colorado. Now seventeen, she’s still the strong-willed girl she’s always been, but now she’s ready to resume the life she’s craved–to be a part of the ranch, make it her home. But, along with her fervor to become a rancher, she brings emotional baggage and scandalous history. Even though she comes from a high-society family, below the surface lurk dark secrets.

An emotional bond resumes between Alex and Jesse, but now Jesse, several years older than Alex, is dealing with a woman. As their romance blossoms, so do complications regarding the ranch and Alex’s past.

Downing is a strong writer who has written a worthy premiere novel. She handles romantic scenes with flair while showing the nitty-gritty of ranch life in the 1880s. Loveland is packed with action and emotion, leaving the reader wanting more. Loveland is one of those books I hated to have end. A hands-down five-star novel.

Market Day in The Gambia

Posted on August 19, 2013 by Mary

From: TUBOB: Two Years in West Africa with the Peace Corps

Waves of 100-degree heat shimmered off the rice fields as I walked the two miles to market. Carrying my small back pack, a few recycled plastic bags, a quart-size porcelain bowl, and a small glass jar, I slowly passed a tired donkey plodding along, his head hung low, as he pulled a heavy cart loaded with sacks of millet. With each step I took, puffs of red dust settled on my legs and sandaled feet.

Market day in West Africa is a far cry from a quick run to Safeway in Seattle. It’s an adventure.

As Peace Corps volunteers serving in The Gambia, a small West African country, my husband Bruce and I lived as our hosts lived. We hauled our own water from the well, swept our mud-brick hut with a short locally-made straw broom, cooked our own meals, and bought our supplies at the open market and small stores. We didn’t have personal transportation, so we did as the local people and walked every place we went.

I heard my name called as I trudged along.

“Mariama! Salaam Malekum!” The name, Mariama, is the African version of my real name, Mary. The traditional Arabic greeting, Salaam Malekum, is heard throughout West Africa. It means “May peace be with you.”

“Malekum Salaam, Naba,” I answered the friendly African woman. She fell in step with me and we conversed in Mandinka, one of five local languages and the one Bruce and I learned during Peace Corps training.

I found Gambian women to be extraordinary. Their lives were not easy–they worked hard under very difficult conditions. Their strong bodies and graceful bearing impressed me. Typically, Naba carried a baby straddled across her back. Her wide-awake little son observed his world while held close to his mother’s warm body. When he became hungry, the woman simply switched him around to her breast. At the market, Naba and I parted, each to her own errands.

I’ll go to the meat market first, I decided with dread. The butcher’s shop, a small mud-brick building with a corrugated tin roof, was somewhat removed from the regular market. A large concrete counter separated the butcher from his customers. Goat, sheep, and beef carcasses hung from the ceiling. I tried to ignore the dead-animal smell.

The meat market crowd pushed their way to the counter. I, too, elbowed my way through the crowd. Whack! A hunk of beef fell off the carcass, severed with a mighty machete blow. Splat! Bits of meat and bone splattered on my dress and neck. Cringing, I held fast to my hard-fought place. Several flies left the main event, the beef carcass, and landed on me.

The butcher spoke a little English. “What you want?”

“Biff stek, please,” I answered. In The Gambia, previously a British-held colony, many words sound English but are pronounced with a local dialect. Whacking off a piece of meat for me, he placed it in my porcelain bowl. Then, as a treat, he dropped in a little pile of wrinkled tripe (cow’s stomach). Trying to show gratitude, I smiled, but knew I wouldn’t eat it, but I’d give it to our neighbor. As I left the meat market, my personal flies came too. I considered the benefits of becoming a vegetarian.

Fragrances bombarded me as I entered the main market, a large open-sided structure. Spices, sold by the bulk, were lined up in little bins. Large flat baskets displayed fresh roasted peanuts. The peanut vendor tore a scrap of paper–any type of paper–and folded a little package to hold the peanuts, still warm from an earthen oven. We briefly haggled over the price, an expected exchange, and I dropped the equivalent of a dime into his hand.

A baker sold piles of fresh baguettes. The earthy aroma of yeast permeated the air. Pankettas, flat yeast dough deep-fried in palm oil, quickly disappeared, breakfast for many shoppers.

I skirted around unpleasant smelling, fly-covered dried fish. We never bought it, though we’d eaten it in Gambian cooking and found it tasted as bad as it smelled. The fresh fish was lovely though and the catfish appeared to still be breathing. Anything that’s still breathing must be fresh. I bought a catfish, slipping it into one of my plastic bags.

Chickens roamed freely, pecking at the ground. Some weren’t so lucky and hung upside down, feet tied to a rod. They never seemed to struggle, awaiting their fate. As I shopped, I saw many women carrying live chickens in the crook of their arms as they conducted their shopping business.

Noise rose to an astonishing level when a bush taxi’s horn beeped as riders were dropped off. Donkeys brayed as they arrived with their heavy loads. Gambians often talked in a loud boisterous manner and now they shouted to be heard. Children darted about, squealing with their games.

Treadle sewing machines click-clacked in the background. There were no ready-made clothing shops in the village where we lived. When the need arose for a new dress or shirt, one bought the material and described to the tailor the style desired. Because of the heat, clothing was generally loose-fitting so exact measurements weren’t required, but these skillful tailors created an amazing variety of garments on their treadle machines.

I eagerly learned what vegetables were available that day. With no cold storage, the availability of most vegetables depended on the season. Tomatoes were available five months of the year, lettuce only about two months. One of our favorite vegetables, okra, was sold about nine months of the year. All year long squash was available as well as imported onions and potatoes.

Friendly women called my name, urging me to come to their attractive displays and buy the vegetables they had grown. Some men sold items too, usually businessmen who bought imported food to sell at the market.

Approaching one of my regular vendors, I admired her tomato display. Most fruits and vegetables sold by the pile, not by the pound. Each pile of five tomatoes displayed a similar assortment, perhaps one large, two medium, and two small tomatoes, in various stages of ripeness. One selects an entire pile, not one from this pile, one from that. I purchased two piles and a piece of squash.

A large rat streaked by my sandaled feet with a cat hot on its trail. Cats fend for themselves so catching that rat was serious business.

I spotted oranges, also arranged in piles of five. Although ripe, the oranges were green. Their tough skins required a sharp knife to peel. Once I counted fifty-two seeds in a single orange.

I remembered I needed rice and crossed to the other side of the market where a vendor sat next to a burlap bag. The man measured rice into my plastic bag, using a tomato paste can as his measuring device. Rice was grown locally, thanks to the Chinese who taught Gambians to cultivate this essential product. It was good rice but didn’t keep well. After a week or so it turned wormy and then it became chicken fodder. Our chickens loved it.

I needed flour. A warning stenciled on the side of the 50-pound flour sack read, “This is a gift from the United States of America. Not to be sold.” I purchased two scoops and moved on.

I had the feeling of being watched. Now I looked around quickly and sure enough, there she was, peeking out from behind a post. It was a game we played, the peanut-butter lady and I. Either she would sneak up on me, or I tried to come up behind her. We giggled like little girls at our joke. This delightful, tiny woman, beamed a huge smile showing beautiful white teeth. Her family grew peanuts and stored them for use during the year. Before going to market, she pressed fresh-roasted peanuts into a paste.

There was nothing more delicious than this fresh peanut butter, which they called peanut paste. Gambians prepare a sauce with it, called domoda, adding tomato paste and perhaps a bit of meat, spiced with hot peppers, and served on rice. Scrumptious! They couldn’t believe we spread peanut paste on bread, nor could they believe how much we bought! I held out my jar into which she plopped five two-inch balls, plus one more as a gift.

The market loomed bigger than life. The smells, noise, heat, and activity, seemed
to be the essence of these people. I considered the market to be The Gambia boiled down to the essentials. One struggled to conduct business, haggling over prices, jostling crowds, suffering with the heat and flies, but this ritual highlighted my week. While buying provisions, I’d visited with friends and shared with them their ancient marketing tradition.

Book Review: Journey to Sand Castle

Posted on August 12, 2013 by Mary

Leslee Breene will touch your heart with Journey to Sand Castle. The book delves into many emotions, but the greatest is the healing power of love.

As Hurricane Katrina rages in New Orleans, divorced teacher Tess Cameron does what she can to help victims as they pour into the school for protection. Utter chaos leaves people in a panic: families are separated, there is little food and water, and no electricity. Hope of returning to their normal lives dwindles with every moment. As the people leave the school for more permanent shelters, Tess is left with a little bi-racial girl, Crystal, the daughter of a fellow teacher, a single mother, whose whereabouts is unknown. A three-legged cat is also thrown into the mix, a newly acquired pet of Crystal’s.

Tess’s teaching job and apartment are destroyed, but rather than seek temporary shelter with the other victims, she attempts to take Crystal to her grandfather in Sand Castle, Colorado in the San Luis Valley. When she finds the crusty, bitter man, she’s discouraged by his apparent disinterest in his granddaughter. Left in a quandary, but wanting to do the right thing for Crystal, Tess tries to find a job to tide her over until she can get her life, and the life of her little charge, in some kind of order. She learns that Grant Wilder, a widowed rancher/outfitter, needs a cook and someone to keep house. Tess isn’t much of a cook and has never considered herself anything more than a wandering spirit, a rolling stone, but for the sake of Crystal, accepts this temporary job and, with the little girl, moves onto the ranch.

The story develops into an exciting drama as fate spins its magic in the lives of those involved.

On a personal note, I was intrigued with the theme of Hurricane Katrina. As an American Red Cross volunteer, I spent several weeks in Louisiana assisting the victims of this horrendous disaster. I could relate to the profound loss and confusion of Katrina’s aftermath as Breene describes it in this novel.

I highly recommend Journey to Sand Castle. It’s a memorable novel of depth and redemption.

Building a Mud-Brick Stove

Posted on August 5, 2013 by Mary

Mud-brick stove under construction

From: Tubob: Two Years in West Africa with the Peace Corps

The Sahara Desert encroaches closer to The Gambia each year. The need for firewood for cooking, plus drought conditions have created a scarcity of trees. Women and children often walk great distances to gather enough wood for fires.

My husband Bruce longed for projects where he could feel more productive. In reading about alternative energy at the Peace Corps library, he learned about building a stove which would use less fuel than an open fire.

Along the meandering path we used to go into Basse, we passed a place where men made mud bricks. The soil had to be the right mixture of clay and sand to make usable bricks. We watched as they dug up the clay mixture and patted it into molds, then left them to dry in the sun. The mud bricks were used to build huts and smaller structures for grain and peanut storage. The bricks would eventually melt or crack, but their lives could be extended if covered with a thin layer of concrete.

Bruce bought a supply of the mud-bricks and they were delivered by a donkey-pulled cart. He had talked to Binta and her husband Mosalif about his project and discussed where in the compound a good place would be to build the stove. The firebox was about three feet long, eighteen inches wide. Bruce borrowed Binta’s two cooking pots so that he could make openings in the top to exactly fit her pots.

It was our hope that this idea would catch on and others would make this simple stove. The firebox, closed on three sides and sealed on top with the cooking pots, required far less fuel than an open fire. A small chimney directed smoke away from the cook’s eyes.

Days went by, but Binta didn’t use her new stove. Finally, Bruce asked Mosalif why.

“I must build a building around it,” Mosalif replied. Traditionally, the Fula don’t cook in the open. We were aware that there were covered cooking areas, but we had also seen many Mandinka and Wolof cooking in the open, though not the Fula. Binta’s current cooking area was the space between walls of her hut. In our hut, that space was where we took our bucket baths.

Many times I had called on Binta and sat in that space while she cooked. It was unbelievably hot and the smoke made my eyes burn. The next weekend Mosalif gathered the materials, grass for thatched roofing, and krinting, such as used for fencing, for the walls. A couple of his friends helped him build the cook hut around the new stove.

Finally, the day came when Binta cooked her first meal on the stove. They were impressed with how much less fuel it took and by how much faster she could fix a meal. Although a few village people did come to look at it, unfortunately the idea didn’t catch on.