Apparently those cozy evenings spent huddled around a crackling fire, whipping up a pot of maize meal, are a barbaric act against both public health and the environment. Don’t worry, though, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco), the ever-so-helpful United Nations agency, has a solution: Ditch the wood and embrace the glorious world of gas, solar and electric stoves! They call it ‘Clean Cooking’. Yes, you read that right.
Apparently a few twigs used to cook a family’s daily Number 1 maize meal is a bigger threat than, oh, I don’t know, the mountains of industrial waste burning and releasing who-knows-what toxins across the globe. But hey, who needs logic when you have a good old-fashioned guilt trip on the menu? Now, our esteemed leader Calle Schlettwein hopped on a plane (burning fossil fuels, of course) to attend this ‘clean cooking summit’ in Paris. Did he forget to mention that a Namibian family barely needs a handful of wood to cook a meal? It’s not like they’re hosting all-you-can-eat barbeques fuelled by entire forests! I was waiting for our Calle to post his barbeque smoke and grill set-up for sale, just to show us how committed he really is to this madness.
He actually issued something in the shape of “you have got it all wrong, we were not really serious about this issue”. Ai? Etse, seriously, how much wood do we really burn at a typical Namibian homestead? As the wise elders say, “porridge doesn’t ne.
