Cobb is an age-old building method using a mixture of mud (clay), sand, and straw as a binder (apparently it produces lactic acid as it ferments, which binds the minerals together). When I was in Africa as a college student, I lived for a few weeks with a Samburu family. One night it rained hard, and the grandmother in the family rushed out into the rain. I wondered what she was doing, and then discovered that she was taking advantage of the rain to repair her house, plastering the outside with a mud-dug, grass mixture. She was an expert in cobb building, like every Samburu woman.
Joe Kennedy is also an expert in cobb building. An architecture graduate of UC Berkeley with MA’s in architecture from SciArch — Southern California Institute of Architecture, and in Peace Studies from Notre Dame, Kennedy has built cobb structures all over the world. In this project, he is teaming with Patricia McCardle of Solar Cookers International, to try to create a durable solar cooker that can be built and used in refugee camps in Chad. McCardle is the editor of the Solar Cooker International journal, and a former member of the US diplomatic corps. She has brought solar cookers all over the world, and has observed the problems with a variety of the cookers in large camps: durability. Her idea and Kennedy’s expertise will hopefully solve that problem.
-
- A simple solar cooker — cardboard covered in cigarette foil — folds up into a dish of sorts held together by sticks and pointed at the sun. The blackened aluminum pot absorbs heat — 150 degrees and rising when we counted.
-
- Boes of clay donated from an Orange County clay producer — a ton of clay!
-
- Crushed charcoal — crushed by hand. In the boxes is clay donated from an Orange County clay producer; and hay bales provide the straw.
-
- Crushed charcoal can be mixed with the cobb to create the black color needed to absorb heat inside the solar oven.
-
- The inside of the cooker, darkened with charcoal. The blue is the bottom of the bucket, which will be removed to create an opening for the oven. Inside the frame, a panel of glass or plastic will allow the sun to pass through and heat the oven.
-
- the bucket inside will be removed when the oven is dry. It is used to create an opening in the oven. A pillow stuffed inside, filled with straw, will keep the heat in the oven.
-
- Volunteers adding cobb.
-
- Stuffing a hand-made pillow into the opening of the oven.
-
- Joe Kennedy and Patricia McCardle of Solar Cookers International and their almost-finished experimental solar oven. When the cobb dries, they will test it out!
-
- More of Kennedy’s creations — cobb benches and a cobb fire pit — at Wild Willow Farm.
Nature Explorer 