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At the end of last year we received a donation to buy a piece of land strategically located in Munigi, which is on the outskirts of Goma en route to Rumangabo and the Gorilla Sector, and a stone’s throw from the airport.

This month we started building a Briquette Warehouse on this land. The warehouse will be home to all of our marketing activities, in addition to facilitating the storage of sacks and the drying and quality control of fuel briquettes before they go out onto the open market.

In short, this is a massive step in our bid to eradicate charcoal.

The plot of land where our warehouse is being built.

It is located on one of the lava flows erupted from Nyragongo in 2002.

The wall construction started last week.

The wall enclosure yesterday, going up fast!

The efforts of our team – me, Balemba, Jean Bosco etc - are now focused on the sale of this biomass energy source, while improving the quality of materials being used for the briquettes mixture.  We are carrying out calorific and burning tests to find out which are the best materials to utilize. Remember, to make one kilo of charcoal, our biggest competitor, you need 6 kilos of wood. That is a lot of concentrated energy!

Balemba with the striped shirt and Patient from Mercy Corps carrying out tests with the fuel briquettes.

Different qualities of fuel briquettes drying in the greenhouse waiting to be tested.

Thank you for your continued support and donations… we are coming along in strides and it is exciting to be a part of this effort.

Last week the Rangers of Virunga and the organization World Wildlife Fund gave vital support to the briquette program.

The Rangers, thanks to Emmanuel’s instruction (and financing), purchased 450 fuel briquette sacks, and WWF donated 450 improved Jiko Punguza stoves (these stoves usually cost $5.50 to make). These stoves, as their name suggests, make cooking more efficient by their improved design.

The briquettes and the stoves were all distributed among the Rangers of the southern and central sectors of Virunga National park and their families:

143 fuel briquette sacks and stoves to Rwindi

69 fuel briquette sacks and stoves to Rutshuru

88 fuel briquette sacks and stoves to Lulimbi

150 fuel briquette sacks and stoves to Rumangabo

1 stove and 1 sack of fuel briquettes for every Ranger

Everyone was taught how to light up the fuel briquettes

Thank you Rangers and WWF for the contribution! This support of the briquette program will contribute toward stopping deforestation, avoiding the risks associated with making charcoal, and boosting our sales!

More news on the briquettes coming soon.

It is over 1 year since we launched the briquette program, and I would like to share some of our achievements:

600 briquette pressing machines on the ground
3,500 jobs created in rural areas
4,000 sacks of fuel briquettes produced each month
A carpentry workshop producing 20 briquette pressing machines per day

A group of press machine beneficiaries in Rumangabo

Our objective was to install 1,000 pressing machines by the end of 2009. Even though the machines have already been built and are waiting to be set up in the villages around the park, the sales of fuel briquettes in Goma could not keep up with the production. So we decided to slow down a bit, and reinforce marketing and sales.

Pressing machines ready to go on the ground

Huge efforts are being made to convince local people of the drastic consequences of charcoal consumption. Changing people’s habits is a difficult task that needs persistent effort in the long term.  And to keep those briquette producers motivated, we need to make sure that all their production is bought by our project, no matter what.

Our on the ground experience tells us that the financial return from making briquettes is one of the main reasons 3,500 people continue to make briquettes. But importantly, briquettes are clean, easy to use, and do not require women to spend days on end in the forest, making them extremely vulnerable to attack.

Marketing fuso selling in Goma

Justine is a good example. Her husband was killed 10 years ago by the FDLR rebel group. In February 2009, she received the briquette-making kit and training, and since then, she has been selling her fuel briquette production every week in Rubare (close to Rumangabo). Thanks to the money earned she is now building a home for her eldest son, now 18 years old, and pays school fees for the rest of her 3 children.

Justine and her son

Justine with her pressing machine

Stories like this are a good example of how this project can have a positive impact both on the forests of Virunga National park and on the plight of the local population.

In 2010 we are more determined than ever to fight charcoal consumption, because our experience so far has shown that it is possible to make a change.

Thank you to all of you who donated to the briquette program in 2009. I should also like to thank the Dutch government (SenterNovem), the Belgian government, the British Embassy (in DRC) and the US Fish & Wildlife Service for their support.

Makala Ya Sasa! (The New Charcoal!)

Back in July 2007 I was working in Mutsora, the northern station of Virunga National Park. I remember hearing about the massacre of the Rugendo family of gorillas from Emmanuel. But it wasn’t until I opened an e-mail from an American lady, who broke my heart with her message, that I realized the horror of the what had just happened. She was pregnant just like Mburanumwe, one of the murdered gorillas.

Mburanumwe is buried behind Senkwekwe at Rumangabo - how pertinent that the Senkwekwe Center will be a stone’s throw from the graves.

I wish I had kept that message, because I would like to tell her today that there is still hope. Ndeze and Ndakasi are two strong babies, and the Senkwekwe Center is half way through to being finished.

The fuel briquette program’s main objective is to stop deforestation, and therefore save the habitat of the Mountain Gorillas and other wildlife in Virunga. Today we are working side by side, and by that I mean just a couple of meters away from each other. While we are building wooden pressing machines in our carpentry workshop at Rumangabo, just 20 meters away from us the brick machine is constantly producing bricks to build the future home of the baby gorilla orphans.

Here you can see the presses ready to be distributed throughout the park, and behind is the little building where we make the bricks (that building is made from the bricks too!)

Please help us by donating towards this campaign, so the wall can be finished and Ndeze and Ndakasi can have a wonderful new place to live. Thank you!

First of all a big hello to all readers. I am back in Goma from maternity leave, with more energy than ever to make sure that fuel briquettes are sold like hot cakes …. a difficult (but not impossible) task to achieve!

Previously we told you about the moving truck going around the streets of Goma with 6 guys dressed with gorilla suits, selling sacks of fuel briquettes, and playing a song Katya specially wrote about the “new charcoal”. It was a complete success, and we will continue doing it every day now.

But of course that is not enough. So we have opened 12 shops in the busiest areas of town, where makala (charcoal) is being sold (and of course where our target market is!)

Balemba and the saleswomen at the shop in the “Deux Lampes” neighborhood in Goma

So yesterday I went with Balemba to visit one of the shops, where fuel briquettes are sold side by side with makala. It is the same charcoal saleswomen who are now offering the briquettes. It is a great result.

A signpost was put up advertising fuel briquettes. It reads, in Swahili, Makala Ya Sasa “The New Charcoal” is sold here.

A saleslady grins as she sells the briquettes!

So now it is crunch time. We will be opening 6 more shops by the end of November. And we are adopting an aggressive marketing strategy. At the same time we also have plans to build a warehouse on the edge of Goma so that we can perfect the quality control and distribution of the briquettes.

Thank you for your continued donations. All kind of support is much appreciated as we continue on this journey to halt the deforestation of Virunga’s forests.

You absolutely must watch this video. If it makes you chuckle half as much as I did, it will brighten up your day.

Now that briquette production is well underway with 490 presses distributed around the periphery of Virunga, and over 3,000 local people employed in making briquettes – we now need to boost our marketing effort in Goma.

That is what this video is all about.

So if you want to see a bunch of gorillas, atop a moving truck, with music blaring and driving the local people nuts – click on the video below.

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Yannick, one of the young guys on the truck, was telling me this morning as they were getting dressed in our parking lot that some people think they are actually real gorillas. He said the other day someone offered him a banana. So what did he do? He grabbed it and ran!

As a footnote the song in the background is called Makala Ya Sasa – which in Swahili means “The New Charcoal” – which of course is what our briquettes are.

Katya wrote the song especially – good job Katya.

And we now have 11 warehouses (that can each store up to 400 sacks of briquettes) at various points throughout Goma. These are effectively purchase points. So we are putting a lot of time and energy into the promotion of this new form of energy. Asking people to change their cooking habits will not happen overnight, but we are giving it our best shot to make it happen as quickly as possible and diminish the threat to the forests of Virunga.

Thanks also for all your continued donations to the briquette program. They are going to very good use.

We’ve reached a cross roads with the briquette programme.  As you remember, we had pledged to set up 1,000 briquette businesses this year.  1000 village briquette businesses translates into the creation of 6000 employments and the substition of about 15% of charcoal consumption with a clean, sustainable and cheap source of domestic energy for poor households in Goma.  We currently have over 3000 people making briquettes and the idea is to have 34,000 by the end of 2011.

That could make the briquette business the biggest employer in the province after agriculture.  Hmmm…

It meant setting up a workshop in Rumangabo to build presses, creating a team of trainers and business advisors, a very effective logistics, finance and administrative support system, a transport business, and the rest.  But now we have over 500 presses in production, and amazingly, we are on track to reaching our target, and more.

About 85% of briquette producers are women, most of whom were forced from their homes by the fighting last year

But there remains one BIG question mark.  Will the briquettes sell on the open market?

So far  we have been distributing briquettes in the Internally displaced camps around Goma.  They have now largely returned home as peace starts to come back to the region.  We are now producing over 4000 sacks of briquettes a month, and we have to convince people to buy them.  Cultural barriers run high, and people just don’t like to change the way they cook.  Briquettes do produce more smoke, which people hate, but they are also much cheaper.  Old habits die hard and it’s not an easy sell.

So what are we doing about it?

Katya and Balemba have been spearheading a marketing campaign.  We have the billboards, youth groups running around with leaflets, pamphlets, and… a gorilla reggae band that goes around Goma on the back of truck singing about the briquettes, the forest, the gorillas (the World Premiere of their video will appear on this blog later this week, so don’t miss it).

We have to sell those briquettes to save the forest and the Mountain Gorillas’ home.  So far, we’re selling about 10 sacks a day, which is not enough.  We really need some clever ideas.  If you have any thoughts or ideas on what we could do to promote the briquettes, we’d love you have your comments.  There’s a very good chance we’ll try to put your ideas into practice.

This is a copy of the comic strip produced by Katya that we have started distributing around Goma.  It’s all in Swahili, but you can hopefully get the message from the pictures.

Two months later, was a big operation in which Rangers destroyed several hundred Kilns.

In his inspect Innocent Mburanumwe led a patrol out and back to evaluate the impact of the last anti-charcoals operation. In patrol he destroyed four Kilns and arrested two charcoal’s poachers.

It’s a pity because, the charcoal boss use women and kids to transport the charcoals from the forest to their stores.
For reminding the last operation against the deforestation and the illegal charcoal in active volcano sector had success to dismantle many charcoals poachers ring.

The operation has made an appreciable difference in reducing the illegal charcoal trade at the south-eastern side of Virunga National Park.

Sadly, it is the people in Goma City. In June 2009, the price was $15 (US) per sac. That same sac now costs $25-30 (US). This isn’t entirely the result of the charcoal interdiction efforts.
But fortunately Goma’s people have an alternative; briquettes project.

Briquette board advertise in Goma town

The sign has

The New Charcoal

This destroys the environment and our future

Briquettes are cheaper and cook faster

Buy a sack of briquettes and get a free stove

Briquettes seasoning

The Briquette Program is going full steam ahead and production of both briquettes and the presses that make them is increasing rapidly. We have had early success selling briquettes in bulk for IDP camps, but now the main challenge is to compete with the charcoal markets of Goma that are the biggest threat to Virunga’s forests.

Demonstrating the proper use of briquettes

That is why I visited an organisation called APROSAF (Association pour la Promotion de la Sage Femme) to demonstrate how briquettes work. This is an association made up of 118 women (many of them midwives or sage femme in French literally meaning ” wise woman”) which was created in the wake of the 2002 Nyiragongo eruption to help families made homeless by the devastating lava flow which ripped through Goma.

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