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| Santos Junior Guilaza's product comes from hardwood trees which provide a longer- and hotter-burning fuel than that used
in American barbecues. Stephanie Hanes |
Charcoal fuels the economy and deforestation of Mozambique
Santos Junior Guilaza makes charcoal for a living – he and legions of people like him literally fuel the engine of rural souther Africa.
from the April 2, 2008 edition
Page 2 of 3
So it's no surprise that Guilaza seees no other choice. But he also says he has started planting saplings, because he worries that at the rate the forest around his village is disappearing, there will be nothing left for his children to chop.
"[Charcoal] is probably the biggest problem in Mozambique, as far as deforestation," says Regina Cruz, a Mozambican forestry expert. "Whole forests are being cut. But what else can the people do."
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Today, Guilaza walks to his kiln, a 30-minute walk from his house. There's no set schedule, he says, but when he woke up at 5 a.m., he knew that instead of going to his corn fields with his wife, Donazia, he would come to this pile of exposed earth. He started this oven a few days before, after he'd chopped two thick trees that grew alongside his corn fields.
In this part of Mozambique, the regulo, or regional leader, tells people where they can plant crops and where they can't. Too close to an ancestral cemetery is a no-no, for instance, as is planting on your neighbor's turf. Villagers can cut most trees that grow on and around their fields but not trees protected by traditional law, such as the panga panga or marula.
People also know that stealing another man's timber will end up in a village-wide dispute, Guilaza says. A log in the middle of the brush might look abandoned, but it probably represents half a family's monthly income.
After Guilaza chopped his trees – wood chips flying from his hand-length ax head – he separated the skinnier branches from the 1- to 2-foot thick trunks. He took the smaller wood pieces home for his own family's cooking. (Last week Donazia made a goat curry stew over a wood fire.) The thickest chunks go toward charcoal.
Guilaza sets up the oven by clearing a swath of grass about 30 feet across and turning over the rich ground, just like his father and grandfather once showed him. He piles the remains of the tree in the center, and covers them with dried grass. Then he lights the wood and shovels dirt on top of the pile, leaving a small hole on top to allow just enough oxygen for a slow burn. He'll make a new kiln for the next two or three trees he chops.
The fire will smoulder for a week, he says, the wood gradually transforming into the thick chunks of charcoal. After a few days of burning, he shovels the mixture of dirt and burned wood to a section of the clearing and sifts out the pieces of charcoal. When they're cool enough, he stuffs them into 35 to 40 burlap bags that he buys for a few cents in a neighboring town. After stuffing them full, he adds a grass net at the top that will allow it to hold a bit more. Guilaza says each 100-pound bag sells for 60 meticais, about $2.40.
The charcoal will heat stoves in cities from southern Mozambique to northern Malawi, from Zimbabwe to South Africa.
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