Independent consultant and blogger in Dar es Salaam
Look, it shouldn’t be this hard, right? I have been asking everyone I can think to ask “what is eCooking” because all things culinary are my jam.
We all have passions. Some people know whether Ronaldo actually has a first- or is it second- name and others can tell you the specs of a motor vehicle on sight. I like the kitchen things. Food is sociology and economics and politics all in one room. Food is technology, biology, a lot of chemistry and no small amount of physics. Food is the ultimate 360 science.
eCooking can’t be all that novel, can it? Back in the 1900s of my youth, people had electrical technology for domestic use. There were contraptions that used electricity to heat a hotplate on which you put your cookware to cook food. These were widely available for home use in various configurations.
As a child, I remember that electricity was a precious resource in terms of cost, so many households would use biofuel and kerosene stoves.
As an adult, I know that electricity is a precious resource. Tanesco was kind enough to cut off the power as I drafted this article which was quite apropos.
Cooking fuel is gendered: Open fires made to roast meat remain a largely masculine endeavour, specifically outdoors. Firewood and charcoal are used and sometimes gas- never electricity. It tends to be an occasional and festive thing, and so fuel economy is not central.
By contrast, indoor everyday cooking remains largely female and focused on economy: The cheapest fuel possible extended over however many hot meals can be afforded.
Food is an intimate part of life, a key source of comfort. Our core memories of a female carer stooped over a single heat-source stove preparing an anticipated meal, sometimes with love, means that we have attachments to certain ways of cooking... and their attendant health problems and witch-hunting of old women with tired red eyes and bent backs.
Availability and convenience are helping gas cookers to encroach on biofuels. Electricity, however, remains a very distant last. Between the cost and fickle supply of electricity and the slow response times and wasted heat of a conventional electric burner, one has to be quite mad to cook with it in Tanzania.
So here I am once again asking: What is “eCooking?”
I am worried that as a Tanzanian woman, I may be accosted by demands to change my behaviour that look good on environmental paper while lacking respectful engagement with our lived reality. I worry that the most environmentally-friendly cooking technology out there — induction — remains as far out of economic reach as electric cars and affordable medical care for all.
The fact that eCooking is a sexy little word that borrows from modern “hip” product naming conventions doesn’t mask its developmentalist ambitions.
We all have passions, and mine is a six-burner metal beast of a gas cooker that is the hearth of our home. It would have to be nuked to be destroyed. When Tanesco disappoints, it burns dependably and steadily blue whether there be one to feed or a hungry and happy African clan at table. What is eCooking, in light of this?
Elsie Eyakuze is an independent consultant and blogger for The Mikocheni Report; E-mail: [email protected]
