The Ubiquitous WHO has told the world that 50 billion hours are spent collecting firewood each year.This firewood is primarily used as solid fuel for cooking and as a source of heating,in the form of plain old firewood,or processed charcoal,gotten locally from cooking wood.
Local charcoal production common in the poorer parts of the world,is at least 30,000 years old.It is a lucrative but mortally involving business.It is conducted about 35 meters from the newly refurbished Gammon bridge in Okirigwre,an outskirt of Sapele in Delta State of Nigeria.Here poverty runs deep like the very waters of the nearby Ethiope river.
Charcoal production here begins with burning or cooking the source wood,which is buried under heaps of sand and sooth,both of which components create a low oxygen atmosphere,causing the burning wood to stop just short of it all turning into ash.This process takes two weeks,and it produces black lumpy charcoal together with some powdery ash as by products.The resulting charcoal retains about 25% of the starting weight of the wood that was burnt,and it potentially produces more energy during combustion added to the desirable advantage of smokelessness,quite unlike raw wood or kerosene fires which produce more dangerous emissions and vapours.
In contrast to the many advantages of using charcoal the very process of producing it is fraught with inumerable hazards,one of which is the unfortunate by production of carcinogens,and a lot of smoke.In the Charcoal producing site in Okirigwre,Sapele,the main workers are women and their children,thereby making them suffer the greatest health risks,with the children having the greatest vulnerability to the countless respiratory illnesses which are wont to arise from such regular exposure to smoke,carcinogens and irritants.This sure will bring to mind the global issue of life expectancy and controlled pollution levels.For the desperately poor people of the stupendously rich Niger Delta,the only thing that drives them is their need to survive in the face of such all consuming shark teeth poverty.End.
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