Beans and rice

Two aluminum parabolic cookers stood in a CESAL shelter zone in Cité Militaire, Port-au-Prince. It was a day in April 2010. There was no charcoal. Retained-heat baskets sat with the cookers. Pots of beans and rice, judías y arroz, were on them.

José Andrés was at the front of those cookers. He was a chef on a Spanish solar expedition. Manolo Vílchez had made the cookers. Carlos Fresneda was there and watched him serve food in the shelter zone. An improvised crew worked with them.

"Allá estaba el equipo improvisado de pinches con nuestro cocinero solar al frente de los fogones sin carbón, con unas ollas enormes de judías y arroz que rebosaban. José Andrés preparó mucha y buena comida."

They had left Santo Domingo on a Friday that April. They went in a white ranchera, with 400 kilograms, under the name The Solar For Hope. Andrés, Vílchez, and Fresneda were with that expedition. CESAL was the NGO.

Before Port-au-Prince they had cooked in Fond Verrettes. A village parabolic cooker was there. Andrés cooked solar rice on it. Then he cooked migas with sardines.

In the capital, at night, Noel Jean Beret, Louis Jean Fefny, and Teifont Widni assembled the second cooker.

The day before the kitchen in Cité Militaire, Jordi Bach of CESAL translated a solar-cooking workshop. The kitchen in the camps was the next day.

CESAL was managing three camps in Cité Militaire. Bach’s figure for that year was 6,400 people.

Desmond and Angelique Fourton lived in one of those camps with three children. Their tent was raised off the flooded ground so water could run under it. They had lost the house in the earthquake. He had lost his job as a watchman. Two of the three children were back at school.

"tenemos que darle gracias a Dios por estar vivos: hemos perdido tantos amigos y familiares en el temblor..."