In the ‘applying-old-ideas-to-new-stuff’ category, I present to you: Mohammed Bah Abba. He invented the “Pot-in-Pot”. Haven’t heard of this revolutionary device? Read on…
Bah Abba, child of a long line of potters in rural northern Nigeria, struck upon the idea while hunting for a solution to the problem of refrigeration in hot, dry, impoverished rural areas of Nigeria. For millenia, people have been storing water in un-glazed earthenware pots. This allows the water to “wick” through the pottery, evaporating on the outside, and thus allowing the water to remain cool inside.
By creating a glazed pot within an unglazed pot, Bah Abba realized he could use the same idea to keep produce and other foods cool. The inner pot is filled with produce. The area between the outer pot and inner pot is filled with sand or mud, and kept wet. In this extremely hot climate, the Pot-in-Pot has extended edible lifetimes of produce, in some cases, from only three days to three weeks.
This has freed many young girls from the daily task of taking fresh produce to market before it spoils.
Thus they can go to school and gain an education.
With education, they can improve their lot, and that of their immediate family.
And Bah Abba has seeded much of southern Nigeria with his pots for free, at his own expense.
Although this is actually old news, first publicized in 2000 when he won the Rolex $100,000 award, I applaud his efforts. It may seem but a small thing, but improving the quality of life in an area that lacks the essentials of life is critical to advancing the cause of humanity, life expectancies, health and welfare, and helping humankind achieve greatness.
my fridge
I’ll stick to my own refrigerator and two extra freezers, thank you very much. This allows me extra time to decide what all to spend your money on, while saving time since I don’t have to go to the market every day. This is the result of you and I being educated and making the needed changes to not let our upbringing affect our future! Thanks for all the produce you provide for the family.–
Christy
Idiot from 67.68.6.14 posted here
An idiot anonymous poster from IP address 67.68.6.14 (Bell Canada) posted something really dumb and offensive here. Guess it’s time to moderate anonymous posting again to keep the morons out.
He was looking on Google for MOHAMMED BAH ABBA glazed. Not sure why you’d want him glazed. Maybe he was looking for a type of donut?
Curiously, this was the only thing the anonymous poster read, and from the timestamps, didn’t even take the time to fully read the article he/she/it left a comment about, unless he/she/it was a very fast reader.
Regardless, I don’t tolerate such posts here.
–matthew, proprietor and ultimate power at barnson.org
How can you tell?
How can you tell what he was looking for?
Referrer logging
I log the referring page (the page that sent him/her/it here). I also have the IP address in my logs. I very commonly check out what my top pages are for the day, and then follow the referrers to find out why a particular page is getting hammered. Google, AOL, and Yahoo are the three biggest referrers… people looking for Rice Pudding, MRI Machine, Shoe-Tying, and other terms end up here a lot.
—
Matthew P. Barnson
Heh..
And they say pot is bad for kids.