The COVID-19 pan­dem­ic has shown peo­ple all over the world how pre­pared or not they are for emer­gen­cies.

The ma­jor­i­ty of peo­ple in T&T use ei­ther LPG or elec­tric stoves to cook their food be­cause of their con­ve­nience. What would hap­pen if the avail­abil­i­ty of these fu­el sources was in­ter­rupt­ed or dis­rupt­ed over a pro­longed pe­ri­od?

With mount­ing bills to pay and fac­ing the dilem­ma of how to pro­vide food for her fam­i­ly, Sarah Min­wah-Malchan, 28, an un­em­ployed moth­er and her hus­band, Kee­gan Malchan, 34, who was des­ig­nat­ed a non-es­sen­tial ser­vice provider dur­ing the COVID-19 lock­down prayed to God for a so­lu­tion to their plight of wan­der­ing in the un­em­ploy­ment wilder­ness.

Di­vine in­ter­ven­tion and in­spi­ra­tion came from the earth and na­ture around their home in St Mar­garet's Vil­lage, Clax­ton Bay, in the form and cre­ation of rock­et stoves.

Rock­et stoves are sim­ple but high­ly ef­fi­cient and hot-burn­ing stoves util­is­ing an in­su­lat­ed ver­ti­cal chim­ney and a de­sign en­sur­ing high air­flow around the fu­el to al­low for near-com­plete com­bus­tion be­fore the flames reach­ing the end of the stove.

As a re­sult of the near-com­plete com­bus­tion, rock­et stoves need far less fu­el to pro­duce com­pa­ra­ble lev­els of heat/light as less ef­fi­cient forms of fires/stoves. They use easy-to-find fu­el such as scraps of wood, branch­es, twigs and dried co­conut shells.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia af­ter she had de­liv­ered two rock­et stoves to a cus­tomer in Point Fortin and fill­ing out an or­der for two more rock­et stoves for cus­tomers in Preysal, Min­wah-Malchan said "I'm an un­em­ployed moth­er of two, my hus­band, Kee­gan Malchan worked in con­struc­tion, he was la­beled as non-es­sen­tial.

"We sat down to­geth­er to dis­cuss our sit­u­a­tion and said things will get hard­er for us as we were not work­ing. We can't af­ford to buy gas, so we de­cid­ed to try some­thing. He want­ed to get cre­ative see­ing that he did con­struc­tion.

"We're Chris­tians and trust in God. One day we prayed and said Lord, you know the sit­u­a­tion and what we're go­ing through, you open a door and an op­por­tu­ni­ty for us and the idea came to us to make rock­et stoves.

"We tried out a small mod­el. Af­ter the con­crete cured, we were cook­ing on it. One of my cousins saw us, a vil­lager was pass­ing and they said the want­ed a big­ger one and we made one for them."

She said the news spread by word of mouth in the vil­lage about their rock­et stoves, and more peo­ple be­came in­ter­est­ed in their low-cost al­ter­na­tive in­no­va­tion to gas/propane/bu­tane and elec­tric stoves.

Min­wah-Malchan said this oc­curred a week af­ter the coun­try was un­der tem­po­rary lock­down from March 27.

She said she awoke one morn­ing and post­ed their rock­et stoves on so­cial me­dia, there were a few neg­a­tive com­ments, but then peo­ple start­ed or­der­ing and the sales steadi­ly grew.

Min­wah-Malchan said peo­ple start­ed to share her post on so­cial me­dia. If a cus­tomer pur­chased a rock­et stove, their fam­i­ly mem­ber or neigh­bours want­ed to buy one. She said the rock­et stoves were al­so gain­ing in pop­u­lar­i­ty with out­door en­thu­si­asts, campers, hunters, fish­er­men and farm­ers.

Min­wah-Malchan said the fur­thest dis­tance they de­liv­ered to was Ica­cos, where a cus­tomer bought two large and two small rock­et stoves.

She said for a week they weren't get­ting ce­ment be­cause of a short­age, but they were lucky to se­cure two bags and were able to con­tin­ue mak­ing their prod­uct.

Kee­gan Malchan said he can make six rock­et stoves a day–they made two sizes, a small and a large mod­el, the size of a five-gal­lon pig­tail buck­et which was the more pop­u­lar sell­er.

Re­spond­ing to how he could sell his rock­et stoves so rea­son­able at $60 and $100 each, he said they catered for the poor man and poor peo­ple's pock­et.

Kee­gan said he and his wife catered for every­body, rich and poor alike; if you don't have cook­ing gas or elec­tric­i­ty, you can still pur­chase an al­ter­na­tive fu­el stove at a cheap price and still cook and feed your fam­i­ly.

Min­wah-Malchan said cus­tomers gave her great feed­back when they cooked on their rock­et stoves.

She said cus­tomers liked their prod­uct and the ex­pe­ri­ence of us­ing it, they called her, sent pho­tographs and com­mend­ed her prod­uct. Min­wah-Malchan said cus­tomers al­so shared their tech­niques with her in start­ing a fire more ef­fi­cient­ly like a woman who used square cam­phor on top her wood­en kin­dling be­fore light­ing the fire or a way to use up old news­pa­per.

She said sell­ing their rock­et stoves was a big hit for them dur­ing COVID-19,. One cus­tomer tried one and or­dered four more, they were al­so able to put food on the ta­ble and pro­vide for Cata­leya and Eli­jah, their chil­dren's needs dur­ing this dif­fi­cult time.

Min­wah-Malchan said they al­so had the sup­port of their neigh­bours and loved ones.

Quot­ing Matthew 19:26 “With man this is im­pos­si­ble, but with God all things are pos­si­ble,” she said they gave all praise and glo­ry to God for de­liv­er­ing the rock­et stove to them so they can help them­selves and oth­ers.