Cooking with gas!

I've been struggle for months!

With what you might ask - the answer may surprise you. I have had only one oven on my range cooker working and that's been a pain. How could I bake bread and cook dinner at the same time? What was I to do when different courses, of the meal I was preparing required different temperatures and different cooking times?

The "nightmare" (but I can't really call it that can I?) has been going on for ages - we even had to survive over Christmas with only one oven  - came to an end today when a flame failure device was replaced. The cooker is not very old - under 5 years -  but gets a fair amount of use. I bake bread several times a week and eithermy wife or I  cook our meals from scratch mostt days. We rarely eat out and have a Chinese take away a couple of times a month.

So why am I bothering to write about such a mundane occurrence as a cooker repair? The answer is that I could not help wondering about what the effect of the money I had spent on repairing my oven might achieve in Sierra Leone. That country has been on my mind a lot since I agreed to cycle 80 miles to support the work of Medair.

The World Bank estimate gross national income (GNI) per capita for Sierra Leone is $340. This translates to over 72 percent of the population living on less than $1 per day, in extreme poverty.

I spent £165 or almost $250 to repair my cooker, that is all  the money the majority of the someone who is part of the "72%" has to feed, clothe and house themselves from today, 29th January, to 6th October. If I did the same calculation on the cost of the cooker it would be all the income the same person would have from today until 24th September 2019.

It really is unimaginable poverty for us and our lifestyles unimaginable wealth for them. But if we add to our thinking the genuine nightmare of Ebola then perhaps you can understand why I am cycling 80 miles in the "Wiggle No Excuses Sportive" to raise money for the Medair response to this horrific disease .

Please will you support my ride and donate £27 or whatever you can afford to help Medair respond to Ebola in Sierra Leone. It's a desperately poor country as I hope I've been able to show you and we, in the West, are so rich in comparison. You will find more details details of how your gift and my ride will help at https://www.justgiving.com/Stephen-Maxted1 Thank you.