Flashlights in Kenya

While looking for flashlight-related stuff on the Web, I ran across some papers by a Master's student at Humboldt State University, Jennifer Tracy, and papers from something called the "Lumina Project" about ...flashlights! Specifically, this is about flashlights in Kenya. In rural Kenya there's not a lot of street lighting or electrical distribution, so flashlights are apparently owned by half of all households.

Ms. Tracy's thesis I think would be interesting to CPF members as it talks about a lot of the things we CPF's talk about. There's a set of product reviews. There's beamshots (well, beam diagrams) and lux readings. There's runtime measurements. There's even comments on angry blue LEDs ( I don't think I've ever seen a 10,000 K CCT).

If you think flashlights are expensive here, check out the prices - Kenyan villagers pay anywhere from $1.40 to about $6 for a flashlight, but that's in a place where the average household income is $65 a month. The worst part is that the quality of these lights is wretched - the participants in the survey reported an average life span of 3 months. Yes, these are Chinese-made flashlights but nowhere near the level of QA we'd expect from our favorite dealers.

You think CR123's are expensive - in Kenya the typical flashlight needs two 40-cent batteries every 2 weeks. Again, remember that they earn as much in a month as we earn between breakfast and lunch each day; this is comparable to the drugstore price we might see for CR123's. Householders tend to buy disposable batteries, while night watchmen and bicycle taxi drivers use mostly rechargeables; it can cost 25 or 30 cents to recharge a flashlight at a charging shop, and householders tend not to have access to "free" charging at work or in town. LED's are standard, though one participant in the survey did have a modded LED flashlight that he'd turned into an incandescent.

Tracy writes about night watchmen at truck stops who will carry a rechargeable flashlight and also a backup - demonstrating that "1=none, 2=1" is applicable all over the world. The preferred rechargeable is a sealed-lead-acid, but when you're paying less than $10 for a flashlight the quality is very poor...Ms. Tracy works out how many hundreds of tons of lead per year must be produced by chucking broken flashlights in Kenya.

The thesis is a good read; I won't post the URL but if you Google for "Humboldt" and "Tracy_Thesis_3May10_final.pdf" you should find it very quickly. There's a lot of stuff on the Web related to this project.

Bill
( I'd nominate Ms. Tracy as an honorary member of CPF.)

Interesting post. I've often thought about how much I spend on flashlights while others are trying to decide on which bill to pay.

I donated a bunch of lights to a church that were going to build an orphanage in Kenya, they asked me what to do with the lights when there done.
My reply was give em to the villagers, 30+ lights with good homes.

(all the lights I donated we're my before knowledge of CPF purchases, so I won't miss them, much)

Interesting stuff,my daughter & her best friend went to Ghana for 2 weeks on a school trip to help the villages build a school,so i gave my daughter & her friend a light each so they were never without some light.
Well when they got back they both told me the locals were really excited about the 2 lights so the girls gave them to 2 girls from ghana.It's just as well i gave them a few batteries as i don't think the locals had
seen batteries like the ones they received.Anyways the point is a little kindness goes a long way with people who don't have very much.

I saw many cheap multi-5mm-led in Kenya, and yeah most of the houses of the places I visited had no water, gas and electricity. People there sure knows how to make do.

They need those cheap lights with that dynamo built in. Turn handle for 1 minutes gives you 30 minutes of light.

ev13wt said:

They need those cheap lights with that dynamo built in. Turn handle for 1 minutes gives you 30 minutes of light.

Click to expand...

That and solar rechargeable.

Thanks for posting this! It's fascinating to learn about flashlight use in other countries.

CarpentryHero said:

I donated a bunch of lights to a church that were going to build an orphanage in Kenya, they asked me what to do with the lights when there done.
My reply was give em to the villagers, 30+ lights with good homes.

(all the lights I donated we're my before knowledge of CPF purchases, so I won't miss them, much)

Click to expand...

A fine thing to do. As you know the ones who receive the lights will not be critical of beam shape or color. They just want to see when it is dark.
Jerry

Kitchen Panda,

Wow I did not know there were people that relied so heavily upon flashlights, but it makes sense due to them not having adequate electricity=(. I am definately going to google search humboldt and check that out. It seems to me these people would do fine with such a light that has the best runtimes. We are blessed and both spoiled intentionally and unintentionally as americans. A light is a NECESSITY to these people. Thanks for sharing this vital information Kitchen Panda!