Eugene man gives hands-on aid in Darfur.

Byline: Jeff Wright The Register-Guard

It took about eight months longer than he had hoped, but Eugene humanitarian Ken Goyer finally got his wish this month: He is in Darfur, the genocide-racked region of Sudan, Africa, to teach impoverished residents and refugees how to build and use energy-efficient brick stoves.

"We have managed to attend a UN security briefing, visit Zam Zam, the biggest local (refugee) camp, and locate a brick maker, do clay testing, and get green bricks for stoves drying on the ground," Goyer said in a weekend e-mail.

Goyer, 62, has arrived in El Fasher, a refugee-swelled city of more than 200,000, at a time when international observers are warning of potential catastrophe. Witnesses in El Fasher have told Amnesty International volunteers, for example, that Sudanese military flights have been flying in troops and arms to the region.

The United States and Britain have co-authored a United Nations resolution that calls for transferring peacekeeping duties in the region to a U.N. force. But Sudanese President Omal el-Bashir opposes such a U.N. presence, and has vowed to send Sudanese troops to Darfur to pacify the region.

Many of those troops are believed to be the same soldiers who expelled thousands of refugees from their homes in the first place. More than 200,000 people have died and 2.5 million have been displaced - many relocating in refugee camps plagued by famine and disease - in a conflict that has raged since 2003 between the government and rebel groups.

Family members and friends say they are concerned about Goyer's safety but mindful that he's pursuing a lifelong passion of helping the world's poor.

"I worry about him every day," said brother Warren Goyer, who lives in Whittier, Calif., near Los Angeles. "But I know he's never been more excited. He's had a lot of careers - but this is the one that he really loves. And he's convinced that he's found a safe group of people to work with."

Ken Goyer, a former auto mechanic and homebuilder, is not the swashbuckling type who seeks out danger. "I try pretty hard to stay out of harm's way and not do stupid things," he said in an interview with The Register-Guard in January.

Goyer left Eugene in mid-June, returning first to refugee camps in Uganda where he previously introduced his stoves. He struggled for months to get the visa that would allow him to visit Darfur. He arrived about two weeks ago, and has an airplane ticket to leave in late September, unless circumstances require an earlier exit.

Goyer started tinkering with fuel-efficient stoves after traveling to El Salvador nearly 10 years ago and seeing destitute villagers cooking on open fires - after scavenging for miles to find firewood. He teamed with Aprovecho Research Center, a nonprofit group based outside Cottage Grove, and came up with a stove constructed of six trapezoidal bricks that stand on end and are then wired together and encased in mud.

In the years since, he has overseen the construction of literally thousands of stoves in El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Turkey, Uganda - and now, Sudan. For years, Goyer worked strictly with other nonprofit agencies, but more recently established his own agency, Aid Africa, in hopes of better negotiating red tape.

Goyer has no computer with him and instead must wait his turn to use one at a Relief International compound. The agency has asked volunteers not to take photos or speak out politically, lest it jeopardize their humanitarian outreach.

Goyer had to wait 11 days between sending two e-mails to his brother, who then passes them along to other friends and family. "He was more or less MIA there for awhile," said Warren Goyer.

Ken Goyer's e-mail spells out some of the pitfalls surrounding him.

"Sixteen vehicles have been stolen from (nonprofit agencies) - the Toyota Land Cruiser being the vehicle of choice," he writes. "One driver is still missing. These land cruisers will presumably be used by the rebels to eventually mount an attack - somewhere, on something and somebody. Much information travels by rumor."

He writes that he and others are considering traveling to Kabkabia, another town of 110,000 people, but that they'll have to do so by UN helicopter because the road to Kabkabia is not secure. Reaching a second, central city could make it easier to train more people on how to build and use the brick stoves.

Back in Eugene, Goyer's wife, Ellen, says this particular trek has been hard for her because Sudan is so isolated and because her husband has been gone so long. "I do feel reassured that Relief International is very sensible, constantly evaluating the situation," she said. "They want to help people there but they don't want to put people at risk in doing it."

She said she looks forward to having her husband home for awhile after he returns from Darfur next month.

"He knows he can't go anywhere in the fall or during the holiday season," she said, laughing. "I don't think he'll be in too big a hurry to go anywhere."

HOW TO HELP Donations: Send to Aid Africa, 285 Maple St., Eugene, OR 97402

E-MAIL EXCERPTS Eugene resident Ken Goyer's dispatch from Darfur

The food situation: "The food is so bad in El Fasher that we have to eat our own cooking. We are buying canned food from one of several `supermarkets.' There is only one restaurant, The Roast House. This isn't Kenny Rogers. The only thing you can barely trust to eat at the Roast House is the fried chicken and the bread. But they do have some good looking baklava in the back and eventually we will get the courage to try some.

"Eating out is very expensive. One half of a roast chicken costs 1,800 Sudanese dinars, or about eight dollars. No need in El Fasher for culinary critics. But great business opportunities exist for a pizza parlor or ice cream shop or anything else. The other eating options are street food, but two El Fasher people have recently died from cholera so there is not much enthusiasm for eating street food."

The weather: "We have arrived during the rainiest time of the year. It only rains about 8 inches per year in El Fasher and half of that falls in August. Even so, according to the statistics, it will only rain during eight days of August. People are saying that this is a dry year, so far. No locusts are expected for this year. Brick makers don't seem to be slowed down very much by the rain, but I imagine that during the dry eight or nine months they will have to haul water out to the hundreds of places where they are making bricks."

Map reading: "If you read the fine print on the United Nations map you see that 65 percent of the population of Darfur is `accessible' ... so I wonder what happens to the 35 percent that is inaccessible. The map has about 112 red dots on it, of various sizes, representing the Affected Population in Darfur. Three of these dots represent El Fasher and (the nearby refugee camp of) Zam Zam. So I wonder what's happening in all of the rest of these red dots."