Extreme Home Make-Over: Ghana Edition

I've been wanting to write this post about home remodeling and building in the Upper West for some time but I've been waiting for the story to finish.

Most of the homes, latrines, walls, and outbuilding in the area are made of mud bricks. Which seems crazy because the place has torrential driving rains during part of the year.  How do they stand?

The building season is during the dry season; around December to around May. Men are responsible for building so it is mainly the work of men and boys. Although women and girls do bring some of the water to make the mud.

Roger's primary building project was a make-over so I'm risking copyright infringement but it does fit my post. He wanted to make bedrooms for the two older children still at home and a storage room. He needed to break down a wall that was in the way of the addition to start. Breaking down walls made from mud bricks gives you the raw material for new mud walls, just add water. Actually is it a little more complicated that that.

First Roger and the older son broke down the wall. This was done mainly with a pick ax. And then the clumps of clay and sand and pebbles and dirt had to be broken down in fine material with the back end of a hoe handle.  (Think of a short wooden club.)

Part of the wall has already be knocked down.

Roger working on brings a wall down.  All very manual labor intensive.

Straw and water is added to dry rubble.  Clay from termite mounds or the ground along with pebbles, dirt, and sand is collected and added as needed.  This uses a lot of water so most everyone helps to carry water.

 They mix the mud and clay together with their feet.  A form is used to make the bricks which are about 15 inches long 8 inches wide and 5 inches thick.

Forms for the bricks and bricks drying in the background.

The form makes two bricks at a time and here are two rows of bricks ready to dry.

You need a lot of bricks and a significant amount of time is spent making and drying bricks. The bricks are sun dried for a couple of weeks and need to be turned for even drying.  These bricks, blocks, are heavy.  After they have dried enough they can be stacked so the open area is available to make and dry more bricks.

Bricks

More bricks  (turning bricks over to dry evenly in the sun)


And more bricks stacked close to the foundation dug in the foreground

And then a huge unusal rain came on February 20th this year when many building projects were well underway. By this time some people had the buildings nearly ready for the roof which is unfortunate because without the roof the mud walls don't stand a lot of rain. Some walls were partially broken and many projects in the area were set back.

Different building just maybe a week before they would have started the roof, damaged by the rain.

Roger was sort of lucky in that he did not have much built. However, he had a lot of bricks made and the rain was even worse on those. So he other other people were not so lucky. But Roger and others seemed to take it in stride. We will just keep working. Perhaps God sent the rain to saved us from some disease and so why should be complain. And what good would it do anyway?


These use to be bricks.  Not much left after the rain washed through

So were these - back to the mud pit to be remade.

Maybe a few of these might be saved, but most will need to be remade.

The sun dried bricks are laid into walls with a thick layer of mud. The walls typically have butresses. Even with this supporting structure some walls eventually being to crack and lean away from the building under the weight.

OK, let's start building

Building almost done.  Note the buttresses along the wall


Windows and doors are framed with wood.  The boy is using a hoe to bring mud to the mason.

After the walls are complete and have had a chance to dry more the roof is framed. A metal roof is typically used in this area for the larger buildings. Smaller storage bins may have a grass roof (grass roofs are rare in my immediate area).  The traditional roof in my area is a thick mud roof.  People sleep on the roofs during the hot season and also dry some of their grain away from some of the animals.

Working on framing the roof.  Wood is painted with black dirty oil to give it some protection against insects.
Adding metal roof.  Almost safe from the rains.  Here a porch is built in front of the bedrooms to provide support for the major wall as well as a place to take off your shoes before entering the room.

After the roof is installed the building is rather safe from rain. The next step would be to apply a plaster inside and out. The plaster may be a thin concrete or a traditional plaster. The traditional plaster is black, possibly due to the use of a significant amount of cattle dung added to the mixture.

The nearly completed addition.  Plastering and working on the floor will be done in time.
Now that the building is done Roger is working like mad getting his farm ready before the rains come. He also needs to finish building the family latrine and connect the walls to the new addition and close back up the walls around the family compound that were broken in December last year.

Update on projects


 My rabbit project has been approved although the money is not yet in my bank.  However, I have enough to get started building my cages.  I still would like to visit one or two other rabbit breeders to see where the best places in the area are for new breeding stock.  We will be using the smaller village rabbits rather than larger breeds such as New Zealand Whites.  I could not find a successful breeder of larger rabbits in my area, possibly because they don't stand the heat as well or because no one has brought them into the area.

 I've started planting in my zai pits.  There was an announcement at church last week that livestock should be tied up starting June first until the end of the growing season.  Some people have started planting in the flood plain below my place but I think I'm the first to plant in the laterite soul around the homes.  One of the reported benefits of the zai pits (trenches in my case) is the ability to plant sooner in the season.  However, unless there is sufficient grass in the area the people will not tie up their goats and so some my feast on early sweet corn, been, and okra plants.

 School is underway and I have a stack of math papers on my table to grade before Monday.  This term is rather short so we will soon be preparing to write the questions for the end of term and end of year questions.

Health update


I remain healthy.  I'm just about done with the medicine for my ears and I'll talk with the doctors to see what comes next.  I was in a dust storm the other day and my eyes have been itchy and such so I'm back to using some eye drops.  I'll let the doctors know about that as well.

Love and best wishes to all.

Love always,
John

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Yam harvesting

Image
Roger and I went to farm to harvest yam on Saturday morning, September 13, 2014.  In Ghana a yam is a root crop that is different from a sweet potato.  We have sweet potatoes here as well. Yam recently harvested Preparing a yam for boiling The yam has a white flesh – softer than a white potato. In this area the yams are planted between April and June.  Harvest continues into December and January depending on the weather and pigs getting into the field. The plant is a vine – which is grown on stakes rather than allowed the spread out.  The plants are placed on a raised bed about 2 feet high.  The beds are surrounded by flat trenches.  This allows the rains to flow around, but not wipe out the yam crop.  Intercropping seems to be common practice with yams planted in the raised bed, soybeans around the edges, and rice in the trenches.  The occasional corn or okra plant is also among the yams – although the bulk of those crop...
Read more

Pito – brewed millet

Image
Corn, rice, and millet are the common grains grown in my region of Ghana. All three are used food, but millet is also used to produce the local brew – pito, or daa in the local language. “N nyu daa” - in Dagaree means “I drink pito.” There are several varieties of millet grown here – a red and white varieties have loose heads. These are used for pito and other foods. There is also a smaller seed variety with a tight head of seeds that is mainly used for porridge. (Don't have a picture of that variety yet.) In all varieties millet grows on a stalk with the grain head at the top of the stalk. White and red millet in the field Two bundles of while millet to be used for seed next season Converting a grain to alcohol is a common practice in various cultures. It provides a way to capture and digest the nutritional value of the grain. In some places, like Germany and the beer brewing monks, the making a beer was a way to preserve the harvest. In Ghana the millet is ...
Read more

Ghana Archery and Travel to Tamale

Image
Ghana Archery Roger and I were walking to see a man in the community early last week and he happened across an arrow head. It was a long thin metal piece that would be attached to then end of a shaft. That got Roger talking about archery and got me thinking about another blog post. He explained how the arrow worked while we walked and promised to show me a bow and arrow when we got back to his house. He talked about the old times when they made poison. The process involved collecting plants and such things and placing them in a pot which is buried for a year. The poison was used on animals and people in the ancient times. That got me thinking about the information that has been and is being lost in the community from the older generation. Yesterday, I was sitting talking with some of the older men and they were talking about how the grandfathers could dig up the roots and such to make medicine for a variety of illnesses. They told me that the knowledge and practice of m...
Read more