Building blocks

It’s all happening here. The landlord has decided to finish building the house! Our organisation have just paid him the next 2 years’ rent……all at once, so he has the funds to complete the job after volunteers have been living here for the last 2 years. Currently, his son is perched perilously on scaffolding plastering the gable end. The scaffolding is hand made like most things here. It can be adapted to suit any height and some is made of teak wood. I never fail to be amazed by Ghanaians’ ingenuity with limited materials and machinery.

 

This is part of a larger project that includes digging a drainage channel around the house to cope with heavy rain pouring off the roof and the waste water from the house. All through this rainy season, water has been eroding the base of the outside walls and threatening the stability of the building. Now the rains have finished (far too soon, according to the millet farmers!) the work can begin.

I was planning a nice quiet Sunday with a lie in until at least 7.30. I think it was around 5.50am when loud voices (Ghanaians only seem to have loud on their volume controls) boomed through my louvre windows in animated Dagaare. This was clearly a planning meeting. Piles of clay bricks were delivered soon afterwards with a lot of puffing and blowing. There was banging on the walls, the lifting of raised manholes and shouting from one end of the house to the other. I gave up the thought of a lie in and got up. By the time I was dressed they had gone!

Later on, some of the children came to draw in the veranda. They are very well trained at home, not to wear shoes indoors. This pair of tiny sandals was left outside our door. Apropos my previous blog post, everything here is worn right to the end of its life.