You should see our house!! Otherwise known as the first ‘pod’ of the winning house design from the Design Competition. The design is built of three identical pods which are the bedrooms and family room of the house. These are round and domed in structure with the earth bags gradually arcing in to form a roof as well. Very ingenious. There is also a shelter linking the three pods, with a mud stove and chimney in one outer corner, plus a composting toilet outside. This is the prototype we’re building as a test run to try to identify the problems and pitfalls before we go into building them on a bigger scale. So far we are almost at roof level of the first pod –
remember Martyn hoped we’d build the whole of the first pod in the first day…. ! We’ve been flat out, with at least ten to twelve labourers – including an assortment of Martyn, me and the other volunteers – every day for two weeks so far. Very labour intensive – but oh so satisfying. Everyone has really got into it, Rwandan team, Rwandan labourers, us – plus anyone else we drag along to admire it. It’s such a different form of building construction that everyone is fascinated. The guys labouring have been fantastic. With a mixture of English, French, Swahili and Kinyarwandan we manage to get along just fine even with the more complicated techniques necessary to explain. They all seem to be as motivated and personally involved as we are. Brilliant. It’s been even better the last week because we’ve got two of the winning design team out here with us, helping everything along. Martyn and I went up to Kigali to collect them from the airport last weekend. They are two girls, Anokhee and Helen who both work for Arup, the engineering consultancy - and they’re great. I think, on the quiet, Martyn’s enjoyed having some people with proper technical knowledge to discuss some of the ideas with (such as the difference between a parabola and a catenary!) rather than us fairly clueless laymen – albeit super interested.
Helen and Anokhee have slotted straight into our happy household – so now it’s six to cook for each night. We’ve been so adventurous, all mucking in and creating some culinary masterpieces. Last night, for instance, we had fajitas – Munezero House style that is, using chappatis as the wraps – which we made from scratch I might add! Hey! Anokhee had tried making chappatis for us when she made a curry the other night, even though we only had ordinary white flour – but they were magnificent so the plan for fajitas was formed. Rather sadly, we heard the poor chicken squawk its last in the morning but I guess the reality check was necessary. We rustled together a few herbs and spices we found in the cupboard to make a marinade with lemon juice, knocked up some vegetable sides with aubergine, peppers, tomatoes etc. – and took advantage of the utterly luscious avocados here for the guacomole. We even had some grated cheese though we ran a bit aground on the sour cream search. (Mind you, if we’d waited till this morning the milk had turned nicely sour overnight. Yuk.) I can’t tell you how long the preparations took – though nicely helped along by a very civilised G & T – and finally we got to the cooking part. Imagine our joy when, after about ten minutes the gas ring spluttered and died. And it was seven thirty in the evening – on a Saturday. We could see Sunday morning banana pancakes disappearing into dust as well. We tried to rope in the help of our night guard, Faustin – who has no English at all (my lessons have sadly failed on this one, as have all the others’ too I must add) but with some signs and gestures it seemed he thought the place to refill the gas bottle would be closed. Andrew and Kath heroically offered to test the theory and at the last minute I remembered a possible back-up: Dr. Jane, not too far away, might just have a spare gas bottle. Phew! An hour later they returned triumphant. Dr. Jane had saved the day when the gas place was closed. What a relief. Our ‘Mexican’ feast was back on track. And what a feast it was. Bet you can’t wait to hear about the fishcakes…..
Last week I arranged another meeting for the Head teachers of the schools we help. Not so scary this time as I’d got more of a handle on the form. It was really nice to see them all, and they were all delighted to have the opportunity to meet again – and have a fab lunch courtesy of Francoise our cook/cleaner extraordinaire. We covered a fair few topics with all the heads sounding much more optimistic than the last time
I saw them. The new teaching in English directive, which began this year, has not been as bad as they feared, and we worked out a few ways to solve some of their concerns – without the need for vast sums of money. And each one disappeared off home with a desktop computer we had reserved for them all, plus monitor, keyboard and mouse, strapped to the back of motorbike taxis, some of them about to travel several hours to their homes! This is indeed Africa.
Gad, our farm manger, is up in Kigali sourcing a ‘supercow’, I’m risking the dreaded Mother’s Union making me a skirt, Prince is running around the usual circuit of government Ministeries existing on a diet of frustration and despair and Martyn is working on the ‘ultimate’ earthbag. So basically, all’s right with the world!
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You should see our house!! Otherwise known as the first ‘pod’ of the winning house design from the Design Competition. The design is built of three identical pods which are the bedrooms and family room of the house. These are round and domed in structure with the earth bags gradually arcing in to form a roof as well. Very ingenious. There is also a shelter linking the three pods, with a mud stove and chimney in one outer corner, plus a composting toilet outside. This is the prototype we’re building as a test run to try to identify the problems and pitfalls before we go into building them on a bigger scale. So far we are almost at roof level of the first pod – 
remember Martyn hoped we’d build the whole of the first pod in the first day…. ! We’ve been flat out, with at least ten to twelve labourers – including an assortment of Martyn, me and the other volunteers – every day for two weeks so far. Very labour intensive – but oh so satisfying. Everyone has really got into it, Rwandan team, Rwandan labourers, us – plus anyone else we drag along to admire it. It’s such a different form of building construction that everyone is fascinated. The guys labouring have been fantastic. With a mixture of English, French, Swahili and Kinyarwandan we manage to get along just fine even with the more complicated techniques necessary to explain. They all seem to be as motivated and personally involved as we are. Brilliant. It’s been even better the last week because we’ve got two of the winning design team out here with us, helping everything along. Martyn and I went up to Kigali to collect them from the airport last weekend. They are two girls, Anokhee and Helen who both work for Arup, the engineering consultancy - and they’re great. I think, on the quiet, Martyn’s enjoyed having some people with proper technical knowledge to discuss some of the ideas with (such as the difference between a parabola and a catenary!) rather than us fairly clueless laymen – albeit super interested.
Helen and Anokhee have slotted straight into our happy household – so now it’s six to cook for each night. We’ve been so adventurous, all mucking in and creating some culinary masterpieces. Last night, for instance, we had fajitas – Munezero House style that is, using chappatis as the wraps – which we made from scratch I might add! Hey! Anokhee had tried making chappatis for us when she made a curry the other night, even though we only had ordinary white flour – but they were magnificent so the plan for fajitas was formed. Rather sadly, we heard the poor chicken squawk its last in the morning but I guess the reality check was necessary. We rustled together a few herbs and spices we found in the cupboard to make a marinade with lemon juice, knocked up some vegetable sides with aubergine, peppers, tomatoes etc. – and took advantage of the utterly luscious avocados here for the guacomole. We even had some grated cheese though we ran a bit aground on the sour cream search. (Mind you, if we’d waited till this morning the milk had turned nicely sour overnight. Yuk.) I can’t tell you how long the preparations took – though nicely helped along by a very civilised G & T – and finally we got to the cooking part. Imagine our joy when, after about ten minutes the gas ring spluttered and died. And it was seven thirty in the evening – on a Saturday. We could see Sunday morning banana pancakes disappearing into dust as well. We tried to rope in the help of our night guard, Faustin – who has no English at all (my lessons have sadly failed on this one, as have all the others’ too I must add) but with some signs and gestures it seemed he thought the place to refill the gas bottle would be closed. Andrew and Kath heroically offered to test the theory and at the last minute I remembered a possible back-up: Dr. Jane, not too far away, might just have a spare gas bottle. Phew! An hour later they returned triumphant. Dr. Jane had saved the day when the gas place was closed. What a relief. Our ‘Mexican’ feast was back on track. And what a feast it was. Bet you can’t wait to hear about the fishcakes…..
Last week I arranged another meeting for the Head teachers of the schools we help. Not so scary this time as I’d got more of a handle on the form. It was really nice to see them all, and they were all delighted to have the opportunity to meet again – and have a fab lunch courtesy of Francoise our cook/cleaner extraordinaire. We covered a fair few topics with all the heads sounding much more optimistic than the last time 
I saw them. The new teaching in English directive, which began this year, has not been as bad as they feared, and we worked out a few ways to solve some of their concerns – without the need for vast sums of money. And each one disappeared off home with a desktop computer we had reserved for them all, plus monitor, keyboard and mouse, strapped to the back of motorbike taxis, some of them about to travel several hours to their homes! This is indeed Africa.
Gad, our farm manger, is up in Kigali sourcing a ‘supercow’, I’m risking the dreaded Mother’s Union making me a skirt, Prince is running around the usual circuit of government Ministeries existing on a diet of frustration and despair and Martyn is working on the ‘ultimate’ earthbag. So basically, all’s right with the world! 
What a pity my Grandad Noah has passed on. He had experience of using earth bags in Belgium some time back. He used them to shore up his trench in 1916. He formed a catenary rather than a parabola, so got shot in the side of the head, by the orbit. The good news was that the top earth bag slowed the bullet a bit so it only passed behind one eye and then stopped behind his nose. It was retrieved and he had it on his watch chain until a fight in a pub in Rotherham after the Great War. The relevance of this escapes me; oh yes, have the Arup Girls (sounds like a 1940's swing band?), heard of Steve Bennett, UAE Transport Consulting Leader for Arup? You know him better as young Steve who fell drunk over a range of New Territories obstacles, both natural and man-made.
ReplyDeleteI'm off now to challenge my composting toilet.
Bernie Neal