House Building with the Vigue

Friends and family,

My apologies for my recent hiatus.  Burnout left me with little desire to write.  I am not any less burnt out now but I am managing it better.  And I am even remembering to take breaks.  Anyways I thought I would renew our online relationship with a colorful post describing my consultant's recently constructed house.  The process is considerably different than in the U.S. so I thought some of you might enjoy this.  Here we go...

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The process started when his old house caved in.  I do not have a good sense of how long houses last here, but I have seen many caved in structures in villages here.  I guess mud brick might not be the best construction material in a climate where it either rains bullets (erosion) or is dryer than the planet Mercury (makes the mud mortar crumbly).  Laura says she lives in constant mortal fear (not really an exaggeration) of the latrines caving in on her.  Thank you Laura, for putting that image in my head.  I will never defecate in my village again.

They started the actual work on the house in April.  The idea was to finish the actual construction before things got too rainy in June.  Given what I have seen this month, that was a wise decision.  However, the past few days have been insufferable.  The planet Mercury might not be much of an exaggeration.

In order to start the process people had to clear out the area that Bakary's house once occupied.  The foundation was slightly underground, so this meant a couple days of digging and breaking old bricks.  Much of that material was used in the new construction project, mostly for creating the mud mortar used between the mud bricks.

The following series of pictures should give you a rough idea of what I saw in my village trips in April, May, and June.

Bakary breaking and digging, you can see his old foundation at the edge of the mud glob (technical term).

Looks like many people have arrived, but curiously few are working.  I am told construction works like this in the U.S. as well.

People not building the house are going about their usual work in the family courtyard (houses in villages and cities are often facing each other in a square where extended families will have several neighboring house).

A village mason began by cordoning off where the walls of the house will be.

This what that looks like.

After everything is setup, they wet the ground before laying the initial row (which ends up underground).

A person splashing a layer of water around where all the walls will eventually be.

The mason laying the first layer of bricks.  Notice the mound of dirt inside where the house will be: that is used for mud mortar.

The mud mortar is globbed on the smoothed out when laying the bricks.

Each layer probably takes two hours to get lined and level as mortar is inserted and globbed on again. 

The inside starts to level out but it will eventually end up needing to be refilled with a mud + concrete mixture for the floor.

A couple of masons stopping for a photo.

Some tools of the trade.

Mud mortar in all its glory.

Near the end of the first day's work,

On the next trip you can clearly see where the first layers had started drying a couple weeks earlier.

Eventually, the layers start stacking up to eye level...

Some wooden planks were brought in to help with the upper layers.

Everything works more or less the same but takes longer due to the need to toss balls of mortar up to the masons.

It eventually starts to look more like brick house.

A mason is making sure the bricks that will border the windows and doorways are the correct size (usually means splitting them in half).

Some beams are added to the tops of doors and windows for support.  You can also see where they patched a hole used to attach the walking beams so they could do the topmost layers.

The sides are angled so that the roofing drains water in the desired direction (away from the central courtyard).

Street view from the back of the house.

Front view.

Happy Bakary after the major construction is done.

First picture f him in front what will be his house.

His place plus the house where his wife is staying now.

The corrugated metal which is added on top and mud cemented in along bricks to weigh it down.

After the entire house is covered in a mud layer (for painting and protection) the roof is constructed with cross beams supporting it (no pictures of that, sorry).

Bakary with his little girl (squeeeee!)

The next step is adding the metal doors and windows which get cemented in with... you guessed it... mud.

Before the walls were painted the masons smoothed the floor with a cement and mud mixture.  Bakary's wife is keeping this floor clean of the paint which inevitably drips on it.

Zaky ptting finishing touches on his paint job.  He did the entire house (two layers on the inside) in one day.

Some children checking out Zaky's handiwork.

Our master painter posing for a picture after he finished.

A VERY happy Bakary.  His house constriction is complete, now all he needs to do is fill it.

He cold not wait to take this picture. 

I got video of every step for my research but I did not get photos of literally every step.  I hope you enjoyed this and I will try to get a couple more posts out as I finish up my year here.

Love,

Nate