Our third week in Kibaoni started with a visit to the near city of Moshi. We had arranged a meeting with C-re-a.i.d., a young association of architects mainly from Belgium that has been working in Tanzania since a few years.
We shared thoughts and knowledge about earth and social architecture and after the meeting they brought us to a beautiful spot to wait for the sunset. It was an old abandoned train station in Moshi.
After spending the day in the noisy and crowded Moshi we were happy to come back to the beautiful Kibaoni, a place that we already feel as home.
On Tuesday we started with a meeting at home to discuss about the design of the sieve, formwork and other things in order to buy all necessary materials to build them.
With the help of a local mason and a local carpenter, we were able to finally start pouring the first layer of concrete and place the formwork in those places where the foundation walls were not stable enough. Afterwards, we placed the stones mixed with earth and the oncrete up to ground level and let it dry. For the masonry, we counted on the great support of Anatoli and Primli, two local labourers that have joined our team lately.
In the meanwhile, we had taken some samples of soil from the fields around the site to make some tests that could give us an idea of the quality of the earth we had. We firstly made some basic field tests to see its composition and strength. As the result was not clear enough to let us know if the soil was suitable for construction, we built a small formwork to make small rammed earth walls and see what would happen after letting them dry. We mixed different percentages of earth from the site, sand and even a small quantity of cement.
Not everything in Kibaoni is work. On Wednesday we were invited to an engagement ceremony and we had the opportunity to see how a Tanzanian celebration is and all its rituals and fancy decoration. As usual, we felt warmly welcome and enjoyed the evening very much.
Tanzania Goes Mud! 