Week 12

The week 12 began with several visits to the site. Gabriel, a journalist from Morogoro came to make us a small interview about the project. We answered several questions about the purpose, the budget, the technique and the materials used.

Immediately after, we met Ambri and Mr. John. Ambri is a man from the village who was supposed to know how to weave baskets. Together with Mr. John and Mr. Matoli, we went to a bamboo forest located 15 minutes walking from our house. We had never known that there was such a forest so close to our place. The forest belonged to Mr. John. With the help of the rest of the workers, we selected and cut the most suitable pieces for weaving and brought them home.

The next day Ambri came with a friend to start weaving the panels for the verandah. The first panel was not as expected, since they used a different pattern as the one we wanted. Unfortunately, they did not succeed and after some trials we decided to change the strategy. Instead of building the panels from zero, we would buy the baskets, destroy them and rebuild them again.

This week we also decided to destroy the cob wall. It was not an easy decision, but after seeing the results of building with cob and with rammed earth, we thought cob was working worse in our case and it was slowing down the construction work a lot.

We also received the visit of Mashambo, the district engineer. As always, he gave us good advise about the construction of the library. This time he came with the sub-director of the school, who also gave us many clues mostly about children behaviour, something to take into account when building next to a school.

On Thursday we started preparing the metal rods to build the pillars. In this case, we want to use a different technique similar to rammed earth. It is called cast earth and it consists on pouring a mixture similar to the one used for rammed earth inside a wooden formwork but with a higher percentage of cement. In this way tampering is not necessary, something that would be really difficult for such a small surface and with all the reinforcement inside. The workers prepared the metal rods and in the meanwhile, we made several tests with the small formwork we used to use for the earth tests to find the best proportions of sand, soil and cement.

Women selling fruits in the market of Tarakea.

Although we are less people than before, the house is still very busy.

On the way to the bamboo forest with Mr. Matoli, Ambri and Mr. John.

Choosing the best bamboo poles for the weaving.

Cutting the bamboo poles to bring them to the site.

Moments after destroying the cob middle wall.

Bringing home the shelf that was inside the cob wall.

Building the reinforcement for the columns.

Primli building the overfoundation.

A view of Zanzibar, where Patricia spent some relaxing days.