From Bags to Blocks ..Bagamoyo week 4

One kaput wheelbarrow, one hammer, and a handful of nails and we are building a house!! The sandbag foundation is complete. It is to be an earthen house made of stabilized earth blocks or compressed earth blocks ( CEB's) as they are called. We are attempting to use mostly materials found on the site, and that means sand from below the topsoil and clay from the termite mounds. There are no trees, save for a few large mango so who really needs nails anyways? Each time we need skilled labor Elke goes through the same process of explaining the need to reduce the amount of cement in the mix. They can hardly believe it. We have reduced it by 1/3 of the typical amount needed to make cement blocks. Yesterday we spent time testing the various blocks made with the new block press donated by Earthrising.

Here are the samples showing the ratios. sand :clay: cement.








Beyond the main mission of building with a limited amount of imported items, we find ourselves stuck with super crummy tools. There is a limit to the usefulness of items brought to the property where we are staying, where we are creating a mini eco-village. The tenant farmers don’t contribute much to the waste stream, but those visiting do, us included. We bring building supplies and things from town (mostly beer), as opposed to things you can grow or things gathered from the land, like green bananas. During the last workshop a wheelbarrow was purchased and when we located it, it was patched but functionless. Which seems to be the method, put it aside for another use. This barrow had a pulley- system created since it is impossible to move when it is full of clay or sand, and it is designed in such away that you need to stay lower so as to avoid rutting into the sand, a two-system team. The Pacifica Garden Club from California donated eighty dollars ( thank you) to this project and I used it to purchase a new red wheelbarrow. I went for the top of the line (not much of a choice here) and put it to good use hauling sand to the site. Additional tools are always welcome but the real chore is in fixing the broken shovels. After one week of use look at Bill, the fixer man, working his magic with a dull machete.

The earth is rising in Tanzania (Bagamoyo week 3)

Outside my tent, spitting distance away, is a field full of green machicha. It is the one and only green veggie visible in these parts. A leafy plant similar to spinach. It gets watered daily and the hose is wrangled between our tents predawn ever since the day our gardener turned into the night guard. We are sleeping in the shade of the future office for the Baobob home, a natural building created from cob with a palm thatched roof that looks lovely but still needs some tweaking.

The earth is rising here at the shamba. The wind blows in a predictable direction each day (southeasterly) and it is full of dust. Initially, because things were not in place for construction of the second building we chipped away at the lime based plaster which made thick fortress for the termites. At times dust blew in our eyes but we chipped away with trowels, machetes and broken bits of tile. The cob underneath is dry now, but the new buildings will be a challenge and Elka, mistress of problem solving and tireless bagger has reconfigured it. I'm anxious to see how the compressed clay will be placed and she is masterminding how to purchase a machine to have on site.

We have spent days moving the earth/sand - shoveling, sorting, piling, bagging, and tamping it all into the correct place. The focus is on the earthbag foundation. Putting sand in bags is seemingly simple, yet this is not so. Each load needs a mix of cement,clay sand and water. Each 50 pound load bag needs to be hauled to the other side of the building, and individual bags need to be plopped in place without spillage. And about 500 bags later we have just filled in the tunnels that were dug. We sweat and rip our pants on the barbed wire that lays on top of each layer, but we trod along with help. The Tanzanian volunteers do a giant chunk of the labor in the intense heat and we put in long days until these clumpy, back breaking, arm wrenching bags are ground level. Yes, it is all done with only one hammer, a level and a line of string!!- an impossible task without you Boys from Baobob. Asante SANA!!!

Tanzania..week one

The quandary of 'who made that?' circles daily. In the Tarangerie National park, where large mammals reside, disrupted only by the need to follow a source of water in these dry times, I'm stuck looking at the poop. In the books they call any leavings from animals stoop and I childishly laugh at the 'stooppoop'. The dusty floor is covered with all matter of dung. Think of zoos, think of cow farms, think of trying to track an animal in all of this. And look closely and ask in wonderment who made that? Here are some choices: to help you along:

Elephant,

giraffe,

baboon,

mongoose,

waterbuck,

water buffalo,

antelope,

wildebeest,

giraffe,

zebra ,

warthog, or lion.....

.

Both the caves and the park have earth-trodden, dusty, dry floors. My direct contact with Tanzanian animal poop, aside from photographing it from a safe distance, is what I call a small sacrifice for love. Endeavoring to photograph every painted rock in the Kondoa region has led us to a few enormous sites. These big boulders were once (no one can say for sure when) slabs for ancient artists/healers. So above, under, and around these rocks we climb. My new task (well not totally new) is the oh so important and dignified job (remember I am on sabbatical) of being
the sign holder and scale placer.

Hidden underfoot I sit, squat and scramble in bonefide, African, rock hyrex shit (sorry no pictures). You can see my earnest effort to be still and await Jon's orders. The best moments of the tour are when somebody else takes over when I fain faint, or limp with a stubbed toe. In the rock shelters the red images of all these animals, and elongated people with mushroom heads, baffle us daily. 'Who made that ? ' is predominate in our minds at the dinner table during our specialized camping safari.

Tanzania week 3..Zanzibar Island of spices

Today was the first day without a guide, driver or armed guard. Most everything we have done in Arusha town, the World heritage site in Kolo, Tarengerie National Park and Arusha National Park has been with high fees, and mandatory guides. You begin to feel unsafe ( but all is really calm around us) when you need to pay a Maasi guard with a machete to walk you 20 minutes to the river to see monkeys. The idea is to employ people, yet here it is difficult to access the beauty around us with our being safarified...But now here we are in Zanzibar. Set yourself free in Zanzibar. We have found our way to a fine powdered beach teaming with bronzing Europeans and white sand. For ten bucks we rented a double kayak and paddled to the north tip of the Island to see the surf break on the reef. The coast is jam packed with orderly, idyllic resorts juxtaposed with thatched roofs and billowing curtains. We paddled for three hours past unattended canoes, outriggers, sail dhows (all wooden) and a few snorkelers. I saw a flying fish and a handful of dolphins not far off shore. This is the first thing we have done, in our 2 weeks in Tanzania, which I could actually recommend to some one and guess what, it didn't require a guard! This freedom will be short lived since tomorrow we are aiming for the fabled spice tour in Stone Town. Oh, I just realized I had better save Jon from the swath of unaccompanied Italian women lingering near his hammock. No guards required here.