Projects

Office and Housing

Chimanda, on the North East border with Mozambique, remained a relative no-go area for the duration of the Mozambique civil war, until the peace accord of 1994. Although in Zimbabwe it was close to a very large refugee camp, and was itself prone to attack from Renamo rebels. Once peace returned a local Zimbabwean NGO SAFIRE (Southern Alliance for Indigenous Resources www.safireweb.org) set up programs there aimed at increasing local wealth production from sustainable sources. The program was a great success and SAFIRE decided to build a project officer house and housing for visiting program members. I was approached to see if the building could follow the organisations remit of wealth creation by use of local material.

Having been shown the site 40m x 17m and sampled the soil we decided to level the site, digging half the site flat. The 1m fall gave us twice the required material for the proposed semi-detached houses, and allowed the other half of the site to have its garden levelled.

Having won the soil we then began building, again I took Nhamo Chasakara with me a ganger and he took on the local team, trained them and ran the site. Despite building throughout the rainy season the building was built to budget. The local requirement for render and whitewash did add cost, but using a very lean mix of 10 sand : 1 lime : 1 cement price was controlled and the render was not too hard for the substrate.

The formwork we used was hired from Harare, and familiar to Nhamo who passed on his skill to the local team. While not available in the district it did help both the speed of construction and the appearance, helping to allay local fears over this unknown technology.