Unfortunately, during last year’s rainy season the teacher’s quarters building was hit by what I understand to be a very serious rain and wind storm, and the teacher’s houses collapsed. Since then the school has been facing the dilemma that the Ministry of Education and the government don’t actually have the funds to help Chargel put up new teacher’s quarters, thus pushing the teachers to live in compounds open and willing to take in the school staff for the time-being. While it is great of the community to take on the roll of housing the teachers, it really isn’t their responsibility, and the teachers themselves would prefer to have more private areas of their own where then can get more work done without as many distractions. After having several pleas for financial help declined by the Ministry of Education to help with this dilemma, I worked with the school head master to arrange the construction of 5 new locally-made houses built on the same site as the original teacher’s quarters building. It took quite a bit of pushing, pulling, community meetings and even some guilt trips to convince the members of the community and surrounding area that this was the best solution, and that it wasn’t practical to just keep waiting for money to flow in to pay for the construction of new houses.
(I will insert here that you may notice a trend in my work focused on helping the people of the community and area take on initiative to brainstorm problem-solving ideas for themselves of then implement them on their own, without outside funding or help, in order to keep the solution sustainable and manageable for the people relying on the project/program/solution.)
We spent many Saturdays making mud bricks at the local quarry just outside town. And we spent many more Saturdays building up the mud-brick walls for the houses. It isn’t the most fun job one can do, especially when it is so very hot. But the men were eventually convinced enough of the need for the houses that they were more than willing to devote a huge amount of their time and energy to this project.
We then spent several more weekends cutting branches and grasses to build the roofs. As you have seen from my previous pictures, building thatched roofs is a bit of a job in itself as well. Once the roofs were finished it was time to begin preparing for the backyards and building a fence around the houses. One day a few of the men decided it was a good day to rake up the area behind the houses and burn the area clean. (That’s what they do instead of mulching to get rid of the stuff they rake up when cleaning out yards and fields.) Unfortunately, they picked a particularly windy day to do this cleaning and when they lit the raked up grasses on fire it quickly blew out of control and very easily burned down the roofs to all five houses. It was a bad day.
On top of that, because it has been so dry, there are no more grasses that can be cut to replace the original roofs before the rainy season. But if the mud-brick houses aren’t covered by the times the rains hit, they will quickly melt away. And that would be a big problem. Fortunately, the community was still convinced of the need to finish the houses and protect them before the rains hit. (At this point the first rains were expected within about one week.) The school ended up hiring some local carpenters to fix temporary corrugate roofs for the five houses. It won’t be the best structure, but it will keep the buildings from collapsing on themselves, and it will allow the teachers to finally have their own housing.
Hopefully around this same time next year I will be able to tell you that the teacher’s houses are finally complete, barring any unexpected rain storms intense enough to knock the houses over, tear the roofs off causing the walls to melt in on themselves, or another unexpected fire disaster.
All in all, experiences like this one lead to good “character development” for all of us involved. It’s about learning, accepting and moving on.
