When we first bought our land in Africa we visited the site in the rainy season and could hear the trickling of a stream next to our site. Sadly that is the nearest we have got to running water so far.
In fact we live about 400m from the water main that supplies Freetown, unfortunately we are at least 100m above the pipeline and there are many problems with getting connected. The most concerning is that a house 50m below our land struggles with intermittent supply as the water pressure varies through the day.
If we wanted access to water we would need to negotiate with the Guma Valley Water Company which is well known for being one of the less proactive parastatals in Sierra Leone. Finding the right person to talk to to arrange connection would take weeks. Even if we get permission to connect we would only be at the start of our troubles.
In Freetown each individual is responsible for connecting his house supply to the mains and everywhere you go you see miles of blue PVC piping. Near the mains take off point there can be hundreds of such pipes snaking next to each other. These then gradually diverge to individual houses. Unfortunately whereever you see these pipes you see a trickle or stream of water as well. The problem is that where these pipes cross roads they get damaged by traffic and start to leak. Initially the pipes are buried under the road, but if the road is not tarmaced the surface gets washed away in the rains until the pipe surfaces. Soon after the passage of traffic will have flattened and burst the pipe.
Other problems occur when the residents who are not connected to the water supply tell their children to fetch water. They might make their way to the stand pipes and wait in line, on the other hand they can pick up one of these plastic pipes at a join, seperate the two parts and fill their bucket from there. Whether they bother to rejoin the pipes afterwards is moot. All the hapless owner of the pipe knows is suddenly he has no water supply. Tracing the leak along the hundreds of meters of pipe is a hit and miss affair.
Often the only thing that can be done is to replace the pipe in its entirety. One of my friends bought steel pipes to prevent the casual breakage of his water supply. However he then found that when the water was turned off for maintenence some enterprising individual stole lengths of pipe.
All in all connecting to the water main is a bit of a lottery when the pipework cannot be buried and concreted in position. Given the need to find approximately 800m of pipework I have resisted the temptation to go through the pain of connecting to the grid. It will happen one day but not yet.
So what do we do? Well initially we built some open above ground cisterns. These filled during the rainy season but only held about 10,000 litres. They also are prone to leaking. They have been filled in the past from water bowsers but currently the land is too rough for the bowsers to reach our land.
In fact most of the water required to build the house to date has been manually carried up to the land at 1000 Leones (approx 20p) for 25 litres. This has been a significant cost in both labour and money. While it provides useful income to local families we need a more permanent supply.
Monday, 16 April 2012
Saturday, 24 September 2011
Learning the hard way
My wife, Mariama, comes from a once prosperous border trading town in Sierra Leone. Koindu had a unique selling point, its location on the border with Guinea and Liberia meant that there was a lot of cross border trade and many people from all over Sierra Leone came to buy their market goods in Koindu.
While you are encouraged to learn to bargain when in Africa, Koindu was filled with hard headed Fulas who were only interested in the next trade and always named their "last price". This means that neither me nor my wife are competent at bargaining. This may explain some of the problems we have encountered so far.
Unfortunately the town was the first to be taken in the "civil war" that overtook Sierra Leone in the 90s. The population fled and the town has shrunk back to a village. Visiting it recently the prosperous neighbourhoods resemble the ruined city in the film Jungle Book.
Our initial building experience was to construct a house in Conakry for the family members displaced from Koindu. Their rented house had damp reaching up to the ceiling in the rainy season, the (concrete) veranda roof leaked so much you could only sit under it with an umbrella up when it rained.
First you need some land. Easier said then done. As most people are unaware of the planning rules and regulations, there is a bit of a free for all when it comes to land. Someone will offer to sell you land but he does not have title to it. Our first land purchase went that way. it was located next to where a major road was about to be built, so the vendor decided he would make more by reselling it to a higher bidder!
Even if you get your land as the planing laws are not enforced, you can easily find your plot surrounded by other plots and no right of way to your land. Ideally you need to start building as soon as you get the land, however the city is littered with half finished projects where the money has run out part way through.
Next you need a house plan. Again this is an area of dubious practices. People are happy to act as your agent, buy other people's house plans and recycle them as new. While cheaper than getting a completely new plan it does not mean the plan will fit the site.
A project manager does not come cheap. Ours was especially expensive. Half way through the project we found he had a deal with the building material suppliers to come and bid the price down to merely 150% of the actual price. He was discovered when there was some shortages on site and my sister-in-law who paid the bills for us went to buy the additional materials and got a better price without bargaining than the project manager who did bargain! When my sister-in-law enquired further, the shop keeper explained the scam.
After that episode my sister-in-law took over the project management role. Not something that she has much background in but her heroic efforts have kept our projects on track. her ability to bargain, while blunted by the attitude of the Koindu Fula's has been fine tuned by the cut and thrust of living in Conakry.
Conakry is the captial of Guinea but is terribly run down despite the presence of some of the largest mineral deposits in the world. It suffered after independence when the president Sekou Toure refused to join the French commonwealth. In retaliation the French stripped Guinea of its movable infrastructure and Toure determined to follow the Pan Africanist agenda and isolate the country from Western influences.
In some way this has made the locals very ingenious and self sufficient. I recall seeing a taxi in Koindu, Sierra Leone, that had been rolled and was essentially a write off. I asked the driver what he would do with it, as even the locals would not want it. Expecting him to say it would go for parts, he said no, he could sell it in Guinea as a usable vehicle. Years later I realised what he meant, seeing the battered Peugeots and Renaults plying there trade round Conakry as taxis.
While the government of Lansana Conteh opened up Guinea more to the outside it is still very poor. By the roadside people weld together scrap metal to make exhaust pipes. The Peugeot 404 is at least 20 years old and still in daily use. In fact this one has been upgraded, in 2004 no Peugeot 404 I saw had headlights! Spares were unavailable. Recent enforcement of basic rules means that this car has had lights fitted, the straps indicate how they are held in place.
The first steps of the build were to build the foundations. Fortunately the land was level but it seemed to cost an awful lot of money to construct. It turned out that since wealthy locals like high rise living, 4 storey houses being common, the foundations were built to accommodate such an edifice. Certainly a bit of overkill for an "up garret" or simple two storey building. Another lesson learnt!
The walls went up quickly and cheaply, they are concrete block walls and in Conakry you can buy these blocks ready made. The real cost was in floating the upstairs floor, that is creating a concrete ceiling to the ground floor. The cutting, bending and laying of the iron bars for the concrete reinforcement was done by hand. The support for the floor as the concrete was to be poured was manufactured from hand sawn boards and branches to support them at the appropriate height. No scaffolding here. Of course given this was going to be a cast floor, all plumbing and wiring conduit had to be in situ before the big day of the float.
Once the reinforcement was in place and the blocks used to fill out between the reinforcement were laid on top, the float began. This was a day of intense activity where bags of cement were manually carried up on to the first floor level along with sand and gravel. A cement mixer worked all day turning out the cement which was then hand carried to be laid to create the floor in one cast.
Fortunately the floating of the first floor was the biggest single expense and with the downstairs shell complete it was possible to start preparing it for living in even though the upstairs was incomplete. In fact we finished the walls and roof quite quickly after that.
However while the structure was complete, the internal work took as long as the outside construction. Up until this point my sister-in-law had kept an admirable lid on expenses. However at this point she and her brother went around looking at houses and choosing the most desirable internal decoration they could find. This resulted in a fine house but rather more expense than expected. The constant refrain was that another $500 would complete the house.
The house is now nearly complete after many iterations of the final $500. It satisfies its main aim of giving the family somewhere to live that is healthy, dry and safe.
While you are encouraged to learn to bargain when in Africa, Koindu was filled with hard headed Fulas who were only interested in the next trade and always named their "last price". This means that neither me nor my wife are competent at bargaining. This may explain some of the problems we have encountered so far.
Unfortunately the town was the first to be taken in the "civil war" that overtook Sierra Leone in the 90s. The population fled and the town has shrunk back to a village. Visiting it recently the prosperous neighbourhoods resemble the ruined city in the film Jungle Book.
 |
| Trees growing inside a house in Koindu (2008) |
First you need some land. Easier said then done. As most people are unaware of the planning rules and regulations, there is a bit of a free for all when it comes to land. Someone will offer to sell you land but he does not have title to it. Our first land purchase went that way. it was located next to where a major road was about to be built, so the vendor decided he would make more by reselling it to a higher bidder!
Even if you get your land as the planing laws are not enforced, you can easily find your plot surrounded by other plots and no right of way to your land. Ideally you need to start building as soon as you get the land, however the city is littered with half finished projects where the money has run out part way through.
Next you need a house plan. Again this is an area of dubious practices. People are happy to act as your agent, buy other people's house plans and recycle them as new. While cheaper than getting a completely new plan it does not mean the plan will fit the site.
A project manager does not come cheap. Ours was especially expensive. Half way through the project we found he had a deal with the building material suppliers to come and bid the price down to merely 150% of the actual price. He was discovered when there was some shortages on site and my sister-in-law who paid the bills for us went to buy the additional materials and got a better price without bargaining than the project manager who did bargain! When my sister-in-law enquired further, the shop keeper explained the scam.
After that episode my sister-in-law took over the project management role. Not something that she has much background in but her heroic efforts have kept our projects on track. her ability to bargain, while blunted by the attitude of the Koindu Fula's has been fine tuned by the cut and thrust of living in Conakry.
Conakry is the captial of Guinea but is terribly run down despite the presence of some of the largest mineral deposits in the world. It suffered after independence when the president Sekou Toure refused to join the French commonwealth. In retaliation the French stripped Guinea of its movable infrastructure and Toure determined to follow the Pan Africanist agenda and isolate the country from Western influences.
In some way this has made the locals very ingenious and self sufficient. I recall seeing a taxi in Koindu, Sierra Leone, that had been rolled and was essentially a write off. I asked the driver what he would do with it, as even the locals would not want it. Expecting him to say it would go for parts, he said no, he could sell it in Guinea as a usable vehicle. Years later I realised what he meant, seeing the battered Peugeots and Renaults plying there trade round Conakry as taxis.
 |
| A Peugeot 404 in Conakry 2008 |
While the government of Lansana Conteh opened up Guinea more to the outside it is still very poor. By the roadside people weld together scrap metal to make exhaust pipes. The Peugeot 404 is at least 20 years old and still in daily use. In fact this one has been upgraded, in 2004 no Peugeot 404 I saw had headlights! Spares were unavailable. Recent enforcement of basic rules means that this car has had lights fitted, the straps indicate how they are held in place.
The first steps of the build were to build the foundations. Fortunately the land was level but it seemed to cost an awful lot of money to construct. It turned out that since wealthy locals like high rise living, 4 storey houses being common, the foundations were built to accommodate such an edifice. Certainly a bit of overkill for an "up garret" or simple two storey building. Another lesson learnt!
The walls went up quickly and cheaply, they are concrete block walls and in Conakry you can buy these blocks ready made. The real cost was in floating the upstairs floor, that is creating a concrete ceiling to the ground floor. The cutting, bending and laying of the iron bars for the concrete reinforcement was done by hand. The support for the floor as the concrete was to be poured was manufactured from hand sawn boards and branches to support them at the appropriate height. No scaffolding here. Of course given this was going to be a cast floor, all plumbing and wiring conduit had to be in situ before the big day of the float.
Once the reinforcement was in place and the blocks used to fill out between the reinforcement were laid on top, the float began. This was a day of intense activity where bags of cement were manually carried up on to the first floor level along with sand and gravel. A cement mixer worked all day turning out the cement which was then hand carried to be laid to create the floor in one cast.
Fortunately the floating of the first floor was the biggest single expense and with the downstairs shell complete it was possible to start preparing it for living in even though the upstairs was incomplete. In fact we finished the walls and roof quite quickly after that.
 |
| Conakry House - downstairs complete! |
However while the structure was complete, the internal work took as long as the outside construction. Up until this point my sister-in-law had kept an admirable lid on expenses. However at this point she and her brother went around looking at houses and choosing the most desirable internal decoration they could find. This resulted in a fine house but rather more expense than expected. The constant refrain was that another $500 would complete the house.
 |
| Relief work on ceiling of Conakry house |
 |
| Conakry sunset on the veranda |
African Grand Designs
My wife, Mariama, is a Sierra Leonian from Koindu,
a town in the most easterly part of the country. From when she first
arrived in the UK she has been dreaming about returning to Africa.
Unfortunately for a long period of time the civil war in Sierra Leone
prevented us from returning. Mariama's home town was one of the first
towns to be raided by the rebels and her family have been refugees in
Guinea ever since.
About 10 years ago we purchased a plot of land on Juba Hill in the capital, Freetown. We bought the land on the advice of some friends of ours, unseen! The area of land is 10 town lots which equates to about an acre. We didn't want all the land but the vendor refused to break it up, so we ended up with a sizable area of hillside.
We finally visited the land in July 2004 after the
civil war had ended. While it was clearly going to be a challenge to
build on such a steep hill, the view out over the Atlantic was one to
savour. Coupled with the fresh breeze to cool us in the tropical days it
looked like a place to build our dreams.
One thing that stopped us from starting the project
was the state we found Mariama's family living in Conakry on our 2004
trip to Africa. Although we had rented the house it was almost as damp
inside as out. We decided we needed to get the family into a house of
their own so for the next couple of years we concentrated on building a
family house in Guinea.
While delaying our own project, this allowed us to get some idea of what was going to be involved in building in Africa. Lessons we learned. Do not trust anyone. It is always going to cost just $500 more to finish. And help can come from the most unexpected places.
This blog is a catch up about our house builds in Africa to date, progress on the Juba Hill project and, hopefully provides some lessons and inspiration for others. We have had ups and downs. If Kevin McCloud finds his on site project managers are taking on more than they can manage, feel sorry for us trying to build a project 4000 miles away where our builders don't speak our language and our translator knows almost nothing about the technical aspects of building.
Still here is the Conakry House
and here is one of the reasons we are building in Freetown now.
About 10 years ago we purchased a plot of land on Juba Hill in the capital, Freetown. We bought the land on the advice of some friends of ours, unseen! The area of land is 10 town lots which equates to about an acre. We didn't want all the land but the vendor refused to break it up, so we ended up with a sizable area of hillside.
 |
| View across land at Juba Hill |
 |
| The panoramic view of the Atlantic |
While delaying our own project, this allowed us to get some idea of what was going to be involved in building in Africa. Lessons we learned. Do not trust anyone. It is always going to cost just $500 more to finish. And help can come from the most unexpected places.
This blog is a catch up about our house builds in Africa to date, progress on the Juba Hill project and, hopefully provides some lessons and inspiration for others. We have had ups and downs. If Kevin McCloud finds his on site project managers are taking on more than they can manage, feel sorry for us trying to build a project 4000 miles away where our builders don't speak our language and our translator knows almost nothing about the technical aspects of building.
Still here is the Conakry House
 | |
| The house in Conakry |
and here is one of the reasons we are building in Freetown now.
 |
| Sunset over the Atlantic |
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