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.

Trees growing inside a house in Koindu (2008)

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.

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

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.

Conakry sunset on the veranda