Aid Camps International - Malawi

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8th September to 29th September

It is my first Aid Camp International trip, and it won't be my last. This is Aid Camp's first time in Malawi too, and they are working with the Landirani Trust (a local Non Governmental Organisation supporting orphans) to build a Community Building Chidren's Centre (CBCC) about 30 km from Lilongwe.

The Centre has been built using a newly recognised method of construction, 'rammed earth' which is actually a traditional method. Brick-made buildings have been used for a while, but brickmaking uses a lot of wood for firing the bricks and deforestation is becoming a problem. Brick-built houses use only one thickness of brick, which is not very stable, and does not keep out the cold or the heat.

'Rammed earth' is done by ramming earth of a certain damp consistency onto a foundation of local stone. The eath is rammed into wooden templates, or 'forms', bolted together, and left to dry before the next layer is built on top. Lanirani have trained ten local builders in this method, who have built the Centre, and eight Aid Campers have come out to help them complete and decorate it.

Wed 12th Sept

It's 5.30 in the morning and I'm awake in the thatched A-frame wooden chalet, listening to the dawn chorus in a hostel in Lilongwe, Malawi. It's not much of a chorus, more one bird in a nearby tree singing his rhythmic news and waiting for a distant answer. By 6 am he moves to another tree and i can no longer hear him. It's light and beginning to develop the red light that gives a glow to the already red soil. There are a few drops of rain, early as the rainy season doesn't start for at least another month. Soon the alarm will go off and we'll be up to leave at 8 for the hour-long journey past the airport, and along the dirt track road to M'teza where we're finishing building the CBCC.

Yesterday we dug a latrine and started the foundation of the verandah which will go all round the building, under the thatched roof. We women, six of us, work under the shade of the overhanging thatch, while the two men dug the latrines in the sun. George, the supervisor,, was impressed with the way we worked, digging a metre-wide trench along the front, and packing it with rock that the local villagers had brought in, carried in buckets and baskets on their heads. The local chief of the three villages that the CBCC will serve, headed the procession, then sat on a tree stump holding a meeting with the villagers. They are interested in us westerners but are shyer than the children who come to watch when they come out of school. We're a bit shy too, we've practised out Milawi greeting, a lengthy ritual of handshakes and phrases, on the builders, but don't feel fluent enough to try it on newcomers. The builders are local too, trained up in the 'rammed earth' method of building that is being used in this project.

Aid Camps International, (a charity working with Non-Governmental Organisations (NGO) focuses on projects for needy children and provides volunteers who raise the money, then build or complete the project), is working for the first time in Malawi, and has linked up with the Landirani Trust, who is building a whole ytraining village to promote sustainable living in subsistence farming, skilled communities and healthy children.

'Rammed earth' is part of the sutainablity and is a traditional method of building to replace the use of bricks, as brick-making uses wood to fire the bricks and causes deforestation.

Wednesday we start building the walls for the composting toilets. The builders bolt together a template, or 'form' of wooden boards, then pour fine, damp soil into it. We then ram the earth down with chunky table legs held upside down. It's hard work, the digging makes my upper arms ache, and the ramming stresses my forearms and thumbs. The dust we throw up is blown around by the wind and covers us with a thin film of orangey brown. I wear a blue overall, which apparently makes me look like a criminal at a crime scene; my room-mate, in white, like a forensic investigator.

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