How to build a Mozambican house

We were only a group of 5 ladies, but we made incredible progress with our building in the 7 build days that we had in Mozambique. The homes we built are fashioned on the traditional Mozambican huts, but with a concrete floor to keep out pests and diseases. This way, Habitat is able to employ local builders who are skilled in traditional building methods such as thatching to maximise the employment they can provide for the community. Houses are also extremely cheap to build - apart from the concrete, most of the materials are natural and can be found in the surrounding areas, and it was amazing to see how you can build a house with basically some tree branches and reeds.

Step 1 - make a foundation. Thankfully these are not very deep, and like I've seen in other African countries, they fill as much as possible with stones in order to save on the cost of concrete. Here is the foundation dug with rocks filled in. The dude is Orlando, the head builder in the village, who quickly earned the nickname Grumpy, although he was lovely really:

Here's Leonie and Sue shovelling rocks - back-breaking!:

Step 2: build a concrete base for the house. These were made with two layers of breeze-blocks and built into a circle. Leonie (the builders' favourite) was allowed to actually lay the bricks!:

The blocks are then rendered with more cement and smoothed over for a nice finish. The builders didn't quite trust us to do these! We were particularly impressed by the use of an old chocolate wrapper to do the corners:

Step 3: build a wooden frame for the walls. These were constructed by cementing large tree trunks into the foundation, and then with more flexible branches to go round the frame. This is followed by step 4, surrounding the frame with reeds. This pic features Salvador (and yes, he is wearing a woolly hat in the 30C heat, it was winter you know!), who we all ended up wanting to marry:

The walls are secured together with wire:

And some very technical 'bashing' to make sure that the wires were wound tight. And yes, it did meant just hitting the house with a big bat, as demonstrated by Robin:

Step 5: make the roof frame. Unfortunately we were not quite skilled enough to really help with the roofing, but again this involves locally gathered branches secured with wire. The structure was really quite impressive. It took the whole team to get it onto the house itself:

Step 6: thatch the roof. Alarming this does just mean climbing on top and applying the thatch. Health and safety officers please look away now:

Et voila! Here is the finished product! Doesn't it look cute and beautiful?

As well as being cheap and sustainable, these houses go up incredibly quickly. Local builders can build one of these in about 3 days, one day each for the base, walls, and roof. Our team helped to build around 6 bases and 6 walls during our time there, and we became particularly expert at the walls, which were probably the most fun to do as well as it involved a lot of teamwork between us and the builders.

Working alongside the families also really touched us. We were particularly attached to Flora and her family - she is a widow living with her elderly mother Amelia, and has 7 children, all packed into one of those mud huts. The finished house above is actually Flora's, and we hope that it will provide more space for her family.

I end with a little video of the dance during the dedication ceremony at the end of our build. Dancing and singing is very much part of Mozambican culture, and our builders treated us to an impromptu dance! Roughly translated, it was all about the beautiful house we have built. Enjoy!