Building a House

Mbise worked as our night guard. Actually he was employed by DME and was supposed to paid out of the farm profits - of which there were none, so I employed him in my tree nursery, which meant he had more money than he ever had earned before. To put it in context, daily, I was paying him 17% of my hourly rate back in New Zealand.

I was paying a bit more than standard and my nursery workers had it easy in the Tanzania context because they started at 9:00am, stopped at 10:00am for a cup of tea and something to eat (out of my pocket), stopped at midday for a cup of tea and lunch (out of my pocket again) and finished the day at 3:00pm. It was all my choice and I enjoyed my workers.

Obviously they were on a good wicket which was why they performed at least to my expectations – but it was more than that - we had a good working relationship.

Mbise realised that we would not be there forever so he had Mags save a little out of his wages each week. That ethic is not found very often in workers anywhere!

There were two large silky oak trees beside our house that were quite dangerous so I borrowed an old, clapped out chainsaw to drop them. I had to repair the machine first, but I safely dropped both trees.

Mbise politely asked for the timber from the trees, and I agreed because I had no particular use for them, so he dug a pit in readiness for expert sawyers. Pit-sawing was the very early method of sawing in New Zealand, and while there were ancient pits in the forest, Tanzania was the first place I saw it in action.

Over time I ferried Mbise’s timber up to his home place where he had negotiated with his father for a small plot of land – which was his right by tradition.

Later I agreed to help with the construction of Mbise’s house – in design, for the builder, for the burnt bricks and transporting the materials

One day Mbise asked me to take him to town to purchase his roofing iron utilising some of his savings.

I was well used to negotiating prices as but it was his money, he was in charge and he reckoned he could get a better price than I could, so we stopped at one of the many roadside stalls. They had a big pile of roofing iron and the sample they showed was good quality 30 gauge iron, so Mbise had the boys load my truck. But I noticed I could see daylight through the iron - they were loading 32 gauge (or less) even though the [forged] stamp read 30!

I told the guy to unload the sheets and if he had any proper 30 gauge a similar price. I wasn’t angry at him, he was trying to make a living as best he could but I bought a lot of materials in the town and I didn’t want to lose my credibility.

Making a living is not easy for these guys and so they push the boundaries, which is why I didn’t deal with them – nevertheless I was always friendly towards them.

They even used to ‘milk’ a kilo or two from the bags of cement, and sell it off in small lots while selling the rest at a ‘discounted price’. Their margin was small but at least they did make one.

We needed cement for the foundation of Mbise’s house and I purchased it from one of my usual haunts, but it turned out that we did not need mortar for the burnt bricks.

The best binder for burnt bricks was termite mound material. Termites remove all the organic material and moisture from the soil leaving a high proportion of silica. Nobody has sympathy for termites, destructive little buggers, and they release a lot of methane into the atmosphere – so I didn’t feel bad about disturbing them.

The mounds are very hard to break down, and the broken material is difficult to mix with water or soften for the mortar but it certainly works well. Of course the termites attacked us while we dug into their mounds and their soldiers made a noise clacking racket with their nippers!

      

The builder was a man I had used before and we always challenged each other as to the methods to be used. But he was also a traditional beekeeper using traditional methods and he showed me the puffball used to stupefy the bees – bees though weren’t the only things stupefied by those spores – users need to be careful! The puffballs were found in old abandoned pit latrines (bomb boxes).

The honey was not used on their morning toast however, it was used to make a potent brew, which was why Mondays were generally bad for Sampson the builder and his buddy.

Finally Mbise had his house and he was married a short time after. Was it all worthwhile though? To see his wide grin, you bet your boots it was!