Work has started at Magunga Secondary School where we are about to build a dormitory for the Secondary School girls in their final year.
So far we have funding in place for half the project we'd like to build which is a facility for 50 girls to board including an ablution block. So we're starting with the foundations and the walls.
This will be a new kind of construction for us because we are using interlocking blocks instead of bricks. These blocks are made from locally available soil, a bit of sand, cement and water. They are compressed and left to set. After a couple of weeks of lightly watering and drying (a process called curing) they are harder than fired bricks. And of course they are much more environmentally friendly because fired bricks involve the chopping down and burning of trees.
Once the blocks are made you stack them without the need for mortar and plaster them on the inside only. In theory it should reduce the budget.
Suzanne is working frantically on a presentation for The Funding Network where we hope to raise enough money to complete the project.
If this new method works for us we'll use it for all our new building projects from now on.
