How to Build a House…with no money or skills…
In November 1997 I returned to South Africa from Ireland with a little loan from the credit union and some kind investments from friends and family and began to build a small house at Rustlers Valley in the foothills of the Maluti Mountains near Lesotho. My first limitation was a place to live in whilst building. My kind friend Caroline loaned me her non running classic Volkswagen van which was fitted out with a bed and some small cupboards. We towed it up the 30 kilometres of badly maintained dirt road, up a steep hill and parked it under the shade of an eucalyptus tree under the shadow of the little long and odd mountain in the valley that I loved so much.
I had two stalwart friends helping me with the building from the start
Bill Gill, 60 year old self proclaimed ‘Best dressed tramp in the world’, coffee addict and all round garrulous and undiplomatic womanizer and chaos initiator. He was there because there was the chance of a captive audience. Then there was H, 29 year old English woman, fit, staunch, ex-gymnast and Amazonian queen. Wielder of chainsaws and with a no nonsense just grab a spade and ‘bloody well dig!’ attitude. She came out from the UK because she loves a challenge and this was definitely one of these. Then there was myself, I was 27 years of age, a part time clown and alternative building thrill seeker and permaculture enthusiast. Between us we had a bizarre combination of idealism, enthusiasm, healthy cynicism, humour and above all, pretty much nothing much else to do.
We dug a dirt road into the field and towed the kombi up and placed it under a big gum tree which provided some shade. There were low branches for a hammock and a black solar shower bag hanging on the north side. Bill and H both pitched tents close by in sheltered bushes. H’s tent was a constant source of amusement as it was a tiny one man tent, super light and incredibly weeny. She could just about slide into it but there was no possibility of another person getting in there as well. Sociability and fornication were definitely out of the question. After a month or so of ‘bijou’ living she built a wattle bender, covered with plastic and shade cloth which was far roomier and convenient for everyday use.
Over the VW we stretched a big tarpaulin and lashed it to other branches. A sheet of corrugated iron on bricks beside the kombi with one kettle, one frying pan and one pot served as a kitchen and a badly designed mutton cloth covered chicken wire basket system with water dripping down the sides was the fridge (but only in the vaguest sense of the word) Our pantry was an old wardrobe behind the kombi that had been donated to us.
The tools consisted of one borrowed chainsaw, 2 pangas (big bush cutting knives) a hammer, pliers, a saw and a hand auger.
The house site itself was about 70 metres away situated on a good North facing slope, surrounded by old cherry trees. There was an animal drinking trough a further 100 metres away supplying bore-hole water. One of the first things we did was attach a T-junction to the water pipe to the trough and take the water up the highest point it would flow, to run into a thousand litre tank ( the tank was a thrown away sugar cane industry freebie) through 15 mm black plastic piping. The water was then gravity fed down to the house site.
There was no specific design for the house-plenty of drawings, ideas and concepts but actually nothing concrete on paper.
I wanted it to be seven metres in diameter, round and built with as many local resources as possible.
We started to clear the site with the very able help of two local men Ntate Israel and Ntate Joseph. The ground was densely covered in grass with a mostly sandy soil. We dug sods of earth and stacked them nearby covering them with plastic to protect from sun and rain. The children from Naledi Village arrived when the site was cleared and almost leveled and we had an impromptu dance and drumming session on the spot. It felt like a fantastic way to build foundations!
Bill, H and I were subsisting on a diet of strong tea, coffee and fried egg sandwiches and occasional bits of fruit and vegetables. This just about held us together and the occasional dinner invites from neighbours supplemented our meager fare and were snapped up enthusiastically. We would arrive for the said dinner armed with towels, razors and soap begging for baths and wolfing down food like beasts. I like to think we entertained them with our witty banter but this was unlikely as we were mostly exhausted and hungry.
The foundations of the house consisted of digging a ditch about a metre deep and a half metre wide and filling with stones which were plentiful and luckily just higher than the site, below the mountain. A crowbar was used to pack them tightly together.
The wooden uprights for the house were cut locally and consisted of Robinia Pseudoacacia- this is an invasive species and is excellent to build with as it doesn’t rot or get insect infested. This sounds very practical but in reality I was almost arrested as the police arrived to the site one afternoon and it turned out the fence we’d shimmied through to cut the wood belonged to the angry Afrikkaans man next door. I paid a confession of guilt fine of R150 at the police station and slithered away with the poles. They were still cheaper than bought poles. The 13 uprights were stripped of bark when freshly cut (do NOT try this when they are dry!) let dry for a few weeks and the foot of each was painted with lime, a copper wire spiral nailed to it and encased in a thick plastic sheath before being settled into the ring of stone foundation. Further stones were packed tightly around each upright. When this was complete we began to stack the sods of earth (grass side down ward) like bricks on top of the stones.
We built up the layers of sod to thigh height and cut more Popular and created a support ring of wood attaching each upright pole together. During this time Ntate Joseph became absolutely essential as he knew all the best techniques and was willing to work alongside our very motley and sometimes argumentative crew.
When this was finished we began to use the ancient method of cow dung and earth (known as ‘Daub’ in Elizabethan England) mixed together with water. It makes excellent -if quite smelly- cement. A group of ladies from Naledi village arrived with basins, fresh cow manure and a selection of small children too young to go to school. There was a lot of laughter, liberal amounts of snuff and drinking of tea and much teasing as we got to grips with this substance. The first coat is applied quite roughly with the mixture slung at the wall and pushed in with the fingers – this leaves a pock marked surface. The mixture is left to dry and should be ready to re-coat in a matter of days. The second coat is applied and is a slightly smoother mix, the pockmarks are covered and the wall begins to show a smoother surface. The subsequent two or three next coats have a finer smoother consistency and are much thinner.
The smell of daub is particularly pervasive-cow dung when applied fresh and liberally to one’s hands can really stick around no matter how vigorously you scrub them with soap. The solution is to douse your hands with vinegar or lemon juice after scrubbing with soap. Under no circumstances go for a job interview or a date within a week of daubing! Sensitive urban types are advised to wallow in this substance for a quick introduction to country living. It’s rough on the hands but so much better than cement.
Our next step was to get the roof on.
Bill was adamant that it should have a seven sided corrugated roof with a detachable glass diamond shaped centre that could be raised and lowered depending on the temperature. This sounded delightful but the logistics were a nightmare and considering our tools and skills it was not at all feasible. I over-rode Bill’s endless arguments and decided to have a thatched roof instead.
We realized we’d have to have a centre pole to support the heavy weight of the thatch and went searching for the perfect tree- we found her in the forest next door belonging to Christian. This time I asked permission. In fact I asked permission AND borrowed his tractor (we’d already borrowed his chainsaw by then too) A big poplar tree with a good fork to slot the roof poles into was chosen. Leaving the bark on we set her into a metre deep hole filled with cement (the only bag of cement we used on the entire building) The next step was a top ring of poplar poles to link all the uprights and provide support for the roof poles.The roof poles were cut locally and were Cedar. All the poles were hand-drilled and thick fencing wire was doubled up and used to fasten them to the upright. Now I know it’s better to use rebar, nuts and washers but the first time round we always do things that in retrospective are not ideal.
The thatch grass came from close by Lesotho- it came in biggish bales and arrived on a massive truck at 5.30am with a bunch of wild men all wearing balaclavas and looking like dacoits. It was stacked upright in what looked like old fashioned haystacks and the arduous task of combing it and bunching it in smaller tighter bundles began.
Two women from the local village began combing it. This was done by having a horizontal pole embedded with nails. Each bundle of thatch was dragged through it to make sure that the grass lay smoothly together. This is done to ensure a neat tight finish to ensure that the rain would not leak through it.
The thatcher was ‘Madala’ which is the Sesotho word for old man or elder. He arrived with his second wife who was very young and pretty and their youngest child. He was reputed to have 11 children and the two wives and children lived amicably together. I was most relieved that he hadn’t brought his entire family. The place was already like a delightfully colourful and chaotic train station. This roof was the biggest roof he’d ever attempted and he stoically started work each morning at sunrise and could be found sitting gnome-like on the roof smoking the most enormous spliffs rolled in newspaper at his break-times. Needless to say he was pretty quiet and peaceful, I was a little concerned that he might get too stoned and slide right off at times but he placidly thatched on and the roof progressed. Very slowly. By the time the roof was half way finished I was very ready to move in. Van living was driving me crazy and the sound of Bill hoiking and grumbling around the coffee pot at all hours was really getting on my nerves. So I moved my mattress under the partially covered roof and woke each morning to the pungent smell of marijuana, thatch grass showering down on me and the upside down toothless grin of Madala.
My 15 year old niece Seafra arrived from Ireland and a little later three of Seafra’s friends turned up too. They were thrilled and only a bit squeamish about the long-drop toilet and Bill. The girls got promptly named ‘Jailbait and the Nubiles’ as they were always pottering about singing in harmony and tanning in tiny bikini’s. The girls built a bender in the trees close by and specialized in getting up extremely late and frying egg sandwiches at all hours. There was an upcoming music festival on the farm so they got involved in painting signs and helping out there and leaving us to finish the roof before the party began.
The roof got completed just before the festival and we celebrated madly. Post festival I realized my money was now thoroughly gone and I needed to return to Ireland to earn some hard cash to complete the building. H began packing up to go to Tanzania to volunteer for an N.G.O. and assist in the building of a community centre, library and co-operative. Bill fixed up his wreck of a car and headed off to better coffee providers and more receptive audiences. Caroline turned up to retrieve her vehicle and tow it to a mechanic. Madala and his wife and child bid us a fond farewell and went home to their village.
We boarded the house up with corrugated sheeting leaving a note on the door saying’ Gone with Swallows be back in Spring’ and heaving a big sigh of relief we headed off over the horizon knowing that a large part of the work was done. We had built a structure (not yet a home) with a sturdy roof, staunch walls and the start of a garden in place. The next part of the house building would begin six months later.
Without the absolute generosity of Bill, H, Caroline, Ntate Joseph, Mme Maseshoeshoe , Derek, Claire, Phillipa, Nic, Nthabiseng, Flip, Leribe, Thabo, Anton and the kind people of Naledi Christian Findlay, my family and friends at Rustlers Valley and in Ireland I would never have attempted to do something like this. It was such a transformative experience. Now I suggest you go and try something like this yourself….maybe a shed, retrofit a van, fix up a boat. Keep it simple but give it a go!
