Building a Community Center in Ghana

Today started out with carrying the gray cement blocks from where they were piled behind the school and lining them up along the trenches. While at first we carried them at a brisk walk with our arms wrapped around the crumbly blocks, it was soon blatantly clear there had to be an easier way of doing it. The great part of having 19 people was that it made for one very efficient relay line. With only very few mishaps (the blocks would sometimes break into pieces as they were passed…I know, very sturdy, right? Perfect for a building!), we soon had the whole site surrounded by blocks.

Overnight, the concrete we had poured dried, and we could start building the foundation walls. The workers laid down the first course (or layer, for us non-architects, -construction workers, and –masons) and then began giving us masonry lessons. Before we knew it, we were in the trenches, straddling the growing walls.

Now, in theory, the construction of a wall seems pretty straightforward. You lay a line of blocks, fill in the gaps with mortar, lay more mortar on top, lay a new row of blocks on top of the first, and start again. Easy, right? Not so much. First, the blocks all have to be aligned correctly. You do this by wrapping a string around the blocks at each end and going down the line to see if the other blocks push up against it or are too far away. Then, to fill in the gaps, you have to use a trove and float. The trove looks like a flattened gardening shovel and the float is a flat piece of wood with a handle. With the trove, you scoop up the mortar, which looks like grey cake frosting and is as heavy as mud, and gently tap it in between the blocks while you hold the float against the blocks to keep it from escaping. I was exceptionally bad at this last. No matter how hard I tried to keep it in the gap, it always came oozing out the sides and plopping down into the mud. After the gaps are filled (not by me, of course), about an inch and a half of mortar is laid across the line and a new course of blocks are put down. Using the string and a level, the blocks are tapped here and there to make sure they all line up.

At some places, the blocks have to be shorter—to fit at a corner, let’s say—so the workers tap along those blocks with the side of the trove like they are cracking an egg. Then, once the line is drawn, they beat at them with the trove, and the blocks perfectly break in two. It is amazing how weak these blocks seem and how totally cool the workers are.

One of the best parts of this job, in addition to the fact that mixing mortar is way easier than mixing concrete, is whenever the workers need more mortar, they yell, “Mooortttaaar!” (think Marlon Brando yelling “Stella!” in a A Streetcar Named Desire without the emotion…you’ve got it.)