The final touch: school yard wall, enclosure

The final touch on our initial Pilot projects in Farach and Zouera is to complete the 60m x 80m earth brick (banco) wall to enclose the school campus and keep the animals and their dung out. In the mean time, the community build a natural enclosure you can see here, in the middle of a sand storm:

and a firewood barrier around the new hand washing tap stand outside the classrooms, to keep out the random donkey that gets through the outer ring.

We are completing our discussions with the local masons and our structural engineers here, to decide whether to finish with a layer of cement plaster for endurance, and what the footing will be comprised of.

To read more about building with banco, see here: http://www.sacredsites.com/africa/mali/djenne.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/3562677/Timbuktu-Mud-mud-glorious-mud.html