“I check out materials available, some villages have stone, some make bricks, everybody had dirt. Timber is scarce and termites eat anything made of wood in weeks. If we use bricks they will need half the forests in Karamoja as firewood to bake them. Not very sustainable…everybody has dirt. Dirt? I remember making bunkers in the army, out of bags filled with dirt. Ah ha! Earthbag construction is the answer. With all that labour we can build earth-bag silos with few inputs. The construction method is used now all over the world with great success.
I placed some orders for hessian bags. No such thing in Uganda. Only potato sacks, which are 3 times too big. After lots of trial and error I end up with 25kg polyethylene rice bags as the material to start the job with. If the bags are too big they hold too much material and people can’t lift them. The trick now is to try them out and do some training at the same time.
I design a curved outdoor bench in our compound. If we are going to experiment we may as well make something permanent. The Green Warrior staff line up and listen while I tell them what we are going to do. They seem a bit bewildered because they have never heard of this type of construction before. Then again, I’ve introduced them to many things they’ve never seen before. I direct them to gather the different materials and tools we need.”
You can read about the various projects this group is building in Uganda by going to Permaculture.tv.
Earthbag Uganda
I really love this mode of construction over the conventional way
M really happy how earth can be used as a good construction material
Hi.
I really interested in the earth bag living structure and would like to implement that in my land in Gulu.
I would like to introduce it also to my neighbors as a cheaper form of building material. Hopefully it will inspire them to work together to accomplish a great vision for the whole community. Ensuring that everyone has a comfortable place to live.
I’m trying to find more information about earthbag building in Uganda. Would you have contact information for someone here in Uganda?
Thanks.
Every project we know of is published on our blog. As soon as we find a new project (assuming they did good work) we publish it.