Mud Houses - a look at Ghana's traditional, sustainable architecture

While I was in Ghana, there were two occasions during which I was able to stay in houses made out of mud. They had been plastered and painted, had electricity, and usually had cement floors. They were not very surprising looking at all.

I enjoyed staying there, although there were times when a mud wasp would try to make its next in the walls and while walking around the village you could see places where goats would nibble away at the external corners of houses (a few hot peppers might help with that!). Very interesting - this video shows a bit about how it is done, how durable they are and what kinds of materials were traditionally used.

Video from http://nbnetwork.org/topic/articles (thanks to Matt Cuba for showing me).



The houses I stayed in were not round like some of the ones shown in this video. They were rectangular compound houses. I can't remember exactly what the roofing material was made out of. I think the first place I stayed at had a plaster or cement roof, and the second had a type of cross thatching with wood (I vaguely remember being concerned about spiders).

This video mentions that one traditional method of making a concrete-like material was through using leaves from the dawadawa tree. I believe (based on a google search) that this is the same as the West African Locust Bean tree, or carob tree: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carob_tree

I would definitely like to go back to Ghana and learn more about these kinds of uses of plants!