Environmental journalist @NatGeo, @NYT, @bbc etc. Global Fellow @ The Wilson Center, Fellow @ Center for Climate & Security
published on National Geographic on Jan 19, 2023
Mud, a traditional construction material in Africa, more easily keeps buildings cool compared with concrete. Architects are finding ways to keep mud’s beauty and function alive in a warming world.
On a mid-May morning in the village of Koumi, Burkina Faso, Sanon Mousa has nearly finished annual maintenance on his three-room house.
He replaced termite-ridden roof supports with freshly cut beams and reinforced the heat-defying mud walls, some of which are a yard thick and more than a hundred years old. After replenishing the roof thatch and sacrificing a goat to the memory of his ancestors, all that remains is applying layers of rainproofing to the exterior.
“The mud will keep us cool. The motor oil, clay, and cow dung will keep us dry,” Mousa says as we tour his living space, which is a good 25 degrees cooler than outside. “We’ve perfected this.”
Mousa, a 50-something retired school librarian with a somber demeanor, is proud of his house. That doesn’t mean living in it is his first choice, though. In recent years he’s watched his wealthier neighbors in this verdant strip of the country’s southwest rebuild their homes in concrete. He has smarted at what he sees as a symbol of his relative poverty. Despite his considerable debt and consecutive failed harvests of the crops he relies on to pad his pension, status and safety are tempting him to borrow money and abandon his mud home. When we met, two brothers in the village had recently been killed in their sleep when a mud wall collapsed on them.
Inside a crumbling mud meetinghouse, Mousa sits to the side of the village chief. Sanu, who goes by only one name, is furious. He has mandated mud construction in the village center in a bid to preserve the old ways, but fewer and fewer residents are following his instructions—including his own sons. “This is our heritage,” Sanu says. “For thousands of years these houses gave us a good life. Why would we change when we most need them?
“I guess this is modernity,” he adds. “Maybe we can’t fight it anymore.”
(Read the rest on Natgeo.com)