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The Stunning 10-Day Rising of the Kapita Earthship Community Center by Faith Attaguile

October 2013, Somewhere on Planet Earth. 5000 villagers. 70 volunteers. One common goal … and a deadline.

When I climbed onto Ethiopian Airlines flight 501 at Dulles International Airport with my goddaughter Nicole on October 5, 2013, I knew very little about our destination country of Malawi, Africa.

Fifteen days later, I knew about tent-eating ants. Pit toilets. Bucket showers. And hard work.

I had a much deeper grasp of Earthship sustainable building techniques.

And I had experienced the fulfillment of joining a group of like-hearted people working together for a common goal. The satisfaction of reaching our goal. And the sense of people power that comes from knowing we accomplished this ourselves … off the grid of government control.

Here’s the story of how that happened ….

Part of the Kapita Earthship Community Center Build Team. Photo: Deborah Binder

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But first … where is Malawi?

Landlocked between Mozambique, Tanzania and Zambia -- Malawi is home to about 15.8 million people.

Malawi’s climate is sub-tropical with two seasons: Rainy (from November-May), and Dry (from May-November).

We were there toward the end of the dry season, so mosquitoes weren’t a serious problem.

But mosquitoes (and malaria) are a serious problem for the people who live here year round. And a 40% poverty rate and 10.2% HIV prevalence are, too.

Not to mention food insecurity, poor sanitation and water insecurity for the 90% who live in grossly underserved rural areas, most as subsistence farmers.

Facing Challenges by Joining Hands

In 2010, Empower Malawi began working with people from the southeast area of the northern Mzimba District (see yellow area in the above map).

The purpose was to begin discussions about developing a community-wide vision for sustainable development.

As people learned about the possibilities of organic agriculture, solar lighting and better

sanitation, they realized they also needed a viable, community-controlled cooperative bank that could offer micro loans to small farmers and small business owners.

Photo: Nicole Cordero

Map: UN.org

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So they decided to build a community center that would be big enough to provide cooperative banking as well as other vital services.

It would be a gathering place where villagers could exchange information and learn from each other as they built a more sustainable future for themselves and their children.

Thus was born the idea of the Kapita Earthship Community Center.

Grivini Kili (Empower Malawi Project Team) says about the project:

“Actually, I think it’s the biggest project ever so far, on the north here.

“If you saw the geographical position of this project in the center of the village where we’re working from, you can actually tell why most NGOs don’t work here.

“It’s a challenge.”

Indeed, the remoteness of this area meant that all supplies – even the ever present rubber tires for an Earthship – would have to be transported a substantial distance to the site.

But the idea had taken root. And the real work of making it happen was underway.

Grivini Kili, Empower Malawi

Photo: Angelique Smol

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A Flower Blooms in Kapita

Still, the question remained: What kind of a center should they build? Their villages are in a seriously underserved area, and there was little available funding for new materials. So their community center had to be able to provide vital services within this context.

After much discussion, the people decided to model their center on the principles of Earthship Biotecture’s flower design (see above). Not just because they could use natural and recycled materials to build it. But also because it would provide these other essentials for off-the-grid living:

Thermal/solar heating and cooling

Solar wind and electricity

On-site sewage treatment

Water harvesting

Food production

This model, developed by Michael Reynolds, is the result of decades of experience and experimentation with off-the-grid living.

And as Reynolds says, the flower design model is ideal for developing countries because it increases the resiliency of each member village. By learning sustainable building techniques as they help build the community center, people from the area can adapt and apply these principles in their own villages.

The flower design model offers 8 rooms, 6 toilets and 2 showers. Each room is about 18 feet wide and 24 feet long. The cisterns sit on an elevated tire foundation in the center of the flower design.

Water is collected on the vault (petal) roofs, running down troughs into these cisterns.

As the rooms spread out of the center, they create spaces for the toilets and showers.

Water for the toilets and showers is gravity-fed from the cisterns. Botanical cells (ditches about

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3’x3’x3’, lined with heavy plastic and filled with rock and sand) surround the flower structure. Each septic tank is channeled into a botanical cell. Plants growing in these cells get essential nutrients from toilet blackwater and shower greywater, ultimately providing nutritious food for the community.

The flower design also uses simple power systems in each room, serviced by the sun, to provide lighting.

How will they use the rooms?

The people decided that they would use the first four rooms of the Center in this way:

1. cooperative community bank 2. small clinic (the nearest hospital is 200 km away and the nearest clinic, 15 km) 3. library 4. food dispensary

The last four rooms will provide plenty of space for growth.

The Kapita Center Build Team Arrives: 10 Days to the Finish Line

Partnering with Empower Malawi, Earthship Biotecture agreed to send its core Earthship Africa Build Team to lead the project, along with about $60,000 in donations.

Sixty volunteers from Finland, Sweden, Denmark, New Zealand, Brazil, Australia, France, the UK, Ireland, Italy, Scotland, Canada, Syria and the US were also part of the build team.

The goal of the build was two-fold:

Complete two rooms of the eight-room structure, two toilets and one shower.

Work with people from member villages so they could learn the flower design techniques and thus be able to finish the center after the build team leaves.

Would we reach the goal? You’ll have to read on to find out …

But first, before I continue a word about our campground.

Earthship Africa Build Team, left to right: Paul, Jeane, Phil, Rory, Jacob, Brian, Lou, Mike. Photo: Deborah Binder.

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Camping With the Ants on the Kapita Primary School Soccer Field

The First Night…

Our story wouldn’t be complete without an account of our arrival in Kapita. An interminable flight finally brought us to Malawi’s capital, Lilongwe.

But it took about seven more hours (4.5 of them over very bumpy, dirt roads) to get to our campsite – a large soccer field next to the primary school serving the area villages.

As we fell out of the volunteer-stuffed van, our jiggled and shaken bodies were happy to finally touch stable ground.

It was getting dark fast.

But there was just enough light to find the four bucket showers we would use for the duration of our stay to wash off the day’s dirt and sweat.

And, of course, the four pit toilets.

Water is very precious here. Each day women from the village, balancing water buckets on their heads, filled two blue

barrels by the showers with well water they fetched from about a mile away.

We used this water wisely, always thinking about how it got to us. That was something we usually didn’t think about back home.

Campground sunset. Photo: Angelique Smol The soccer field. Photo: Federica Miglio

Four campground bucket showers serving 70 people. To shower, we would dip smaller pails into the blue barrels shown here and take them inside the grass enclosures to clean up. Photo: Sami Lotter Wickens

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The First Morning …

Early the next morning I woke up to the sounds of “Whack!” “Whop!” – even “Eeek!” coming from bleary-eyed occupants inside multiple tents neighboring ours.

Then, “Oh my god! They’ve eaten holes in my tent!”

“What?” I thought …cautiously lifting my head and looking at the floor of our tent. Indeed, Kapita ants were on the march -- by the thousands -- having eaten holes through the bottom of our tent.

Waking up to ant whispers certainly wasn’t a pleasant way to start the day. But we were, after all -- camping. In Africa.

And it could have been Mamba snakes ….

Later that morning the school principal, after a warm welcome, smilingly told us that if there was one thing Africa offered we might not appreciate, it was ants. He apologized but shrugged his shoulders and said, “We just have to live with them.”

Which is precisely what we learned to do for the rest of the build, although many of us left Malawi with very … holey … tents.

DAY ONE: School Kids, Hiking to the Build Site, Women’s Work, Breakfast -- and the Vault

The School and the Children

Some of us woke early because of the ants.

For others, it was because the sun was rising, and who would want to miss that?

But all of us started our day with the sound of children’s voices arriving at the Kapita Primary School.

They arrived early, often after first working in a family field …

The Kapita Primary School serves about 400 students and has only two teachers. Photo: Bassel Allahham

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Interested in all the funny-looking people camping on their soccer field, they stood at its edge, smiling at us and talking amongst themselves.

When we joined them, they happily crowded around us, greeting us and warming our hearts with their sunshine smiles and open curiosity.

Photo: Angelique Smol

Photo: Rohan

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The Hike

After a short campsite orientation, Day 1 began with a hike to the build site.

Almost a mile, the walk meandered over hills and streams, through cultivated fields, and culminated in a long hike up a steep hill. And yes, it left some of us a bit breathless.

Still, the hike was beautiful. And once we reached the top of that last ridge, the build site was just a short walk along the rim.

This took us past an array of small houses along with goats, dogs and pigs.

Photo: Dani Wolff-Chambers

Photos: Caitie Picot

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Not to mention beautiful little children who quickly learned how to Hi-5 us and say “Hello!” and “Bye-bye!” as we passed:

Pigs finding something to eat. Notice the adobe brick oven in front of the house. Above photos: Caitie Picot

Photo: Angelique Smol

The “guard dogs” taking an afternoon nap Family goat in front of an adobe brick home

Walking along the ridge to the build site. Photo: Maki Adachi

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Women’s Work…

We ate breakfast each morning around 7:30 at a little spot along the last ridge to the build site.

Women from the village tended cook pots resting on open fires, served out breakfast portions to us, and washed the dishes.

Not an easy task, preparing meals for 70 people three

times a day, 10 days straight

in addition to all the other work they had to do.

Here, women raise kids, cook, haul water for their families, keep house, farm -- and often run small businesses simultaneously.

And during the build they not only hauled water for their families.

They hauled water to our campsite each day so we could bathe.

And they hauled water up the steep hillside to the build site so we could make the mountains of plaster and concrete needed for the center.

Their investment in this project was huge.

Women hauling water to the build site. Photo: Pauli Archetti

Our beautiful cooks. Photo: Maki Adachi

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Our Breakfast

Breakfast always included the necessary cup of coffee or tea.

Some days we ate porridge made from maize flour – always good with heaps of brown sugar on top!

On others we ate cassava with fruit.

The women cooked our breakfast over open fires, and we eagerly ate it while sitting by the roadside before the day’s work began.

After breakfast, it was off to the build site (about 100 yards up the path) to begin our first day of work.

When we arrived, we discovered the Earthship Build Team already laying out the community center “floor plan.”

We also came face to face with lot of tires, just waiting to be pounded…

Photos: Nicole Cordero

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Indeed, we had a lot of work to do. So we divided into 5 work groups. From now on, each group would be assigned to a specific task, each day of the build.

My group assignment today? Building the vault.

What’s a Vault?

Essentially, the vault is the roof of each room. It’s made of rebar and chicken wire.

Constructed off-site, finished vaults are then carried to their tire foundations.

Once set on its foundation, each vault gets a four-coat plaster covering.

The first coat is a “spit plaster” made with grass to help it attach to the wire netting. The next three coats put a smooth-surface finish on the vault.

Rory and Jacob (our Earthship vault gurus) had already begun work on the first vault when we arrived at the site.

We asked them what we should do. They said, “Start another vault. Here are the dimensions. Remember, everything has to be level, so this ain’t goin’ to be easy. You’re working on very unlevel ground. When you’re ready, we’ll show you how to tie the rebar together. Go for it!”

And so that’s what we did. We made some mistakes along the way, but by day’s end we had laid out the beginnings of the second vault. And that was on the first day!

Here’s what one of the vaults looked like as a team built it:

Photo: Deborah Binder

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DAY 2: Pounding Tires. And pounding tires…

Tire-pounding champs Jeane and Phil led our group today. Along with Mike, of course, who showed us by example.

The first thing I noticed, as I took up a sledgehammer, was Mike on the other side, pounding away.

The idea is to ram dirt into these tires until they are intensely tight, becoming tire bricks. Pretty labor intensive…

Eh! … Eh! … Eh! – he went, at a sane pace, stopping at about five chops to rest and conserve energy. I took my lesson from him (a fellow 60-something). I’m sure that’s what allowed me to finish the day without collapsing on a line of tires ….

Photos: Federica Miglio (left) and Angelique Smol (right)

Michael Reynolds, founder of Earthship Biotecture. Photo: Federica Miglio

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The rammed earth inside each tire is what provides the thermal mass that helps keep a constant room temperature inside the structure.

The basic rule? No soft pockets allowed inside the tire!

Just keep pounding until everything is solid. Then make sure the tires you’ve pounded are level and centered over the footprint line. In teams of two (one shoveling and one pounding), we were soon able to pound about four tires an hour.

Photos: Federica Miglio

She’s the best! Photo: Maki Adachi

Leveling the tire wall. Photo: Deborah Binder

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DAY 3: Carpentry, Lunch, Placing the First Vault … and Fire Dancing

Carpentry today. Brian is the Earthship Crew’s resident carpenter, and what fun it was to work with him.

Run out of screws? Use nails or whatever you can find -- including rejected screws that have fallen on the ground, bent and “useless.” Pick ‘em up. Straighten ‘em out. Use them again.

Are the wood widths uneven? That’s the name of the game in this neck of the woods. Get to work with a shaver. Or give a wink, and use them anyway.

As Brian says, when you’re in a remote area like this, you can’t be picky. And you gotta be creative, using the materials you have the best way you can.

Great attitude, that -- and it definitely rubbed off on us.

So our group began by measuring, cutting and building six door frames. A good start.

Brian at work. Photo: Federica Miglio

Building the door frames. Photo: Rose Deborah Webb

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The Lunch

Each day around noon women from the village would carry our lunch to the site in large buckets.

We line up, hungry and thirsty from working all morning in the hot sun. And ready to eat whatever they offered.

Before serving us, one woman would hold a cup of water out so we could wash our hands. What a pleasure that was!

And today we had a treat. Besides the standard nsima (corn meal) and beans, we ate wonderfully tasty soy meat along with freshly steamed greens. A gourmet meal.

Like breakfast (eaten just 100 yards down the path) we would take our plates and find a place on the ground to eat … and rest.

Photo: Angelique Smol

Photos: Federica Miglio (above left) . Other photos by Nicole Cordero

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Placing the First Vault

Suddenly, in the midst of tire pounding and carpentry work, we heard someone shout, “Ready to lift the vault! We need volunteers!”

All work stopped as people ran to take up positions along the vault in order to lift and carry it to its pounded tire foundation.

The first flower petal was about to bloom!

It was quite an operation – almost like a dance with Mike and Phil conducting -- and what a thrill to see the first vault placed on its permanent tire foundation home!

Lifting the vault. Photos: Caitie Picot

Placing the first vault on its tire foundation. Photo: Pauli Archetti

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The Fire Dance That evening, after dark, we built a fire at the edge of the soccer field.

One of us brought out a drum and began drumming, soon accompanied by bottle percussionists.

Pedro brought out a guitar, and singing began. Then dancing.

Soon people from the village joined in. Then the village women began singing their own songs … and displaying their own rockin’ dance routines.

Not to be missed, they brought the house down. It was a wonderful way to end the day.

DAY4: More Carpentry … and “Spitting” the Plaster

Today we placed yesterday’s doorframes into position on the site.

Then, when all carpentry work stopped due to a supply shortage, I found a new job spit plastering.

This is the first plaster coat we put on the vault roofs. It’s made with lots of grass so the plaster mix will attach easier to the vault’s chicken wire skin.

A messy operation for anyone working inside the room being spit plastered! But getting “spat” upon in this way is just part of the job if you’re inside…. Luckily, the mess lessens as soon as the plaster begins to stick to the chicken wire.

Photo: Nicole Cordero

Placing the door frames. Photo: Angelique Smol Photo: Maki Adachi

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My job was to help coat the outside edge of the roof. Jeane said, “Don’t worry, Faith. You’ll get the hang of it…”

Cautiously navigating along the rabble-filled, four-foot high tire edge, I held a hock, heavy with a pile of spit plaster, in one hand. The other hand was “free” to (1) throw handfuls of plaster onto the upper part of roof edge, and (2) prevent myself from falling into the 8-foot deep toilet septic tank being dug directly below me. (You can’t see it in the photo, but believe me, it was there….)

My view down into the partially-dug toilet septic hole. Spit plastering the first vault. Photo: Zuri Burns

That’s where I was headed if I fell. Photo: Zuri Burns

Spit plastering along the tire foundation above the toilet septic tank hole. Notice the botanical cell ditch on to the right. Photo: Angelique Smol

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DAY 5: Morning Yoga, The Local Store, Preparing the Floor for a Concrete Cover … and OutlawToilets

Morning Yoga

This morning, like every morning, the school children gathered at the edge of the soccer field to watch us before they started school.

On several previous mornings they had seen us stretch through yoga routines, with Nicole leading us.

Today was different. Nicole walked over to the children and invited them to try some yoga stretches. She started a routine, and soon they began to copy her.

Breathing in, then out with a gentle “Ahhhh.…” their little voices rippled softly along the length of the entire soccer field.

And they took up Nicole’s yoga positions with a nimbleness and happy assurance that only young children experimenting with something new and fun can do. Their laughs and giggles were contagious!

The Local Store

Later on that evening, some of us walked to the local store to get a drink. When the children outside the store saw us, they immediately took up the yoga positions they had learned that morning, laughing and waving when we clapped.

The store was sparsely stocked, but it did sometimes have a warm coke, and often a warm beer (refrigeration’s not an option here). Here’s a peek outside and in:

Photo: Angelique Smol

Photos: Bassel Allahham (left); Nicole Cordero (right)

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And about 200 yards down the road, we found the only other store around. A smaller one, more like a vending machine, serving customers across a counter.

Preparing the Floor for Concrete

Today’s work was as dirty and dusty as it’s ever been. Our task?

Digging up endless buckets of dirt from the floor to level and ready it for a layer of concrete.

We dug out roots. Picked up rocks and debris. And filled multiple buckets with red clay dirt to be dumped outside.

It’s amazing how much dirt had to be hauled in order to level the floor. Given the tools we had to work with, leveling was a tricky business.

So we adapted to the reality of our situation. As Phil remarked, “Look. There’s Perfect, Almost Perfect, and Not Good Enough. Don’t worry about Perfect, but never accept Not Good Enough.”

Photo: Rose Deborah Webb

Photo: Angelique Smol

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After a full day’s work, we got the floor to Almost Perfect condition, ready for its chicken wire “skin” in preparation for a final concrete coat.

Pouring concrete. Photos: Federica Miglio

Laying the chicken wire skin. Photo: Rose Deborah Webb

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Outlaw Toilets

The first community center toilet we built generated great interest amongst the villagers.

Toilets here consist most commonly as a deep hole, surrounded by privacy grass and a few bricks around the hole for squatting purposes.

When the hole is filled, they cover it over and dig another one. Simple, but not very sanitary. Not to mention a waste of good fertilizer …

So it wasn’t surprising when, during today’s Q&A session at the end of work, people from the villages queried Phil extensively about how this newly-installed

toilet would work.

They wondered how they would clean the waste out of the pit of these permanent toilets. And one man observed that most people had never seen a Western-style toilet before. Sitting wasn’t part of their culture. Squatting was. Perhaps they’d try to squat on the seat?

After some discussion, Phil acknowledged that it might have been better to install an easily-cleaned ceramic “squatting toilet” as opposed to a western-style toilet. Either way, the septic tank of the toilet would work the same.

“The toilet works like a mini-septic tank,” he said.

“You can’t see it now, but the first thing we did for this toilet was dig a hole about 4’ wide and 8’ deep.”

He continued, “Once we dug the hole, we lined it with heavy plastic.Then we stacked tires inside the plastic-lined hole, leaving a gravel chamber between the outside edge of the tires and the plastic-lined hole.” (See photo, next page left.)

A pit toilet. Photo: Nicole Cordero

Damien digging the toilet septic tank hole. Photo: Dani Wolff-Chambers

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“The next step,” he continued, “was to install PVC pipe from the gravel chamber into the plastic-lined botanical cell.” (See photo, above right.)

“Our outlaw toilets work via an anaerobic process that transforms solids into blackwater,” he continued.

“Once that happens, the liquid seeps through the tires into the gravel chamber surrounding them. This blackwater is then channeled into the botanical cell receptors.

“The roots of the botanical cell plants reach down from the soil into the blackwater nutrients, and are able to produce great plants for food as a result.

“Remember,” Phil concluded, “outlaw toilets leave zero discharge. And there’s no off-site drainage that can pollute groundwater. Toilets like these have been used for over 20 years in the Taos, NM Earthship Community. They’ll work well here, too.”

I was listening intently to Phil’s description of how the Earthship toilets worked. And when I turned around, I saw an “Aha!” look on several faces of people from the villages. They understood now.

Building an outlaw septic tank for toilet (left). Lining the botanical cell to prepare for connection to toilet (right). Photos: Earthship Biotecture

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The Showers

Here, most people have never seen a simple shower like the one we completed.

Getting shower water from a pipe that’s gravity fed from water-collection cisterns (eliminating the need to haul water) was a whole new idea to them.

And after using our grass enclosed bucket showers

for six days at the campsite we, too, had a new appreciation for the simple but beautiful shower we had just built.

Standing on a clean textured dome while taking a shower, your feet never touch dirty muck like the muck was now growing inside our campground bucket showers.

(Besides bringing in the dreaded mosquitoes, who knows what other creepy-crawly things resided there?)

Waiting for a bucket shower at the campground. Photo: Federica Miglio

First Kapita Earthship Center shower room with sink. Photo: Federica Miglio

Young girls looking into the shower room. Photo: Nicole Cordero

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So, instead of forming muck puddles, water in these showers drains into the surrounding gravel. From there the water drops into a rock “basin,” where it’s channeled into botanical cells and can fertilize the plants growing there.

So the shower septic tanks work the same way as the toilet septic tanks.

Again, as I watched some of the people from the villages listen to Phil describing the process, I thought I could hear them thinking, “Wow!. No mud. No mosquitoes. Just a clean, sanitary shower!”

Or was that just my voice, thinking about the campsite bucket shower I was about to use … and wishing I could use this one instead?

DAYS 6 & 7: Bottle Wall Art & How to Make Them…

It turns out there’s an important rule (or two) for building bottle walls.

Rule 1: Don’t rush.

If you rush, your wall will topple over for sure. So … place no more than three

bottle brick/concrete layers.

Wait for them to set.

Then lay three more layers, and let them set.

Rule 2: Don’t rush.

No joke.

Because if you slop on the cement and mash the bottles into the slop any old way, there will be hell to pay on the other end. Cleaning cement off bottle ends to let in the light is not a fun job.

Trust me on this.

Photo: Federica Miglio

Photo: Maki Adachi

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Whoever thought plastic water bottles could be so pretty in a plain ol’ wall?

Bottle wall lights. Photo: Federica Miglio

Pauli polishing bottle ends from the outside. Laila polishing bottle ends from the inside Photo: Angelique Smol Photo: Zuri Burns

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Building the bottle walls. Photo: Angelique Smol

Photo: Angelique Smol

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Bottle wall from the inside with adobe finish. Photo: Pauli Archetti

Photo: Dani Wolff-Chambers

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DAY 8: Let the Vault Plastering Begin!

We’re close to the finish line now. Today, Phil and Jeane led our group in plastering the room vaults.

Each bucket of plaster is passed from hand to hand to someone on the roof. There, the bucket is passed down the line to the first person needing a plaster supply.

Empty buckets run in the opposite direction to be refilled.

Assembly lines supported the process … except where tough corners required the individual expertise of Chris …

Passing the spit plaster. Photo: Angelique Smol

Photo: Angelique Smol

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Chris to the rescue. Photo: Angelique Smol

Amazing how fast it went, and how much fun we had in the process!

Photo: Nicole Cordero Photo: Pauli Archetti

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DAY 9: Passing the Dirt Bags. Making Water Catchment Gutters

We’ve completed two rooms, two toilets and one shower. The water catchment system is next.

First, this requires building up, pounding down and leveling out the tire foundation for the plastic cisterns that will be placed at the center of the structure.

Passing the dirt to the roof. Photo: Pauli Archetti

Preparing the cistern foundation. Photo: Sami Lotter Wickens

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But that was only the first step ….

The between-room gutters had to be sculpted in a way that rainwater would naturally fall down the outer edges of the vaults to the inner catchment system.

That meant building an incline from the outside edge of the vault downward to the cisterns in the middle of the design. So we began moving, lifting and dumping hundreds of bags of dirt, collected from the botanical cells, onto the roof gutter.

A long line, extending from the dirt piles along the botanical cell ditches to the edge of the roof, passed these bags from hand to hand.

Then we hoisted the filled bags to people on the roof, who dumped them there under Phil’s ever-watchful eye.

That took a good part of the morning.

The tough part began when Phil was satisfied that the incline was ready for plaster.

The dirt brigade. Photos: Nicole Cordero

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First, we had to lay heavy plastic from the bottom of the gutter to the top of the vault. Then, over that, chicken wire to receive the plaster.

It was a windy day, so we had to get up on the roof and act as paperweights, holding the plastic down:

Once that was in place, the chicken wire went down fairly easily (everything is relative here) and the plastering began.

Human paperweights. Photo: Nicole Cordero

Phil plastering the water catchment area. Photo: Rohan

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The plastering went so fast that many of the “paper-weights” had to climb down just to get out of the way.

Some found a new job shoveling plaster into the buckets being hoisted back up onto the roof.

By the end of the day we had finished the first coat of plaster, placed the catchment drain over the cistern, and installed the first water tank.

Not bad for a day’s work!

Photo: Angelique Smol

First cistern in place. Photo: Chris Jacobsson

Placing the catchment drain over the cistern. Photo: Rohan

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DAYS 10-12: The Finish Line: “I am because we are” – Ubuntu Proverb

Two rooms, two toilets and one shower completed; botanical cells landscaped. Photo: Henno Marais

View of cisterns and complete tire foundations for the Kapita Earthship Community Center. A third room (right) has been spit plastered and readied for plaster coats. Photo: Jeane Nardrone

These last days involved a lot of finish work, cleanup and celebration for a job well done.

We had completed two rooms, two toilets, a shower – and the first spit plaster coat of a third room. And we had laid out a pounded tire foundation footprint for the other rooms of the center to be completed by the villagers who worked and learned with us during the build. We learned, they learned … and now they’re going to carry on.

As Mike Reynolds said,

“We all became an Earthship family of seventy working toward a single goal for those two weeks.The project ended with a full moon and full hearts. Long live the Earthship family!”

I second that.

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Want to become part of Earthship family, too?

Then go to Earthship Malawi and discover how you can help the Kapita Earthship Community Center become fully functional by August 2014.

About the Author… Faith Attaguile spends most of her time at FrontlineCopy.com offering copywriting, blogging and empowerment storytelling services to eco-businesses working for a greener world.

She has guest-blogged at KayakCanoeBlogger.com and writes regular posts on her website blog. You can find other articles by Faith in East County Magazine and The Coast News.

Connect with her on Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and LinkedIn.

Photo: Angelique Smol