September 2020

17 Buckden Roundabout September 2020 African orphanage I was also impressed by the Beach Club, and due to its location down by the shore, and not too far from the site, I decided there and then that that would be my accommodation on my future visits. On the way back to Kisumu the following day we spent a little time in Mbita (the mainland ferry terminal town) looking at supply facilities for building materials. I saw enough to satisfy me that basic materials such as cement, aggregates, structural timber, profiled roof sheeting, and some small steel profiles were available locally. Others, such as concrete blocks for con- struction, would have to be sourced from suppliers in Kisumu or Nairobi. The long and tiring journey home then began. Part 4. Construction Every project needs a brief; a description of what is to be achieved. And of course this evolves from a study of the user ’ s requirements. David Bale, in his introduction to this paper, has described the background to this project, and the requirements are straightforward. Build a residential school to provide a home and an education for more than one hundred orphaned chil- dren. And do it as efficiently and economically as possible, whilst complying with Kenya building standards. (Kenya build- ing standards are modelled on UK standards – a legacy of the colonial period.) So from dialogue before, during, and after my initial site visit, the brief emerged: • Construct an Admin block to provide office accommoda- tion for management and teaching staff, and private sleeping accommodation for residential staff. • This developed into a 2 storey building with offices and a common room on the ground floor and 7 bedrooms together with a communal space on the upper floor. • Construct a Classrooms block to provide 6 classrooms with teaching space for up to 30 children in each class- room.This developed into another 2 storey building, with 3 classrooms directly over 3 classrooms below. Access to the upper floor to be provided by an external staircase, ramps and balconies. • Construct dormitory blocks, separate for boys and girls, for up to 50 children in each block. • This developed into two single storey buildings with one single open space in each for the provision of bunk beds. • Provide all the necessary infrastucture for water and electricity supply and for sanitary and surface water drainage. Samwel is, and has been, the local project manager for this enterprise, and is the Director for the School. He is, and has been, responsible for the local purchasing of all local con- tracting, employment of manpower, and purchasing of materi- als locally. He is the focal point for all communication with my- self in the design of the buildings and for the procurement and delivery of all UK resourced materials. His role has been criti- cal. As also has been the role of Daniel, mentioned earlier. He has managed all of the actual construction on site, as a small local contractor, using his own workforce, on a labour only basis. The Admin Building Following the September 2018 site visit the pressure was on to get design and building started. Samwel was already receiving numerous enquiries about the planned school. We decided to start with the Admin building, in order to provide office and accommodation for management and teaching personnel who will need to be in place before the school could accept chil- dren. And in order to achieve the fastest possible programme we decided to design and construct this building using only materials readily available from within Kenya. In fact the Admin building construction is quite traditional. At ground floor the walls are solid concrete blocks, with a ren- dered and painted external finish, whilst the upper floor is tim- ber framed with profiled metal sheeting for the walls and roof. The suspended floor at 1 st floor level is timber joists supported by the concrete block walls, with plywood boarding over the joists. Concrete blocks were provided from a block making factory in Kisumu. Timber is cypress timber from local suppliers. Photographs of the building under construction, and substan- tially finished are shown below. Excavation for foundations to the concrete block walls started in February 2019. Concrete block walls were constructed dur- ing March/April 2019. The timber framework was erected in May and largely completed in June 2019. External wall and roof cladding was erected in July/august 2019, and general finishes, both internal and external were carried out in Sep- tember/October 2019. Whilst the site work for the Admin block was ongoing, the de- tailed design of the Classrooms block was developed here in Buckden. The final instalment of the story of Keith Lawrence and the Afri- can Orphanage will be published in next month ’ s edition. (Continued from page 16) Note the very colourful finish (local choice) and the 4 legged security guards.