The old homestead of the catholic clergy.
The Christians in Kaphatika, a small village in the Ntchisi district of Malawi, started building a new parish priest's house between 2017 and 2020. 40 Small Christian Communities (SCC) from the surrounding area were involved in the production of the fired clay bricks. I accompanied the construction and photographed the people during the preparation and realization. The construction work was done with clay, sand, steel and quarry stones completely without the use of machines.
The construction work began in 2017 with the production of fired clay bricks.
The parish priest in his homestead.
The foreman.
The construction site was leveled with hoes, shovel and wheelbarrows. The foundations were dug by hand.
Before the construction of the parish priest's house was started, a storage room for building materials was built. The foreman was also given a room in this building to spend the night and an office for accounting and paperwork.
Every day, women were hired to pump water by hand into buckets and to fill the water tank for the production of cement and concrete.
The quarry stones for the concrete and the retaining walls were handmade by local men and delivered to the construction site.
The chief of Kaphatika regularly visited the construction site.
Before the walls could be plastered, the steel roof with iron sheets was delivered by a company from Lilongwe, the capital 250 km away. Electricity, water supply via a water tower as well as iron windows and wooden doors were installed after completion of the roof. It had taken a total of three years for the national electricity supplier ESCOM to deliver poles, lines and a transformer.
View from the fields to the new clergy homestead in Kaphatika with parish priest’s house, an external firewood kitchen, a backyard and a summer hut.
Priest and Bert with his tent in Kaphatika