Buying a house

We had a fairly clear idea of what kind of house we wanted to buy for the project and shortly after arriving in Maganja da Costa we set about looking for a suitable place. We wanted it to be located as centrally as possible, with a small amount of land to build an awning where meetings could be held. With the help of a local lady, Mariamo, we found a house in an excellent location, a five-minute walk from the market, and set slightly back from the road. It had a small amount of land, complete with two papaya trees, two orange trees, lots of bananas and an enormous cashew tree. The house on the land was quite small and had too many small rooms. It needed to be re-faced, re-roofed and have the internal divisions removed to create more space inside. We also thought we should add some extra windows.

The first step in buying the house was a visit to Herménia, the Rainha – the queen of Maganja da Costa. She came to look at the house and the land along with the owner, and agreed to let us buy the property. A few days later we went to finalise the sale at her beautiful traditional house boasting a large flat screen television. We signed the declaration, along with Magadabale, the seller, and the Rainha, and the money was counted about ten times, just to make sure.

We spent an excited 2 days in Quelimane, the capital of Zambézia province, buying things to repair the house. When we returned to Maganja and were given the keys to the house we had our first good look at the interior. It was glaringly obvious that the house was in terrible condition; the walls inside were crumbling, and it seemed unlikely that it would stand for another year. The amount of refurbishing needed, its inadequate size for the project, and the fact everyone assured us that building a house would cost 5000MTn (£100/12500ISK) and take four days, persuaded us to knock down the old house and start again.

The next morning we met with three mestres (builders) to discuss the building of the new house. Adelson, the coordinator at ActionAid and our flatmate, stressed the importance of drawing up a comprehensive contract. We eventually agreed to pay 5000MTn, not including food. The contract, all six pages of it, was printed out and given to the builders to sign. What we had not initially understood was that this did not include materials, although we now realise that the builders would now be seriously in debt if that had been the case.

The destruction of the house only took a day, and meanwhile we worked on the garden. The Rainha came by as we were flattening the machamba (Mozambican word for field where they grow cassava) with a special type of shovel/axe, told us we were doing it all wrong and took over momentarily, standing in the mud in white trainers with a shiny capulana and matching top.

Our first problem with the house were its dimensions. When asked how big we wanted the place to be we said 4.5 x 5m, without really realising how small that was for three rooms. The builders, João, Julio and Samuel, had to layout the house three times, and we eventually settled on 7.5 x 6.5m. We have since measured the house – it’s 7.3 x 6m.