To get there we all took a trotro which stopped to let us buy cement. We followed the main road back toward Accra till we were about 3 towns out from Cape Coast. We then made a left and traveled up a huge hill along a village in a valley on a really awful road. It was full of holes, filled with water and debris. Our driver simply took it as a challenge and roared along...
We made it in one piece and in good time, about 1 hour. Danielle and I were with Kofi and a team of 3 guys (the people who actually knew what they were doing).
The recipe for cement blocks is different here than from back home and a lot more manual labor is required. You mix 3 parts wet sand with 1 part cement. This is measured as three heaping wheelbarrows (with a flat tire) and one bag of cement. This is spread all over the floor and mixed with shovels. Danielle and I were good at filling the wheelbarrow but not as good at mixing uniformly.
The mixture is then shoveled into a pile and distributed into molds. The mold is a metal form with the bottom like a spring-form cake pan. It is filled with the mixture then tamped down and this is repeated until nothing more can fit. It is then carried to the cleared surface of semi-level floor and inverted. You have to pull the mold off in one smooth motion or the brick will break. We had 2 molds but only one was working properly so we had to take turns with it. The guys in charge filled while Danielle, me and Kofi turned out all the bricks (Kofi filled and mixed too!). All in all we made 75 bricks, which is awesome!
The down side is that by the time we were finished we were dehydrated, had blisters all over our hands, and our shoulders and lower back are going to be sore for a while. The up side is that the school can now build on its additional classroom, which is defiantly worth it! Especially since the rural areas receive a lot less attention, when they are the ones that need more of it.
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