Working On A Building!

Putting a roof on a building in the US doesn't take long - as a matter of fact, most of us don't know how long it takes because the builder takes care of all of those details for us. This is not the case in Ghana; especially in Nkwanta.

You are the builder - and the general contractor - and the financier. It all starts there.

We never thought it would take us a year to get the walls on the mission house up - but it did. So when we realized we were at the roofing stage - we got just a little excited. After the masons added the number of courses required to put the rafters/trusses on - we went to order the lumber. The first step is to talk to the person that sells lumber about the types and amounts of wood that you want. If the lumber seller does not have what you need on hand - he then goes to the chief that owns the land where the trees are to get permission to cut the lumber. Once he has permission and you have paid at least half then he contracts for the trees to be cut from the forest. The trees are brought to his workplace where he splits and prepares the wood. The wood has to have time to dry and then it has to be treated. This process can take two to three weeks.

Then the lumber guy delivers the wood to your construction site - where the carpenter and his crew start building the trusses/rafters. In all - this portion of our project took about one month.

So we are excited that the trusses are up - and the roofing sheets will go up in the next two weeks! Stay tuned for pictures of those sheets!