Improved Living

Homes for our teachers

Why

In the last few years, Mukwashi has grown rapidly in numbers, quality & professionalism. Friends & supporters have helped us install transformational school toilets and solar power for the office, but most progress is due to the remarkable work by our head teacher and the young, ambitious, highly-qualified team she’s recruited.

Sadly, however, most of the homes where our brilliant teachers had to live were appallingly grim. We had no choice but to pay £4,000 every year to local Zambian farmers to rent leaky, uncomfortable, sub-standard, tin-roofed shacks for most of our teachers to share.

Their living conditions were degrading & demoralising, but there was nothing else to rent in the area other than tiny mud houses with even worse living conditions. Inevitably, this made it difficult to recruit the best staff.

What

The only possible solution was to build ‘improved living’ homes for all our teachers on our 15-acre school site, where there’s plenty of room.

We commissioned Pesiav United Enterprises, one of Zambia’s leading construction companies: (i) to build two blocks of ‘bedsits’ with shared facilities for nine single teachers, (ii) to build two ‘semi-detached’ family homes for senior staff; and (iii) to rebuild the four existing small homes on our site for married teachers.

These 15 homes will enable us to retain and recruit the best staff; most importantly, they will provide all current and future Mukwashi teachers with dignified living conditions for at least the next 40 years.

When

We started Stage One (nine shared homes for single teachers) in May 2024, and the first teachers moved in during September – though it was another four months before their homes were finally completed.

We began Stage Two (two family homes for senior staff) in late-July and completed them in mid February. These took longer because progress is always slower in the rainy season. We commenced Stage Three in January and completed everything at the end of June.

How much & how

It cost £90,000 to build the fifteen homes – an average of £6,000 per home. Nineteen supporters in Austria, Canada, China, Portugal, Luxembourg, Singapore & the UK generously gave, loaned (interest free) or raised the funds to build them.

Solar

There is little mains power in Zambia – falling river levels due to climate change have almost wiped out the country’s hydro-electricity infrastructure. Solar is the only way forward, but it is not cheap!

It seemed such a huge task to raise the funds to build 15 homes that we didn’t believe we’d be able to equip them with solar lighting and solar water heating for another few years.

However, last August, because of the power emergency, the Zambian government temporarily suspended import duty & taxes on all solar goods – cutting the price we’d have to pay by 50%.

We decided to grab this opportunity and used £6,640 we had received from from the UK Government via its Gift Aid scheme to purchase and install solar panels and geysers for all 15 homes.

Stage Three completed

In Stage Three, we refurbished and up-graded an old block of four small two-bedroom homes. We are made major internal structural adjustments to make much better use of the space. We replumbed, rewire…

Stage Two completed

We began work on Stage Two at the end of July. This time we were building two three-bedroom family homes for senior staff, and our Headteacher and Deputy Head moved in during February. We’ve tr…

Stage One completed

We started building our ‘improved living’ homes at the end of May and have now completed the first stage: two blocks containing nine studios for shared living by single teachers. The teac…