A partially enclosed courtyard area of a house, with wall stubs of a collapsed room (right). One set of rooms was built with sun-dried blocks, then plastered and roofed with metal sheets. The other building is also plastered, but roofed with thatch. Two hearths are located in the courtyard and each building has a metal barrel used to store water. A headpan filled calabash bowls (chrԑgbͻͻ in Nafaanra) sits near one water barrel. A wooden mortar (left) is turned upside down, likely to protect it from foraging goats. Ahenkro, July-August, 1986.
While many houses take the form of compounds, people may build stand-alone structures that might later be added on to, creating an enclosed courtyard. Here, one side of the building is wattle-and-daub construction, the other side made by an atakpame (coursed earth) technique and later plastered. The wattle-and-daub technique allows walls to be built quickly, the frame ("wattle") allowing the daub to be placed without the need to let lower levels of the wall dry before adding upper levels. Ahenkro, July-August, 1986.
Rights:
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial
Publisher:
University of Victoria Libraries
Location(s) Facet:
Ahenkro
Subjects:
Atakpame
Subjects Facet:
Plastering; Thatched roofs; Wattle and daub; Building, Clay; Housing