In April I flew over to Ghana again via KLM, and stopped over in Amsterdam and London for a few days. The agenda was to try to put some structure around the efforts to migrate the Carolyn Miller school back to Liberia. There were many unknowns still. I caught up with Laura and Ikando, and was very grateful (again!) for their wonderful support and knowledge of the region.
It was great to be back in West Africa.
I stayed overnight in Accra at the Ikando complex in Nima, before heading out for the camp the next day. Ikando also has a house just on the edge of the Buduburam camp which is very well equipped: modern build, generator, plumbing and bathroom, comfortable bedrooms. It was a great base to work from and just a few minutes walk from the school. On the first morning at camp, I caught up with a few people just on the walk over. There are around 40,000 people on camp, of which I would know only say tens, but it was nice to get a few greetings by name and have a bit of a chat. I had breakfast first at the Brotherhood ‘cafe’, which is run by Sierra Leone guys who cook the best food on camp. It was back to breakfast oats and milo for a while now!
Now the first day on the school was very interesting. My intention on the first day was simple, to get the big picture of what we were trying to achieve. I wanted to structure this activity properly, so to be thorough so I fell into project management mode. I started by interviewing a few key people, especially Karrus and the principal James, for their thoughts. There were a few differences. Karrus envisaged a school for 800 students, predominantly boarding students and unaccompanied minors, paying no fees. James saw a school of 400 comprising mainly local fee paying students. From now on all estimates would vary, and the income model would have 2 branches. As a compromise I suggested we phase things: say year 1: 250 students, year 2: 500, year 3: 750 or similar. I took copious notes on expenses and prices; the costs of running the school now, the price of building materials such as cement, hardwood, zinc sheets, precast concrete blocks, reinforced steel mesh and rebar. I also soaked in as much as I could about the local building techniques and available skillsets. I found out the salaries for the various roles: teacher, principal, dean, cook etc.
Now one thing that always struck me about the default West African building was that although it is simple to construct, it is relatively expensive, and HOT inside. It goes something like this:
1. Lay cement slab and foundations, with concrete pillars.
2. Lay cement block walls, with ventilated blocks instead of windows.
3. Raise hardwood trusses (queen post or howe style)
4. Nail across purlins and fix zinc sheet roof
It is easy to build, relatively costly for a 6m x 8m classroom, and very hot inside.
The typical classroom block that is constructed usually is a rectangle, 3 classrooms long, ie about 25m x 8m of floor space; you need a 2m verandah for shade each long side, and a walkway along one of them. Estimates of the materials alone came in around USD 30,000 for a 3 room block, not including transport of materials, or labour. The costs were roughly equal for the floor, walls and roof: a third of the total each. Now if you only needed one block, as you might for a small school of up to 100 day students, a serious sponsor could come up with the funds and get it built. However a school of several hundred students means several such blocks. A boarding school means the same again for dormitories. Then there is a kitchen, library, staffroom and admin block, a hall of some sort which may or may not be the dining area.
I also learnt something that increased the degree of difficulty somewhat. It is apparently a given that teachers are provided housing as part of the package. It sounds reasonable given the environment, and it is considered a normal part of a salary package, but I had not been expecting it. The budget now included the construction of housing for the best part of 30 staff. Assuming a similar building type for the staff houses, my very first pass at high level estimates for a complete boarding school supporting 700+ and a number of teachers houses came in around USD 500,000 (low) and 1M (high).
A lot to think about.