July/August 1984 RAIN Page 19 ACCESS: Mud Building Attached fainilt/ dwellings in a Malian village Mud. What other material on earth is more basic? Yet mud can also be formed into shapes and textures of enthralling beauty. Some people even use mud to make themselves beautiful. I've often thought that the first Zen and the Art of. . . book should have been one on mud crafting. We seem to have lost much of our appreciation of mud here in the U.S., although a trip to Mesa Verde or the Pueblo Indian reservations would show us this was not always so. (The Zunis even have a Mudhead kachina.) Mudpies and Mosques Mud is more respected in other parts of the world. In northern Ghana, a village's water supply often depends on carefully crafted mud. Villagers construct earth dams during the dry season, which then fill with water when the rains come. These dams often support a nutritionally important fish population, provide water for dry-season gardening, and hopefully hold enough water for cattle and people until the spring rains come. The alternative: for the women, walking four to eight miles each way for a bucket of water. Keeping this in mind, the mud walls of a full earth dam are an object of beauty. Besides holding water, mud can also be formed to hold fire. The three-sided mud stoves of Ghana even suggest the shape of an earth dam. Cooks make their own custom-built stoves, for they alone know which pots they will use and any added features they will need. In most parts of West Africa, mud is also the primary construction material for buildings. Mosques and family dwellings in Mali show the people's reverence for PHOTOS BY JEFF STRANG
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