Rondavels
08-08-23 00 / episode: 204
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Script
"Rondavels.
Do you know what those are? I sure do.
About 20 no, 30 years ago I went to Africa to live.
I lived in Africa for a few years and while I was there, I saw lots of rendezvous.
Those are the houses that many, many African people live in.
They're typically made of mud or stone or wattle.
Ok.
Now they're actually pretty livable once you go inside them, but from the outside they don't look like much.
Maybe you could say they look cute.
They are the little mud huts that people make to live in.
The materials are plentiful.
You can get the material off the ground.
So you don't need to spend a lot of money constructing your house.
On the other hand, the doors.
Well, you could have a really low quality door or a high quality door.
You can have a big rendezvous or a small one.
Most of them were small.
One of the problems with the Rondell is there's no electricity, but that seems to be a problem in many, many parts of Africa.
Another problem is if you heat it or if you want to do some cooking, you're probably gonna be using a fire.
If you have a gas stove, you're not much better off because the exhaust fumes, the smoke goes right into the house if you open up a hole in the roof.
Well, that's a hole where the water can come in.
So usually people don't open a hole and the smoke just stays inside the hut and it piles up in there.
Not very healthy.
On the other hand, once the fire goes down to a low, uh, cool burning level, it doesn't give off much smoke and it gives off lots of heat.
So now it's not as smoky in there, but you still got the smoke from starting the fire in the first place.
I suppose you could make the fires outside and then bring the coals inside for cooking.
That might be the wisest thing to do.
But it's a, certainly a pain in the neck.
Rendell are all over Africa and they're not gonna go away quickly.
So, if you thought that the little mud hut in Africa is a thing of the past, well, it isn't, it's still there.
It's alive and popular."