Dear Gobar Times Readers,
I have mud on my face. Much better than egg.
Good for my blood circulation I am told. I am sure at some point in our lives we have all
enjoyed playing in mud. A little bit of mud in our life, is after all not such a bad
thing. We came from mud and will go back to it. All peoples have a story to tell about how
life began from the earth or the primeval mud. There is a fine muddy line between yucky
dirt and soil. Dirt is soil in the wrong place — in your fingernails, on your
clothes, in your hair. Yet soil nurtures life and provides us with food and shelter.
Mud is at once the most used and the most neglected building material in the world.
Over half the developing world’s population lives in houses that use mud in one way
or another. The fact that people still use mud to build means that it is tried and tested.
Why then do we crave for energy intensive and environmentally destructive cement, marble
and granite in our middle class homes? Mud has its limitations, but so does every other
material. Time to rediscover mud.
