The Anglican Church of Mozambique will build 50 houses out of clay and plastic and glass bottles collected from local garbage dumps, for the same number of families, in the district of Gondola, Manica province, in the center of the country.

This initiative will focus on families who lost their homes during the wars waged in central Mozambique between Renamo guerrillas and government forces, since 2016 when the contesting groups were under the command of Afonso Dlhakhama and then, in 2019, of Mariano Nhongo, both now deceased.

The similar project of ecological one-bedroom, one-room houses has already been implemented from the South of the country and will now cover a small population of Gondola living in precarious conditions.

After initial help with food and clothing, the precarious housing conditions remained unresolved, said Gondola Church priest Francisco Charles.

"The church cannot live on the Gospel alone," he mentioned.

"We saw that we could do something to give a smile to those people who are suffering and we decided to make a campaign, and the support for the construction of these houses came up," he revealed.

Virgílio Jambo, councillor for health and sanitation in the municipality of Gondola, says that the project, besides helping to clean up the village, will solve the housing problem.

"The idea is to have an ecological neighborhood," he told.

The one bedroom, living room and balcony house will use 17,000 plastic bottles, while the glass bottle house will use 27,000, for the same size and compartments.

The project which started in September 2021 will last three years, is already setting up two of the 50 houses planned, and has funding from Tearfund, an international Christian agency.