The teleuk of the Mousgoum of Northern Cameroon

The teleuk house is a dome-shaped dwelling built by the Mousgoum people of the flood plains that straddle Chad and Cameroon in Central Africa. It is a dome shaped house with a small opening on the upper side. All along the bell shape, there are grooves in the wall. This is usually to facilitate renovations that are done yearly to keep the structure both solid and visually appealing.

With no foundations, scaffolding, reinforcement, compasses or other measuring tools, Mousgoum architecture is astonishingly simple to build. It is, however, a unique masterpiece of indigenous engineering, made possible only by the strict rules governing its use and a detailed knowledge of the materials and context.

The teleuk, which can be up to 20m high and have a circumference of more than 7m in diameter, is built in successive layers of clay around 30cm high. The earth is first purified, wetted, mixed for a long time and reinforced with plant fibre (seaweed, straw, etc.) and other organic matter (horse urine, fish oil, etc.) to ensure cohesion and impermeability.

As the wall rises, it curves and requires less material. Starting from a base 50 cm thick, record thicknesses of around 5 cm can be achieved. Which is quite a feat in itself. The walls come together to form a dome with an opening (around 40 cm) at the top. This is where the smoke from cooking and heating escapes, and where ventilation and lighting are provided.

A traditional dwelling consists of five of these huts, connected by walls, with a millet storage area in the centre of the circle.

The visually stunning teleuk is a remarkable, ecologically sustainable structure built solely from found materials (earth, clay, grass and animal dung) that are 100% reusable and biodegradable. The building material also means that the structure fits naturally into its surrounding. The deceptively low-tech building is designed to maximise the thermal benefits of the building materials, allowing the interior to be naturally cool even in the hottest weather.

Teleuk homes provide cool temperatures in a region where the thermometer goes as high as 45 degrees centigrade on some summer afternoons. On such days, the temperature may be as low as 25 degrees inside a Teleuk home. You can see that it is almost like a termite’s nest and scorching heat can never really go all the way to the core of the structure.

Adapted from https://maison-monde.com/teleuk-peuple-mousgoum/