Library Construction - Brick Making

First off, I want to send out another huge thank you to everyone who so generously donated to help this library project happen!  I am still shocked at how quickly we were able to raise all the money and I am so very grateful for all the support from friends and family back at home.

Now, for an update.  Following the necessary formalities of the country, throughout the past couple weeks we have had meetings with local government officials including the Director of Education and Technology and the Administrator of the district, informing them of the community library project.  More exciting though, the library construction is in its first phase: brick making!

Making mud

A couple weekends ago we went with Iassito (the president of the organization AJUDEMU who will manage the library) and Shek (the English professor who will be the manager of the library) to learn how to make some mud bricks. 

The process is relatively simple.  First, they take the proper type of dirt, mixing it with a little water to make mud.  (They carry the water over in buckets from an underground well about 100 yards away.)  

Carrying the mud over

Next, two boys use a blanket to bring the mud inside the mosque where the bricks are being formed.  (The mosque is just a big open brick building which serves to protect the bricks if it rains. I guess we are going to have some special blessed bricks!)  

Me making bricks

Then, you pack the mud into a wooden frame which forms two bricks at a time.  Once filled with mud, you use a little water to smooth out the mud on the top and then remove the wooden frame.  Lifting up the frame without destroying the bricks is the hardest part, but it should kind of just slide up with a little force.  And that’s it!  Now you have successfully made two mud bricks!  Just repeat about 3000 times! After sitting out to dry completely, they will then put all the bricks in a big outdoor brick oven to burn them for about 2-3 days.

Shek makes bricks while an audience watches

Do  you have any idea where bricks come from in America?  I just told them we buy them from a store, Home Depot. Ha, something to think about…

Our brick makers include a group of two older guys and five or six boys.  I’m sure they loved watching the two American girls playing in the mud, laughing at us, of course, throughout the process.  Hopefully we didn’t slow down their work too much, but in a typical day they make about 550 bricks.  For our library, we estimate needing about 5,000 bricks.  If all continues to go well, we should be able to start the building construction in late April/early May! 

This has been an idea I’ve had for a long time now, and it’s so exciting to see it actually starting to happen!  We still have a lot of work ahead before we can open and offer books to the community, but little by little, it’s becoming a reality.

550 bricks!