Bricks, Water, and Sticks

Today was quite the day.

I woke up when I heard my community members unloading a pickup truck full of brick outside my bedroom window. I was supposed to be with them, but I had put my ear plugs in and failed to hear the poor attempts to wake me up. I was up now, and there was still much work to be done, so no one seemed to hold my extra 45 minutes of sleep against me.

We were gathering bricks to build a summer hut in our garden. A summer hut is the Africa equivalent of a gazebo, and they are a fairly common place for gathering to meet, discuss, or simply relax out of the sun for a bit. We needed 3000 bricks in all, and so we made numerous trips to a nearby village to pick up the bricks, which we were actually purchasing from Vicki, one of our cooks. We loaded each brick by hand into the back of a pickup truck and hauled the bricks back to our house where we unloaded them, and stacked them up. We made it through without too many injuries: one smashed and bloody finger on Molly, a gashed and swollen ankle on Emily, and all kinds of little shards of what seemed to be fiberglass in my still-all-too-American-sensitive hands; apparently, there is a tree right next to the brick pile we were pulling from that has leaves that drop the little fiberglass dust particles. We finished by lunchtime, and since we were still without water, we decided to make a trip to the bore-hole after lunch.

Matt, Molly, Sarah, and Emily all went to the bore-hole, while Kat and I took the school car to transport food to the hospital for the Headmaster’s daughter (she broke her arm earlier this week). Both trips returned around the same time, and so we spent a few more hours unloading the water from the giant 1000 L container, which we borrowed from the school.


Then, a few of us took on the task of debarking the Blue Gum branches that will provide the frame for the roof of our summer hut. The process of debarking them is grunting and tedious work, but I found a good bit of pleasure in it, and found satisfaction in the five big sticks I was able to debark.

Now, at the end of the day, we’re all worn out, sweaty, dirty, and exhausted. But at the same time, I think this day was one of the best days for our community thus far. All of these tiring and grueling jobs brought us together as a team in a way that we haven’t done yet; and I can already see how it has brought us closer together in spirit.

Who knew some bricks, water, and sticks could do just the trick?