Littledrummergirl1

Brick by brick...

Of course The build was an integral part or our stay in the village, and our team worked with the masons, family members and local HFH Zambia Affiliate staff and volunteers on two different houses starting from the ground up!

The ‘BEFORE’ pictures…Michael's house, & Barbara's, right

Michael & Ennie’s home within a 5 minutes walk away and Barbera & Irad’s home within 35 minute of where we stayed. Both families currently share 1-room dwellings with their large families, made of clay with a thatch roof which often leaks and needs constant repair.

Annie explained how her current home is much too small for her and her husband Michael and their five children.

Irad showed me the portion of her current home, where the roof has gaping holes which constantly falls apart and allows rain into their sleeping area (below).

Both women (and their families) inspired me with their resilience in harsh circumstances and their unrelenting hope for the future. They were very excited to move into new three room brick houses with sheet-metal roofs which will keep them dry in the fast-approaching rainy season.

The children were also delighted at having a new dry home with their own room (to share with siblings of course), separate from their parents and with more space to be ‘kids’.
Above - with two of Michael & Ennie’s children, daughter Juite and son John, both awesome kids who reminded me of my own neices & nephews.

Rising at the crack of dawn to the sound of the overly eager Rooster (who was more of a Coo-coo clock than a morning alarm), we often began work by 7:a.m. and wrapped up the day by 8:p.m., taking a long lunch break in the worst heat of the day around 12:p.m. Being near the equator meant we lost our daylight early, so in addition to having no artificial light it made sense to utilize the day appropriately.

Our work consisted of various tasks, some of which are pictured below:

Breaking up and shoveling sand out of ditches (finding several frogs along the way!).

Mixing sand with cement & water (the latter sometimes had to be rolled in by barrels from the well 300 meters away).

A seemingly never-ending task that was my least favorite! :)

Laying mortar and hand-made bricks, one by one. The bricks were created from clay by the families before we arrived and baked in a home-made kiln.

Creating many hand-to-hand assembly lines to transport the piles of bricks from the kiln.

Taking bricks from the kiln (above)

Treating wood (below) with a mixture of old
engine oil and an ingredient used in
tar for the ceiling frames.

Pouring cement into 'molds' made from the empty cement bags between bricks (below). These were left to dry overnight and used for lintels above the window frames.