Chimfunshi Village

Chimfunshi Village is where Chimfunshi employees and their families live. It's just a short walk from the visitors compound, and Innocent, the Chimfunshi manager, was happy to give us a tour.

Most of the villagers were engrossed in a brick-making project. The intent was to build a couple of new employee houses, which are made of mud bricks with thatched roofs. They make their own bricks out of mud and sand.

The normal process of making a brick involves digging and sifting dirt, mixing with water, molding each brick, then stacking the bricks into a small kiln. They stoke a fire inside to bake the brick walls. After a couple of weeks, they dismantle the kiln and use the bricks for building a house.

Good luck came their way recently when a local visitor saw their hard work and said, "My father has a brick-making business [in a nearby village]. I'm sure he would loan you a brick-making machine that would make this much easier."

For a week, the villagers had use of the borrowed machine, which molds a brick in under a minute. They still have to dig up the dirt and hand-sift it into a soft sand and mix with water and a little cement. But with the machine, the molding is instant, and no kiln is needed. The bricks just dry in the sun.

So for one week, the entire village was involved in the process of making as many bricks as they could while they had the machine. Old women, nursing mothers, young children... everybody who wanted their village to benefit from new housing found a way to help.

The process: A huge termite hill is broken down with pick axes, then the dirt is shoveled into wheelbarrows and brought to the sifters -- two people who bounce the dirt on a framed screen. The sifted dirt is then mixed with water and cement and poured into the brickmaker. Molded bricks are neatly stacked and covered with a plastic tarp. They will sit for a couple of weeks to thoroughly dry before being used.

Innocent also took us to the village, where just a few women and children were while others worked, and to his home, where he fed his chickens and played with his little dog, Tim.

The next morning, Innocent took us to the village school, a one-room classroom that was built by supporters of Chimfunshi. None of the students or the teacher spoke English, but Innocent translated for us, and we offered them a gift of Bananagrams. They enthusiastically went about creating a crossword of all their names.

There were only nine boys in the classroom, no girls. "Where are the girls?" Judith asked. Innocent looked chagrined as he explained, "We try, but it's hard to get them to come." There is still a prevalent notion, apparently, that only the boys are worth schooling.