Surprise! A Pile of Bricks!

Written in March, 2013:

Hi Sponsors,

Well, I woke up to another surprise from Uganda this week, and this time it was a big pile of bricks:

• Drag

• Drag

Seven thousand bricks, to be exact. They made my day. Every time I thought about those bricks, I had to smile. Now you may may wonder, like my eighteen-year-old daughter, why I should be so excited about a pile of bricks halfway around the world.

Well, first of all, it was just the surprise of it. The letter started like this: "Mum, always I love surprising you. The surprise is I and Mr. Kisembo 
have prepared and already burnt some 7,000 bricks with our own little 
resources..."

But even more is that those bricks represent the promise of a dream that Tonny and I talked about last summer, that someday SOVCO can build a small school so that the children can get a better and more personalized education right there in their community.

• Drag

Tonny and his adopted father, Ojok Kisembo have a vision for their community, in which almost half of the children have lost at least one parent. Kisembo has a special concern for needy children. He adopted Tonny after he was abandoned as a toddler. He was cutting little Tonny's hair one day when the rebel soldiers came and took Kisembo and his wife away. Tonny ran into the tall grass that surrounds the house and hid until an old lady came along. He told her that Kisembo and his wife had been taken, and she cared for him until Kisembo escaped from the rebel group and came back.

After that, the family left the community for several years. But they love their ancestral village, and finally returned to help with its rebuilding. Kisembo is on SOVCO's board of directors, and has donated time, land, and other resources to help his son build an organization that addresses the needs of their people. He is a tall, practical farmer in his fifties, and he and Tonny together made this wonderful pile of bricks on a piece of land donated by Kisembo's mother's (and this is Hamis's grandmother's) daughter-in-law, who is also the aunt of Komagum Paska (that's the kind of community it is). And someday we hope those bricks will become a school!

I found a short video clip online that shows how bricks are made in rural northern Uganda. I sent it to Tonny, and he said, "yes that is very method we use to make the bricks. We don't have any machine but we use a local method like that method you have attached herein in this email for me to see, that is it." So if you would like to see that video, click here.

We don't know when this school will be built. To begin, we need another 10,000 bricks, and to finish, it will need roofing materials and finishing materials, of course., and then furniture. We will start small and dream big. Maybe next year during brick-making season, they will make more bricks. Maybe I will begin to look for grants for this type of project. If you know of a foundation or individual that might be interested in building a school in Uganda, please let me know. And keep this project in your prayers!