I walked out of my woodworking shop one afternoon after classes, and found a woman sitting on the walkway, waiting for me. She stood up immediately, and greeted me.

Norma: Mkhulu, I wish to speak with you.

Mkhulu was siSwati for Grandfather. Though I felt young at 40 years old, in Swaziland, by the time a man was 40, he was likely already a grandfather many times over. People who did not know my name yet, greeted me as mkhulu all the time. It was a sign of respect too. The woman looked familiar.

Me: Yes, mother, what can I do for you?

Norma: I am Norma. I used to have a peacecorps, Reese, and I met you at his going away party. But he went home, and I need a new peacecorps to help me with building my kitchen.

Teachers and other adults I had met would say something like, “Yes, I had a peacecorps at my school when I was in high school.” One word, peacecorps. That was what we were, a peacecorps.

Me: Yes, Norma, I remember you. You have the homestead where Reese lived while he was here. What is this about a kitchen?

Norma: I have been wanting to build a kitchen for some years, on my homestead. Reese made me a block mold, and I have been making bricks. Now I just need someone to help me build it.

I had heard this kind of thing many times in the 2 years I had been in-country, and mostly, what it meant was, “come and plan, and buy materials, and build a kitchen for me while I sit and watch you.” I already had several secondary projects going on in my community, aside from teaching every day, and was not really interested in taking anything like that on. But I remember Norma as being very humble and hospitable at Reeses going away party, so I thought I would check it out, and give her the benefit of the doubt. Norma was the house cleaner for two or three Peace Corps volunteer teachers in nearby Nhlangano, and so, was accustomed to Americans.

Me: Ok, Norma, let me come out to your homestead on saturday, and look things over.

Norma: Oh, thank you Mkhulu, I will be so pleased to have your visit.

So, saturday morning I caught the southbound bus at my school, and headed for Nhlangano. It was a full bus by the time it got to my school, so the only sitting space was in the very back seat, the worst place to ride. Lots of dust blowing in, and the back, behind the wheels, goes up and down the most. I bobbed up and down for about an hour, and was looking out the back window when the bus hit a large pothole, and all of a sudden, one of the goats someone had tied on top came loose and plummeted down into the road behind us, with its feet still tied. Everybody in back hollered Stop! Stop! Stop! And the bus driver slammed on the brakes, and the conductor hopped off the bus and ran back, and picked up the goat. He ran back to the bus, and did a freethrow with it, like a basketball, and shot it back on top, and away we went again. Poor goat. Eventually after a 3 hour bus ride, I got to the bus stop nearest Normas, and got off. It would be about a 30 minute walk across the bushveld to get to the homestead.

When I got to her homestead, where she lived alone, she sat me right down and fed me and gave me some orange squash to drink, Africa’s version of kool aid. We talked about pleasantries, and after I finished eating, she gestured to me.

Norma: Come over here, Mkhulu, in this house, (a rondavel about 12 feet in diameter with a grass roof) I have stored the materials we will need for the kitchen.

She unlocked the door, and opened it about a third of the way, and squeezed inside. I squoze in behind her, and looked around, and my jaw hit the ground. She was indeed ready to build her kitchen. Up to just above my waist height there must have been 2000 dry mud bricks stacked all over the floor. She showed me her block mold, a 3″ by 8″ square frame of 1×4’s, for making one brick at a time. And leaning across the bricks was a stack of 10 sheets of 12′ corrugated tin. And about 20- 12′ saplings of about 4 inches in diameter that she had cut from the forest, all branches trimmed off them, to be used as rafters. In one corner, a dozen 100 lb sacks of portland cement, wrapped in plastic to keep them dry. A big box of roof nails. A dozen 12′- 1×4 boards. Two small windows. One big plank door with hinges and frame. It was like a Sears kit for a mud brick house, ready to build. I was completely stunned.

She brought me back outside, and around behind another hut was a large pile of sand, and standing by the sand, two 55 gallon drums full of water.

What was truly amazing, was that from her small money from cleaning volunteers houses, she had bought the tin, nails, and cement, and 1×4’s, and the windows and door, and had gotten them from town out to this remote homestead. Not only that, but the saplings had come from the forest across on the other side of the valley below her house, a 20 minute hike down to the tiny river, and 20 minutes back up the other side to the forest. She had cut and trimmed and hauled them herself. The sand had come from the riverbank below, one 5 gallon bucket at a time. The water from the river, one 5 gallon bucket at a time. 22 trips of 20 minutes down and 20 minutes back up for the water. God knows how many trips for the pile of sand. I was just flabbergasted. All she truly needed was somebody to build the kitchen. I was amazed at how much labor she had already put into having a kitchen.

We went over and sat in the shade under her only tree. She told me how long she had been gathering things to make her kitchen. In another hut, the one where she slept, she had a cast iron woodstove that some Belgian volunteers she had worked for 4 years ago had bought for her. Complete with duct pipes for the smoke. It was going in the kitchen for cooking. She went in to her house, and came back with a coolish beer, which she opened and gave to me.

Norma: Mkhulu, I have worked hard to be ready. Reese helped me plan how to be ready, and the day he left, he told me about you, and suggested that I come and ask you for help. I know that you don’t know me, but will you help me build my kitchen?

Well, hell yes. How could I say no? My mother would rise up out of her grave and call down lightning from on high, if I turned this woman down.

Me: Yes, Norma, I would like to help you build your kitchen. I would like to put up a poster in the Peace Corps lounge, asking for volunteers to come on weekends, and I will teach them how to build a kitchen, and they will help us build it. Will that be ok with you?

Norma: Yes, Mkhulu, that will be fine.

And so I did. I made a poster for sign up and taped it up in the PC lounge. Workshop in Construction With Native Materials! it proclaimed. I described what we would be doing, over a series of about 5 or 6 weekends. I thought about what space the 10 sheets of tin would cover, and drew up a rough plan with my scale ruler for the kitchen. I set a date for the first “workshop”. About 15 volunteers signed up. I was pretty psyched.

The day came, and I went to Normas on the early bus. When I got there, Norma took me over to the third hut, and opened the door. There was a large swaybacked bed, with clean sheets and a lumpy pillow, and a table inside. The height of luxury. I dropped my pack against the wall.

Norma: This will be your house for sleeping in while building the kitchen, and any other time that you wish to stay here, Mkhulu. This is where Reese lived.

Cool! 

By the last bus, there were 10 volunteers that had arrived, and they pitched their tents around the open space of the homestead, and we threw together a meal, and were sitting around a fire, swapping teacher tales and drinking beer. I explained what we would be doing the next day.

It was a true blessing that one of the volunteers, Rumi, had been an architect back stateside. The next morning, she taught me the 3 4 5 rule for making a square corner, and we laid out the plan for the footers for the walls. I got people digging the trench, and had others take buckets and gather small stones for the footer cement. Some wanted to know how to make mud bricks, so I put them with Norma, and had her teach them. By dark, we had mixed and poured the cement footers in the trenches, and smoothed them off. The brick makers had made about 40 bricks. The volunteers wanted to put their names in the wet cement, even though they would be covered by the brick walls. There was some very artistic name writing done.

The next morning the footers looked beautiful. Everybody ate breakfast, and we set a date for two weeks for the next session, and they packed up and headed back to their schools. Rich was the last one left, and we walked out to the road together.

Rich: Do you know how to lay brick, Sam?

Me: Not the vaguest idea, Rich. I have seen brick houses, and understand the principles, but never did it. You?

Rich: I have laid brick twice. As a helper for a day each time. Mostly I mixed mortar and hauled bricks up the scaffolding.

Me: Well, shit! That makes you the master. You are in charge of the bricklaying.

Rich: Oh great. The blind leading the blind. It might be a good idea to get our skills together before the next session in two weeks. What say I meet you here next friday and we get a jump on the bricklaying, and figure it out? You got a level?

Me: Yep. I have a 4 footer. And a roll of string. And I found two brick trowels laying around after they put the cement block addition on my school. Sounds like a good idea. See you next friday night.

The next weekend, Rich and I talked about bricklaying for an hour. Jobs I had seen from a distance, it seemed that you were supposed to start the corners first, so we mixed up a batch of mortar, and got started on one.

Let me just pause here and talk about some things. You make mud bricks by mixing dirt and water to the right consistency, and then you pack it into the little frame, and smooth off the top, and then kind of push with your palm on the mud while wiggling the brick mold up and off the brick, so it can sit there in the sun and dry. Sometimes with your handprint on top. One at a time. If you got the consistency of the mud too wet, the brick slumped when you removed the frame. So some bricks are flatter and thinner than others, some slump so that one end is not as thick as the other end. And some come out the full 3″ by 8″, and about 3 1/2 inches high. Some are kind of trapezoidal and lean to one side. Most are not square or equi-dimensional.

Another thing is cement. If you have ever seen a cement block or brick job, there are always random blobs of dried cement on the ground when they are done. If you have ever picked one up, you will know that cement does not stick to dirt. Not at all. Not even to dried mud bricks. So the two principles you have going for you on a mud brick wall are: gravity, always pulling straight down, and Newtons First Law of Motion, an object at rest, tends to remain at rest unless acted on by another force. But mostly gravity. That is why the walls needed to be perfectly plumb, straight up and down, so it stays erect.

Rich and I started laying a corner. The cement joints were wide and narrow, thick and thin, trying to make up for the uneven bricks, and make each course kind of level as it went. It was hard. We discovered the bricklayers mantra… “Aw hell, we will make up for it on the next course.” We said that every 10 minutes, after we put the level on top of what we had just laid. We said it so often that we would break into gales of laughter, which at first, kind of concerned Norma. But she got used to it. We drank beer in the hot sun, and laid bricks and laughed. It was a great saturday. By dark, we had three corners built, about 10 courses high. And we had surmounted the learning curve for mud brick construction. We were ready for the next session.

The next weekend only 6 volunteers showed up, and Rich and I taught them how to mix mortar with sand and portland cement and water, and how to lay bricks. Everybody got to do everything. It was a lot of fun. The group was intimate, and we worked slowly and carefully. Everybody had a good time. By nightfall we had the walls up to about 2 feet high, and the corners about a foot higher. I had set the door frame in place, and it looked very much like the beginning of a mud brick kitchen. I was pretty proud of us, and I think everybody else was too. Sunday morning we set a date for 3 weeks hence, and headed back to our schools.

The next weekend I was in town at the Peace Corps office, getting my mail, and working on the newsletter, and I changed the date on the poster for the next session.

The date came, and I went out to Normas Friday morning, and made a plan. Rumor had it that word was out what a fun time the first two sessions had been, and I was expecting more people. I wanted to be ready for them. 13 volunteers came this time, and on saturday I had people mixing mortar, laying bricks, making bricks, and going down the hill to the river to replace the water and sand that we had used up so far. By dark, everybody was real tired, but the 55 gallon drums were topped off, the sand was hauled, and we had the walls up to about 5 feet tall. I had set the two windows in the side walls, about 4 feet off the ground. There were another 60 bricks made. Norma was very happy.

The next session drew the biggest crowd yet, 16 people. The homestead was wall to wall tents. Saturday morning went the same as the previous week, and there were now people who knew how to mix mortar, and lay and make bricks, and to teach the newbys how. The camaraderie was great. By dark the walls were done, the rafters were tied into the courses of brick and ready for the sheetmetal. We hauled the very heavy cast iron stove into the kitchen and set it in the middle of the back wall.It was a masterpiece. It looked like a kitchen, the door and windows worked, everything was groovy.

That night we sat around the fire after a massive dinner, and I brought out my guitar and played and sang for and with them. We drank beer. Mary had sat on a pile of firewood next to the house by the fire, and when it got dark, the chickens flapped up on to the pile of wood by her, and were going to sleep. She brushed against one a couple times, eliciting a buck-buck-buck from it in complaint. Next song, she intentionally touched it in time with the music, like a chicken percussion. It was hilarious and everybody laughed.

Me: (singing) Well, Grandpa was a carpenter, buck buck buck,

He built houses, stores, and banks. buck buck buck,

Chain smoked camel cigarettes, buck buck buck,

And hammered nails in planks, buck buck buck.

It was a fitting end to a terrific day. Sunday everybody went back to their schools with smiles on their faces. Rich and I planned to come back next weekend, and nail the sheet metal roof on, and do any punch out necessary.

When we got there the next weekend, the kitchen was changed. During the week, Norma had gone out and gathered cow flops, and mixed them with water and portland cement, and smeared it over the walls like a sort of stucco. It would keep the occasional rain from eroding the mud bricks. It made the outside walls look very nice.

Rich and I sat and talked to Norma friday night. She told us that the witch doctor that lived across the valley had become jealous of her because of all the volunteers visiting on the weekends. Silly man. I had gone over to his place, and also to the Indvuna (chief) of the area before we even started, and invited both of them to come and participate, which was proper. They were the bigwigs of the area. But they had not taken me up on the invitation. Too bad for them. Jealousy was ubiquitous in Swaziland. I paid it no mind normally.

The next day Rich and I got the roof on, and the stove hooked up, and Norma cooked us dinner on it. She was beaming. Later, sitting by the fire outside, drinking a couple beers, Rich and I talked.

Rich: That is so chickenshitty of the Sangoma to have a jealous hissy fit.

Me: Yeah. He was kind of an asshole, real snooty, when I went to invite him to the sessions. Too highfalutin to dirty his hands. The Indvuna was nicer, but I could tell he wasn’t gonna come either. Too bad, so sad.

Rich: We need to do something to mess with the head of the Sangoma. They are all bullshitters anyway.

Me: Did you have something in mind, evil boy?

Rich: Well, sort of. Come with me.

He took me around back where the brick making had been going on, and turned on his flashlight. There, on the ground drying, was a head made from mud. It was a little bigger than a softball. The eye pits sank in deep. It had large lips and a hawk nose. It even had ears and a neck. It was a work of art.

Rich: I made this this afternoon. We should put it up high on the kitchen after it dries, sort of like a guarding spirit. The sangoma will shit himself.

It was true. It looked evil, like an Aztec shaman. I loved it. We made plans to mount it next weekend, after it dried.

Rich showed up friday with a can of black liquid rubber coating that he planned to paint on the head to protect it from rain. He was a metal shop teacher at his school, and had made a nice galvanized metal tray for the head to sit in, with a strap with holes to fasten the tray to the kitchen. I had found a torn piece of some kind of dried up animal skin that still had hair on it, and had brought it along thinking to somehow make a wig for the head. I had also brought two small pieces of polished rose quartz from my collection of polished rocks. And had made a brightly colored bead necklace to tie around the head’s neck. Rich coated the head with the black rubber, and we let it dry. Then a second coat, and I stuck the rose quartz pieces in the eye sockets, gluing them in with dot of black rubber. I shaved some hair off the hide, and we stuck it into the second coat of rubber on the top of the head, sticking up. We glued the head into the tray with more black rubber coating, and put the necklace around the base of the neck. I had 2 tiny beads from the necklace, and I glued them on to the bottom of the ears for earrings. It looked creepy and frowsy. Evil. Just perfect. We mounted it on the end of the kitchen at the top, its malevolent pink eyed gaze looking right across the valley at the sangomas house. Just absolutely perfect. We had a beer and toasted Fred (the head) to long life.

Norma had seen the mud head drying on the ground during the week we were gone, and confessed she was afraid to touch it. I assured her it was just a protective fetish we had made to keep her kitchen and her safe.

I went out to Normas one more weekend, just to visit and make sure everything was working ok on the kitchen, and brought her a cast off plastic flower wreath I had found, to hang on her kitchen door and add some color. As I was sitting in the shade with her, talking about life, a small boy came to the gate and asked to see me.

Me: Yes?

Small boy: Sir, the sangoma has asked that you come and see him.

Me: ok, let’s go.

And we walked down the hill and crossed the little river, and climbed up to where the sangomas house was, on the other side of the valley, near the forest. The boy showed me in, and I greeted the sangoma respectfully, trying to hide my smile, because I suspected this was going to be about the head.

And it was. He sniveled on for 15 minutes, whining about the head looking at his house, and how his family members were becoming sick because of the muti (magic) that the head was aiming at him. I looked innocently surprised at him, and assured him that it was just a protective fetish with white magic, to keep Norma safe, and had no power at all to make anybody sick. I apologized that he had taken it wrongly. Even after a hundred people over the last two years had felt moved to tell me that white people had no magic, they were always ready to believe differently. I told the sangoma that he should boil the river water before drinking it, and his family would not be sick.

I left and spent a peaceful weekend with Norma, and went back to my school, and heard no more about it.

It never fails to amaze me what you can accomplish with a group of volunteers in a short amount of time.

Mud heads for peace.  

Good job Reese!