Things are… different than I’m used to. Right now, Maranatha is in the process of procuring bricks for the construction of a new dormitory for the primary school students at the central school in Mizigo. Maranatha is the only school in the region to take in orphaned children, and they have been boarding them in converted classroom space for the last 8 years or so. Now, through the fundraising efforts of a nonprofit organization named KidsUganda based in Lake Bluff, Il, they are able to build a new structure to provide better sleeping quarters for the girls and convert the old sleeping quarters back into much needed classroom space (Maranatha’s classrooms are busting at the seams due to their highly-demanded niche of serving orphaned children).
120,000 bricks are needed for construction. When I got here, I thought, ok, the contractor will easily be able to procure them and have them delivered to the construction site in a few loads, from a factory in Kampala. Well, there is no factory. Instead, the market is dominated by many individual producers who cut, dry, and fire their own bricks. And contractors here are really more like foremen or labor managers – they are not responsible for procurement. So, Maranatha needs to procure and deliver their own bricks.
So this is how it works: each morning, Patrick calls up what I consider to be his “utility man” – a guy named William, who is employed by Patrick and utilizes their flatbed truck. William has a list of contacts for everything Patrick might need – bricks, corn, tin sheets, you name it. He calls around and finds out who is selling bricks today, and he’ll hear that someone 30 miles away has 10,000, or someone 10 miles away has 6,000. Then he goes to them and loads 2200 at a time into the truck. He can make between 2 and 4 runs a day, with two associates that help him load and unload. So, it has taken two weeks to deliver 70,000 bricks to the site. By the time all the bricks arrive, William will have made at least 50 brick runs, and Maranatha will have paid oodles in transportation and labor costs. Doing so is better than paying an arm and a leg for the contractor to do it, and then you have to worry about questionable quality.
Above: a man fires bricks outside his house along the road to Kampala.
Below: What a pile of 70,000 bricks looks like.
Video: William emptying the contents of the truck.
Great stuff Dan. Through your posts, we get a real sense of what life is like for orphaned children and those working to help them. Nice pics and video too!
Looks like you are going to need bit of Johnny’s class stuff also in solving these supply chain bottlenecks…let me know, if you need the copy of ‘The Goal ‘ couriered to you…:-))
I’ll keep visiting your blog to see that people are making some ‘real’ difference.
This is such a great tangible example of the things we take for granted here in the US and hte difficulties emerging markets face. Great stuff- more pictures of kids!!
Great updates. Hope you are doing well.
I agree with Adrienne on what we take for granted and a need for more pictures!
I think those kids will be much safer from the wolf in the brick school than they were in the school made of straw and the school made of sticks. Good work.