How to Make a Brick

First, get a bucket and a rope and haul up a bunch of water from the
well. The water is about 30 feet down. Dump the water into a basin until
it is full. Then put the basin of water on your head, walk over to where
you want to dig dirt, and dump the water on the ground. Bricks are made
in dry season when the dirt is very hard, so the water will help to
soften the ground.

Barefoot, so you don't ruin your cheap plastic shoes, dig with a hoe or
pick or shovel any dirt that is soft enough to move and pile it in a
heap. Continue until you have a large hole with a large pile of mud
beside it. Mix in some straw with the mud.

Now, take your wooden form for two bricks at a time, lay it on the
ground, and fill each side with mud. Level the mud with your hands and
fingers. Then lift up the form to leave two rectangular piles of wet mud
to harden in the sun for a few days. Continue the process over and over
again until you have rows of mud bricks drying in the sun.

After the bricks have sunbaked for a few days, look for a scrap of metal
- a broken knife, a piece of a hoe, a scrap of an old motorbike,
anything to scrape with, and chip off the rough edges and the mud that
oozed out beneath the form when you were forming the brick.

Now it is time to make a pile to fire the bricks. Arrange the bricks in
layers in the shape of a square or rectangle maybe 10 feet across. Every
third layer, shuffle the bricks so that there are empty spaces between
the bricks. These spaces are for the charcoal. Continue making layers
1-2-3, 1-2-3, 1-2-3, ... until the bricks are used up. Layers 1 and 2
leave small holes to fill with charcoal so that the fire will travel up
the stack and find the layer 3s. Layer 3, leave lots of spaces all over
and fill with charcoal which will burn and heat up the stack.

Once the stack is all built, it looks like a square pyramid. Now coat it
with a layer of wet mud all around to seal in the smoke and heat.

At night, so you don't bake in the sun, light a fire with sticks at the
bottom of the stack. As the fire follows the charcoal strategically
placed all through the stack, it eventually heats the whole stack until
it glows on the inside.

After a few days the bricks are cool enough to remove and use.

What a lot of work! Each brick sells for about $0.08. Transport via
oxcart to where you want it is about $0.02 per brick.