Building. A simple necessary basic fact of life. An event which is part of the rhythm of life here. And a trade that I previously had no interest in whatsoever. However, the mud splattered faces and the continually appearing piles of bricks appealed to me. How do you create a solid classroom from the mud beneath your feet and with no machines other than our fingers? Interested, I joined in each step of brick making and theoretically learnt how to build a house.

I won't describe the process, as I fear it will make boring reading, but very basically there are 4 stages of brick making: 1. Initial shaping of the mud into 3D rectangles, 2. Drying the bricks. 3. Throwing them from pile to pile in a human chain, and 4. The burning- a process when a big pile of dried bricks with 3 tunnel fires at the bottom, burn at about 2000 degrees celcius for 48 hours, stoked, fed and entrances opened and cealed depending on heat. After a cooling period of 4 daays, the bricks are ready to use. It takes a few weeks from beginning to end, but granted you have firewood and mud, it is a completely free process. If you are hiring workers and buying wood, it costs 100 quid, 4 times less than if you bought those bricks.

The initial process of slapping mud into a wooden triangle "stencil" on a stand and transferring it to the ground for drying is hard work. I made 138 bricks in 3 hours, which I was pretty pleased with (despite being 2 or 3 times slower than Godfrey, my friend and teacher) but I was aching for 3 days afterwards.

Throwing bricks in rather entertaining. An enjoyable rhythm and an ancredibly satisfying thing to see bricks glide along the human chain and then fly up 2 meters to the man on top of the burning pile. It is also made fun with constant chatter from my dear friend (and personal guide of Ruhanga) Os, and Henry's drunken 10am jokes and banter. Hours go by surprisingly quick.

The best bit though, has to be the burning. Equipped with my ukelele, local spirit in an old Fanta bottle, debate subjects and a bed made of tarpaulin on dried grass, me and Michael (fellow volunteer) joined Os and co for a night under the stars. Getting logs in those tunnels requires strength and a lack of heat sensors, but the heat it works up certainly keeps you cosy. I admit we did not wake every 2 hours to feed the fire, but waking up to the sunrise, fire and Poli attempting ukelele is a rather nice way to start a day.

The building process is all done by hand. String instead of a spirit level, hands instead of machines and wooden scaffolding. The only thing bought is cement mixer, the rest is completely natural, sustainable and biodegradable. Building is more about accuracy than brute strength, but the satisfaction is still there when your building (yes, I now feel like I have claim to the P6 and P7 classrooms) shoots up 2 meters in a day.

Making bricks is hard work. For someone not used to it, I would go to bed aching all over and with cuts decorating my hands and arms, but the constant crowd of kids watching the Mzungu woman doing an African man's job and the disbelief on their faces when they exclaim in surprise that the "Mzungu lays well" is pricelss.

It feels so good to create a space for education purely out of our hard work and the floor. It is simple satisfying work and the way a building suddenly appears feels like magic. I love being part of that and I'm not going to deny the trimphant air punch my inner stubborn child gives when I'm nicknames "The Mzungu who makes bricks". Yes, dear Ugandan men, white girls can do it too!

On that rather self satisfied smug note, I will confess I have fallen in love with brick throwing and wish you all a very happy Christmas!