It is the first day of school in Chad, Africa. Children are filling the road.

"Will they give us a notebook?" Thomas asks.

"Will they give us a pencil?"

"Will I learn to read?"

But when he and the other children arrive at the schoolyard, they find no classroom, no desks. Just a teacher. "We will build our school," she says. "This is our first lesson."

James Rumford, who lived in Chad as a Peace Corps volunteer, fills these pages with the vibrant colors of Africa and the spare words of a poet to show how important learning is in a country where only a few children are able to go to school.