The pot-holed lane to my house is paved with litter and on each side, mud brick shacks with happy children and chattering women. There is a small shack near to the brick-making ground and when I go to see the brick-making there is always a few shy children peeping at me from underneath the door curtain. Sometimes I give them a balloon but I’m not sure that isn’t going to turn them into beggars.
Recently there has been a group of 3 or 4 men, on of whom is constantly up to his thighs in mud. They are making bricks and I have been watching with interest, the stages of construction. The man in the mud, has been in the mud for about 3 days. One day he was joined by another man, but generally it is just him and several men looking on and chatting to him.
I have become quite friendly with them, stopping to chat each time I pass. I ask them about the process and they ask me to buy them soda. It’s pretty irritating, having people ask you to buy them things buy anyway, I politely decline and turn talk back to the process.
It takes 3 or 4 days of digging like this before the clay is ready to be shaped into bricks. Firstly it has to be dried a bit by beig piled into a massive heap and then covered with straw. Fingers crossed it doesn’t rain.
Then the shaping takes place using a twin brick shaping wooden cast. Each brick sells for about 10p and so there is a terrific amount of manually labour involved in making a really small amount of cash.
God only knows how many hours the wiry man has been hacking at the earth, turning over the mud, adding water and turning again. He looks so thin – not an ounce of fat on him and he smiles every day and greets me cheerfully as I pass. The others tease him but I don’t understand Luganda so I don’t know what they are saying.. I can probably guess though!