Madagascar’s Brickmakers
Artisans perfect the ancient art of making bricks
Brickmaking season in Madagascar’s Central Highlands runs from April through October and is impossible to miss. The capital city’s riverbanks and dikes showcase mazes of whimsically stacked bricks drying in the sun and brick kilns burning for days. The added pollution from brickmaking, sadly, is also impossible to miss.
While most of the world gave up making bricks by hand by the late 1800s, it remains in Madagascar an artisanal tradecraft that provides much needed income for populations with limited access to resources. Over seventy five percent of Madagascar’s population lives below the extreme poverty line and the average Malagasy person is forty two percent poorer today than they were fifty years ago. Making bricks can earn its maker a modest income, which often comes just as harvested rice supplies are depleted. Brickmaking is one of many jobs in Madagascar’s informal sector, which makes up eighty five percent of its economy.
Once rice has been harvested from the fields, the red earth left behind is used as raw material to create the bricks. The tools used to make bricks are simple, but the work itself can be tedious and monotonous. Shovels and spades help with digging up the hard earth, while simple wood forms are used to shape the mud bricks, which are then set out to be dried by the sun for up to a week.
Once dry, the bricks must be fired in a kiln. Building a brick kiln can take days, depending on its size, and an average kiln is made up of 10,000 bricks. There are countless kiln shapes and families in the brick business pass on their knowledge from generation to generation on how to build the ideal kiln.
One thing all brickmakers seem equally skilled at is the art of brick tossing.
Whether it’s building up the kiln or tossing fired bricks into a pirogue for transport, Malagasy brickmakers can toss — and catch — bricks with their eyes closed. Each finished brick earns its maker 1.5 U.S. cents, and it’s critical that as many bricks as possible make it to buyers, so it’s no wonder bricks are rarely dropped.
Rice hulls and grass are often used as fuel to start and keep the brick kiln burning. Knowing the correct temperature at which to fire the bricks is key — too much heat and the bricks will be ruined but too little and they can’t be used. Locally made rum is often used to get the flames going, with some brickmakers using this as an offering to ancestors as a way to ensure a good firing.
Tending to a burning kiln is a full-time job — day and night. Some brick kilns will burn for two weeks, and maintaining the proper temperature demands frequent quality control checks.
Once the bricks have been fired, they are transported by boat, for a small fee, to a nearby river depot. Hand-drawn carts, and occasionally trucks, then take the bricks from there to the final buyers. No small number of people have handled the bricks by the time they reach their destination and each brickmaking micro-enterprise is profitable for all those involved. Millions of bricks change hands each season in and around the city of Antananarivo alone.
In a country where the largest currency bill is valued at $6, the money brickmakers earn from a season of making bricks is significant and often is enough to ensure their families can eat and have basic necessities. Many countries have moved on from making bricks by hand, but artisanal brickmaking continues to be profitable and just one of many Malagasy trades that show no sign of going away anytime soon.
