February 7 Day 17
Today we travel by bus to the foothills of the Sierra Madre mountains. We will stop along the way to see craftsman at work. Our first stop is to learn more about the art of making bricks. This brick maker has no car. He rides his bike to work every day and makes $15 and works 4 am to 1 pm. It is just too hot after that to continue working at this job. The finished bricks cost 10 cents each. The bricks are made of the clay soil, water and manure, or sometimes straw. He has a pit very near to where he forms the brick where he gets the soil and mixes it with the water and manure. Then he has a very long handled shovel which he uses to lift one shovelful at a time into a handmade wheel borrow. The he literally runs back up to begin shaping the bricks. He has a form that shapes 4 bricks at a time. Once he has packed the soil into the form he slips it off and begins another. The bricks are left right where he made them to dry in the sun for 2 days. Then they are moved to another location to dry for another 3 days. After that time they are stacked so that air can circulate around in several rows, about 1000 bricks. As he layers these bricks he also makes a wall around them out of old bricks. Eventually this wall completely covers the stack of new bricks. This outer wall becomes the oven which will bake the bricks. He leaves a whole at one end to place wood to heat this oven. The bricks remain in this oven with a wood fire heating it for 30 hours. Then they are allowed to cool for a few hours and are ready to sell. He is required to make 700 bricks a day and this is a one man operation. He does not own the business, only an employee. All this for $15 a day. Wow.