Blessed are the brickmakers

Today we drove from the rainforest back to Tanna for our flight to Joburg. Our guide made us leave early because he said he was worried about the traffic in Tanna. On the last two occasions we had been there I hadn't really noticed any traffic but as usual he was completely right. The route we took across the rice fields crawled. Still it gave us an opportunity to see another slice of the city.

While the primary production of Madagascar would be rice, the second most common sight we saw was brick making. It would seem that many people have turned their rice fields into brick pits. It is all done manually with the bricks being moulded and left out to try in the field and then picked up can carried a distance to these "kilns". If you look you can see what appears to be a young boy carrying about 12 bricks on his head. The adults (men and women) carry more. The bricks are stacked and then the "kiln" filled with saw dust and other bits, lit and the bricks are cooked. After a few days (I presume) they then appear to "unpack" the kiln. The bricks are then stacked by the road and conveyed by bullock cart to wherever they are going.

Apparently it is more profitable than rice but I wonder whether they will have a market for all the bricks I saw being made.