Bricks and Charcoal
I would never have guessed the two most common commodities in much of the world are bricks and charcoal. Country after country has shown some aspect of the bricks and charcoal manufacture, market and use. If you are thinking of a baked, red brick sold at Home Depot and a square of Kingsford… those are proper and a little too removed from the real things. Charcoal in the world of Latin America, Africa and Middle East is wood sticks and chunks that have been cooked in a kiln. I am really not sure what that stuff is sold in USA, but I only hope it is pure cooked wood compressed into convenient bite-size cubes. I wish I had a chunk of it so I could show an African and get a good laugh. Bricks are rarely red unless the clay is red and even then it isn’t the hue of USA bricks. They also never come in the size that is so common in America. Bricks and charcoal have a commonality in that charcoal is often used to bake the bricks and the bricks can be used to make the charcoal. I can’t travel a hundred kilometers anywhere in the countries outside of America and Europe without running into a pile of fresh bricks and/or a large bag of charcoal for sale next to the road.
I was in Tanzania when I first asked about the large bags (50-100 kilo flour bags for instance) that are filled to the absolute top and then covered with palm leaf or some other thatching and often with newspaper in between. Bill was my driver and he pulled over to inspect a site. There was a pyramid of the bags near the road and two men manning a kiln a few meters beyond. They had dug a pit, filled it with wood and covered it with clay after lighting a fire. The wood smolders and cooks until it is light and thoroughly blackened. Although there are more sophisticated methods for larger scale such as using a brick kiln (I can only imagine what Kingsford does), I think the basic idea is always employed. Bill purchased a bag that would last his family a month. I believe he paid $8 or 10 as far out of Dar es Salam as we travled which was a bargain compared to the $15 closer to the city and $25 that it costs in Dar.
Charcoal is used by most homes in much of the world. It can provide the fire for cooking and other needs. Since the cities have fewer areas from which the needed wood can be collected, most of the charcoal manufacture takes place out in the countryside. Given the steep increase in price as you get closer to the bulk of homes and away from the trees, there is always a thriving shipping system for the charcoal. Not only do you have it being transported to market by trucks, but you also have it strapped onto the roof of many vehicles including the shared taxis or matatus or collectivos. Want to take a good gift to a city dweller in Kampala? Take them a bag of charcoal.
The bags are piled everywhere. You pull up and take one. Thinking American, I was perplexed by how anyone knows what the price is and where is the money left. But of course, I was forgetting that in the real world, someone is always home or the neighboring hut will be happy to complete the transaction for the absent owner. The large bags described are the most common, but there are a lot of options for purchase depending on where you are. The most variety seems to be in the old markets. Smaller bags, weaved baskets and even by the piece are available in many places. The poorer the location, the more likely the charcoal will be offered by the piece. I wonder what the $8 bag goes for by the piece in Dar?
Charcoal is horrific on two accounts. It is devastating to the surrounding forest and it causes tremendous amounts of air pollution. I was in areas of Ethiopia (famous for its loss of forest) where charcoal is forbidden due to loss of forest (I saw acacia bushes, no trees) and air pollution. Being that it was Ethiopia, illegal charcoal was being sold along the highway by people headed back to the very polluted Addis Ababa. The forests around most of the cities are either gone or under serious attack, one stick at a time. The movement of people through forests emerging with piles of sticks each morning is phenomenal. If they at least have some sustainability in mind, the main tree is left standing without any limbs so that it can grow limbs back for a future harvest. Nice idea, but the forest is then seriously damaged, ugly and I bet this isn’t even sustainable especially in countries like Yemen which are popping out kids at a rate of seven per mother. I have woken up in Kampala in upper floors of the Sheraton gasping because my room is full of smoke from the early morning burning of charcoal throughout the city when its seven hills are not very visible. At least Uganda has the rainfall to support a lot of woodburning whereas Ethiopia, Yemen, northern Cameroon and the Andes do not. By far the saddest sight I have seen with charcoal is a pile of bags along a beautiful road in Madagascar and all of the hills beyond the charcoal are stripped bare with large scars in the soil caused by erosion. Another unforgettable site was at a market in
On a different, but related subject… I have been meaning to write about eucalyptus. It appears to me that this is the tree of the tropical world. I know eucalyptus from the scourge that it is in California. It was planted there from Australia for firewood needs a century or so ago. It’s a great firewood. So great that when an area of it catches on fire, it goes poof like Oakland’s hills did. It also uses a resin or oil to kill everything else living around it. What I did not realize is that it had also been planted around the world and is a curse and a savior in most places. Environmentally, it is unfortunate that native plants have been replaced by it, but at the same time it is keeping erosion in check. I think it is also a problem for water usage. Economically, it is a wonder for all of the wood it can produce and therefore the amount of charcoal production it can sustain. It certainly has to be a part of more people’s lives than any other wood with uses extending way beyond just charcoal. For instance, people grow perfect poles for home construction by topping eucalyptus trees less than a meter above the ground so that it will grow a straight new trunk that is regularly harvested. When I see eucalyptus trees I know I am usually in a marginal area for plant life (natural or man-made) and people are getting a lot of use out of these treees.
Bricks are much more impressive than grimy charcoal. Rather than ending in a wisp of smoke, they end up standing in walls or buildings “forever”. I have been fascinated with the brick business since I first saw it probably only minutes after landing in Africa although I really don’t remember the first encounter. I’m sure the first recognition that something big was going on was when I started wondering why there were so many piles of mud and stacks of bricks along the roads. The clay is often covered with leaves so it took a while to connect the piles of leaves as piles of clay as precursor to the bricks. I’m also sure this finally fell together for me upon seeing men making bricks from the clay.
The basic brick making technique requires someone to fill a mold (made out of wood pieces) with soggy mud, pat it into the mold, remove the excess, remove the mold and let the brick dry. The local techniques all vary to some degree probably based on tradition and available material. The soggy mud may or may not contain other material such as straw. The molds are of different sizes from large cinder-block-like to flattened squares. The most typical molds make two bricks at a time. Many places employ just the sun to dry the bricks while the rest use a charcoal-fired kiln. Another mystery for me was why the bricks were stacked into large cube or box-shaped structures. They seemed neat enough way to store the bricks, but why was everyone doing it. I think it took until Madagascar to finally see in the gigantic dug fields around Tana where the brick production is tremendous what this was all about. People figured out that you can build the needed kiln for drying the bricks best by building that kiln out of the very bricks that you want to dry. So they build the structure leaving an empty core for the charcoal and then light the charcoal creating a gigantic oven. I wonder if anyone cooks in these ovens.
Yemen is the most amazing brick place I have visited. Most of the country is built from mud. But the Yemeni just don’t build hut-like structures like so many of the other countries. Rather they build huge structures including towns with 30 meter “sky-scrapers of the desert” and the world’s largest mud hotel (name escapes me – it was very nice). Best of all in Yemen was the intricate detailing of the mud bricks in the building walls and the use of plaster for protection. I saw many, many places in Yemen where the buildings appeared to just rise out of the ground because they are exactly the same color as the ground from which the mud was extracted. It’s one thing to see this on a small scale such as in northern Cameroon, but a totally different experience on Yemen’s scale. In Yemen the mud is usually a dull light brown which does not make for the prettiest of wall colors, but with the intricate windows and other features and the white plaster trim, Yemen’s mud structures are some of the best architecture in the world. Good enough to be the main attraction to that country for me and I was not disappointed. In fact, it was better than any pictures led me to believe.
In Yemen, I stopped at one brick making site where five men were doing the work. One man mixed the mud, another handled the mold and the other three filled, moved and dumped the wheelbarrow loads. Being that Yemen is hot and dry, the Yemeni air dry their bricks and they are ready to be used in about one week. These men made about 1000 bricks per day that are sold for about US$0.20 each so they produce US$200.00 per day or about US$40.00 each. I’m sure they only make a fraction of that for their labor so someone with a small piece of land is making pretty good income for their bricks.
It will be interesting to see brick and charcoal production in Asia. I am sure they are doing it, too. In Madagascar, after removing the clay they use those areas to grow rice. I have a suspicion I will see the same in Asia. I can only imagine the brick production in China as well as the amount of charcoal they are burning. Actually, I can’t imagine the scale of anything in China. After seeing so much shoddy brick construction around the world, I have not been amazed by all the buildings that feel down in China’s earthquake. If there is an earthquake near Cairo, that whole city will collapse because that was the worst brick construction I have ever seen. The Egyptians keep adding floors to their buildings so there are 7-8 story buildings all over Cairo and Gaza and most of them are leaning when built – LITERALLY… LEANING.
Tags: World
vagabondrick
I was fascinated by your descriptions of bricks, coal, etc. The coal reminded me of my Berlin days in the 70s. I had to haul over 100 pounds of coal a week to our second story apartments, business office, childrens center and senior center. There was no central heating (gas or electric) in our neighborhood – just the ceramic coal burning units in each room – each of which had a coal bin. The nice part was only the room being used were really heated, the others kept cool by using only one or two lumps at a time. Of course the rich, hotels, downtown store, and American bases had the modern gas central heating – but no one in our neighborhood – and there was no delivery service there either. Well, this was certainly a trip down memory lane for me as I read this entry.