{"id":1114,"date":"2015-06-18T16:17:51","date_gmt":"2015-06-18T13:17:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/andriusmazeika.com\/?post_type=portfolio&p=1114"},"modified":"2025-04-29T11:22:36","modified_gmt":"2025-04-29T08:22:36","slug":"blood-bricks","status":"publish","type":"portfolio","link":"https:\/\/andriusmazeika.com\/en\/portfolio\/blood-bricks\/","title":{"rendered":"Blood bricks"},"content":{"rendered":"

Most of us are used to the notion of work as a place we go to. A place we spend a fixed amount of time, some of it \u2013 working. Hours safely under our belts, on a time-card and\u00a0erased from our lives we get out and start, well, living. Imagine now being not\u00a0at\u00a0work, but\u00a0inside\u00a0it. Imagine breathing it, tasting it in your mouth,\u00a0having it cover your skin and burning your eyes. Imagine being surrounded by your work day and night, imagine rolling in your bed and bumping your head hard against it. Imagine your whole immediate\u00a0landscape made of it. Your garden. Imagine your children living inside it with you. Imagine them playing with it instead of toys.<\/em><\/p>\n

For the brick kiln workers in the Kathmandu valley of Nepal, this is the daily reality. Bricks and dust. Houses made of stacked up bricks, the very houses surrounded by more bricks\u2014wet bricks, dry bricks, fired bricks, broken bricks. Bricks fencing off one neighbour from another. Bricks lined in patterns. Stacks of bricks on their backs and stacked high on top of their heads. Bricks as toys in the hands of their children. In between, around and on the bricks \u2013 fine dust. Covering their clothes, faces, gritting between their teeth, watering their eyes, garnishing their daily dal bhat<\/em>\u00a0(traditional Nepalese rice\u00a0meal).<\/p>\n

I photographed the brick kiln workers\u00a0on the last day of\u00a0my second visit to Nepal. I arrived there looking for a project to shoot, to create a purpose in my own life. The year prior, I spent travelling in South East Asia and then in Nepal. I fell in love with the country and vowed to return. The return happened earlier than I expected and I found myself rather unprepared for it. I was broke, jobless and the initial honey-moon\u00a0romance with the country was long\u00a0gone. Reality hit me hard. I even\u00a0ended up spending a night in Nepali police custody for a motorbike accident (which is a story on its own). I was lost, confused and, at times, very much depressed.<\/p>\n

Shooting the brick kiln was like taking an elevator down deep underground. And yet, it lifted me up and out of my gloom.\u00a0I\u00a0watched the indefatigable women carrying\u00a0twenty-eight bricks\u2014that\u2019s 70 kgs!\u2014on their backs, cooking meals, washing the pots and plates in a nearby dirty trickle of a stream. Up close,\u00a0I\u00a0looked at the penetrating, dust-covered\u00a0faces of the children.<\/p>\n

Later on, looking at the photos on my laptop screen, I pondered the eternal question that kept many a\u00a0painter and\u00a0photographer awake at night:\u00a0what is it that makes a face?<\/strong>\u00a0How is it that the faces of these children speak more about life, radiate more inner\u00a0strength and wisdom than those of an average elderly middle-class white citizen from the \u201cfirst\u201d world? Could it be that by making our lives comfortable and secure we make them dull and\u00a0predictable? As in Oscar Wilder\u2019s \u2018Dorian Gray\u2019, I believe\u00a0the ultimate goal in life\u00a0is to make your own face. When it\u2019s time to call it a game I want to have the last good look at my face and see\u00a0life\u00a0written all over it. Engraved in wrinkles, scars, sagging skin,\u00a0missing teeth and\u00a0grey hair. All signs that I\u2019d lived.\u00a0The adults and the children in the brick kiln\u00a0seem to have achieved this already. But, at what cost?<\/p>\n

Cost is rather complicated to calculate. Whereas price is not. An average worker in this kiln makes 1,000 rupees per week (around\u00a010\u00a0US\u00a0dollars). Irrespective of the distance,\u00a0for (un)loading 1,000\u00a0bricks, workers receive $2.5.\u00a0A single, unfired brick weighs\u00a02.5\u00a0kg, after firing \u2013\u00a01.45\u00a0kg. That\u2019s $2.5\u00a0for\u00a01450\u20132,500 kgs carried on human shoulders. More often than not workers are female.<\/p>\n

The kiln employs workers from the underprivileged Gandharba caste. Every caste in Nepal usually has a corresponding trade \u2013 shopkeepers, fighters, priests, etc. Gandharbas were the travelling musicians and carriers of gossip and news. Due to recent changes in modern Nepalese society, the demand for traditional Gandharba services is low. Some make ends meet by playing their traditional Sarangi instruments on the streets of Thamel, the tourist quarter of Kathmandu. Others are forced to look for alternative ways to survive, such as working in brick kilns or other low-paid jobs.<\/p>\n

Out of around 250 Gandharba\u00a0people working in the brick kiln \u2013 around 40 \u2013 are children. The youngest employee on the payroll is 12 \u2013 five years younger than the legal requirement. In total, the brick kiln industry employs\u00a028,000 children across Nepal.<\/p>\n

Needless to say, the workers suffer from various work-related health problems. Respiratory issues, headaches, problems with their eyes. Only the supervisors wear cloth masks.\u00a0After spending only a few hours shooting, my own camera had to be taken in for cleaning and\u00a0servicing. Some workers spend up to 7 seasons working and living in these conditions.<\/p>\n

With the\u00a0Kathmandu valley population growing at 4% annual rate<\/a>\u2014one of the fastest growing metropolitan areas in South Asia\u2014construction is the third largest sector of the economy. The workers are attracted and subsequently trapped with a system of financial incentives \u2013 helping their families survive the monsoon months. The system ensures that the same workers are coming back to work season-in-season-out. The result is modern day slavery which has already earned itself a chilling name \u2013 blood bricks<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Following the devastation of the 25th of April, 2015\u00a0earthquake that flattened many brick and mortar buildings,\u00a0Nepal needs to find a\u00a0more sustainable way to meet the growing\u00a0demand for housing in the rapidly urbanizing areas. Increased international pressure could\u00a0act as the much needed catalyst for change.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Most of us are used to the notion of work as a place we go to. A place we spend a fixed amount of time, some of it \u2013 working. Hours safely under our belts, on a time-card and\u00a0erased from our lives we get out and start, well, living. Imagine now being not\u00a0at\u00a0work, but\u00a0inside\u00a0it. Imagine breathing it, tasting it in your mouth,\u00a0having it cover your skin and burning your eyes. Imagine being surrounded by your work day and night, imagine rolling in your bed and bumping your head hard against it. Imagine your whole immediate\u00a0landscape made of it. Your garden. Imagine your children living inside it with you. Imagine them playing with it instead of toys.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1097,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"portfolio_category":[44],"class_list":["post-1114","portfolio","type-portfolio","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","portfolio_category-personal"],"yoast_head":"\nBlood bricks | Andrius Ma\u017eeika<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"A photo story about the Gandharba caste brick kiln workers of the Kathmandu valley.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/andriusmazeika.com\/en\/portfolio\/blood-bricks\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta 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