This weekend while visiting the Mekong Delta, we had a chance to tour a large warehouse of brick kilns and a huge pottery workshop. After learning about the labor that goes into making these bricks, all of the expenses and how small the profits are, I became very interested in how it is possible for people in this industry to make a living.
The process of making bricks is very costly, and takes well over a month. A full kiln of bricks takes 30 days to fire, and sells for less than 1 million dong, or around $50 USD. Much of that money made from the sale of the bricks is used to purchase the clay and other materials that are used to make the bricks. To fire the kiln, hundreds of pounds of ‘rice husks’ are used as fuel, which is also quite costly. Many of the people who work in the warehouse are young men, whole families, and children who’s families cannot afford to send them to school. Our tourguide told us that in most places people have started making bricks in a much more modern, cost effective way, but that in the Mekong Delta the Brick makers are still using this method from hundreds of years ago, even though nobody is making much money off of all of the hard work that goes into it.