※ This video is part of <Extreme Jobs - Bangladesh Bricklayers 1-2> broadcast from November 21 to 22, 2011. Bangladesh is a country where stones are hard to find because most of the land is made up of sedimentary soil. Here, they make large bricks using mud and break the bricks into gravel to use as construction materials. Currently, Bangladesh has over 8,000 brick factories in and around the capital city of Dhaka, and there are over 20,000 brick factories nationwide. Many workers live and work in temporary buildings around the factories with their families. We visit a Bangladeshi brick factory to learn about the process of making bricks, the work environment of bricklayers, and their lives. ■ Thousands of chimneys around Dhaka constantly emit smoke. They are all brick factory chimneys. Smoke from the kilns where bricks are made rises into the sky of Dhaka. From November to April, which is the dry season in Bangladesh, people from all over Bangladesh gather in the capital Dhaka to work in brick factories. However, even if they carry 1,000 bricks on their heads all day, they only get paid about 1,000 won in our currency. They work for less than a dollar. ■ Bricks are brought into the kiln, and the workers wear wooden shoes and make full preparations. In order to fire the bricks, they have to climb up to the kiln and adjust the air holes themselves, but the temperature on the surface of the kiln is so high that their shoes melt. Since they are wearing hard wooden shoes, their feet are covered in scratches here and there. If they step wrong, they can even get burned on the kiln surface. Their feet are full of traces of glory. ■ Upstream, they are busy digging up dirt. The workers dig up the dirt themselves and transport it to boats. The price of mud per boat is 1,000 to 3,000 thousand dhaka. In our currency, it is about 5,000 to 40,000 won. However, the soil has an owner, so no one can just steal it. There are 24-hour caretakers on duty, but there are many boats that steal soil during shift changes. Laborers who cannot obtain soil have to go into the river and scrape dirt from the bottom of the river. ■ Soil is constantly coming into the workshop. The soil is piled up like a mountain, and laborers are mixing soil and water. The mixed soil is put into brick-shaped molds. People who sit on a wide sandy field and make bricks all day long, exposed to the wind from the sand. After several months or years, their skin is damaged by the wind from the sand, and they cannot avoid respiratory diseases caused by the acrid smoke. ■ Bricks baked in a kiln are drying in the sun. The completed bricks are carried on the workers’ heads. One brick weighs 2kg. Adults usually carry 10 at a time, but children carry 6 to 8 at a time because their arms cannot reach. The number of bricks and the number of round trips are money for them. If you keep moving bricks like this, deep wrinkles form on your forehead where the bricks are pressed down. Wrinkles are not a sign of age here. Even children, not to mention adults, have wrinkles on their foreheads like old people. ■ If men make bricks, women clean up the defective bricks. Women break the bricks one by one, holding hammers. Their hands, anxious between the stones and hammers, never rest for a day. Making bricks is hard and difficult. However, bricks are the only material for building houses in Bangladesh, and at the same time, they are a means for building their hopes. ✔ Program name: Extreme Jobs - Bangladesh Bricklayers Part 1-2 ✔ Broadcast date: 2011.12.21-22 #TVGollaDocumentary #GollaDocumentary #Documentary #Documentary #ExtremeJob #Production #Factory #MassProduction