Brick moulders sink with Gaborone Dam
Kagiso Onkatswitse | Thursday August 27, 2015 16:53
An air of sorrow now surrounds the Gaborone dam brick moulders.
The sand around them has turned soft like powder products, due to severe soil erosion, a stark contrast from yesteryears fruitful years of brick making.
Today, however, the production areas, which used to emit the smell of wet soil, now smell of dust. The brick burning chambers, which were nearly always clothed in smoke, are clearly visible. In the past, the dense smoke from the chambers indicated the burning of bricks to harden them.
Everyone in the area is busy in the nearby bushes searching for areas to dig for water. Some have located a river that used to flow from the dam, whenever it overflowed.
The brick moulders stomp deep in the reeds and find a pond along the old riverbed.
They decide to dig a small trench, which will channel water to an area from where it can be easily fetched.
Dolly Dikgole, 57, shares her frustrations over the water shortage.
“We spent a week trying to look for water in our operating area.
“The business could be doing well, but we have no water and no support from government. Batswana who use our bricks to build had begun to know us, unlike before, but there is no water to meet the market demand,” she says.
For 62-year-old Shimane Sekhu, the dryness of the dam means no business.
“Our dam is dead. This dam used to support us through continuous flows in our ponds. Now the streams have all dried up.
Our brick production has now turned into a water searching expedition. As you can see, we are now searching for water instead of making bricks,” he says. A visibly worried, Phalalo Olefile, 51, cannot stop counting her losses.
When business was good, Olefile recalls making up to 2,500 bricks a day. That number has now shrunk to only 500, due to the water shortage.
“Brick making is the only thing I have done all my life. This is my means of survival. Our target has literally dwindled down to almost nothing, because we spend more time looking for water sources,” she says.