India, Brick By Brick

Every building in India - with the exception of big, poured-concrete structures - is built with bricks. And those bricks are made by hand, out in the country, by families who own a little piece of land and have access to clay. They form the bricks by hand, lay them out to dry, stack them in a pyramid and build a fire underneath them for curing. No factories, just hard labor.

A brick pyramid. The holes at the bottom are for the fires.

The family stacking bricks.

Who does a lot of the work? The kids, of course.