Limbani.

He was eleven when he counted a thousand bricks laid by him and got paid for a whole thousand for the first time. He counted them three times because he didn't believe the number. By the time they came to collect them he had fallen asleep in the grass, next to the line. His work is still measured the same way: per thousand bricks, piece rate, no contract and nothing signed. The bricks are counted on the ground, on the same drying line where they dried in the sun.

Before that there is a chain of steps that never changes. He digs the clay at night, throws it into the pit and puddles the clay with his bare feet until it comes out fine; he tips it into the wooden mould and leaves it on the line, in the sun, to firm up. When there are enough, he builds the kiln out of those same green bricks: walls, vault and stoke hole, all of it unfired mud. The firewood goes inside and the thing burns for days on end. When it cools, the kiln is taken apart, and what gets taken apart is what gets sold.