Congolese Construction - Brick Walls

There are three kinds of bricks here in Goma. There are the lava rock
bricks that people make using hammers - 12 bricks a day yields a worker
50 dollars a month here at Maji. Then there are the concrete bricks
which are never made using enough cement and so some of them can just be
rubbed away with your fingers, and others you actually have to try a bit
harder or use a finger nail. Not exactly what I'd want to build a
prison out of for sure. Then there are the red clay bricks that are all
shipped in to Goma (because we don't have any clay - just lava). It is
these bricks that we will discuss today.

The new house at Maji is being built with a combination of bricks, but
the red bricks make up a lot of it. When they build the walls the
bricks are too far apart with lots of mortar in between the bricks.
Also because the bricks are not made very well, handled poorly, and just
poor quality in general, the edges are always chipped, usually more
round than an edge, and there are often dents and cracks on the brick
face as well. It doesn't look too bad from a distance, but it's not
what most people would choose to have their living room walls made
with. Joe is no different; even though the walls in the living room and
bedroom both are made of these bricks, it's not good enough.

So begins the process. First the workers take the broken bricks and
brick pieces and collect them from all over the site. Then they smash
them with a hammer until they are small enough to fit in the mortar and
pestles they use here. You guessed it, then they grind them in the
mortar and pestle until they are a fine powder. To make sure they are
fine enough they rub the powder through a screen. They then have the
colorant for the walls. They mix this with a little bit of cement and
they fix the walls.

I'm not talking about patching up the cracks on the faces of the bricks,
or even finishing some of the edges so they are actually edges. They
redo the whole wall. They bring the whole wall our a half inch or so as
they make a new brick over each previous brick. Using trowels they make
the face flat and smooth and then using trowels again they make the
edges sharp. They do each brick. It's painstaking work and I asked the
guy how much he did in a day and he highlighted an area of wall about
two and a half feet square. That's all that guy is going to be doing
for weeks!

There is one section of wall that is more gray than others and it was
the first section, so I think they added too much cement to the mix to
cover up the red from the bricks. Also I don't know what they are going
to do for mortar because now there is a good inch and a half depth from
the brick face to the existing mortar and it doesn't look very good.
I'm sure they will do something with that later. I also noticed on the
second wall they started on, they ignored the under layer of bricks
completely and are just spacing the new bricks where there is a good gap
and making the rows completely straight, which makes it look a lot
better, but then why did they use the red bricks on the wall in the
first place? Kind of crazy, but I must admit the end product does look
pretty nice.