July 9, 2007
Baking bricks along the Blue Nile
We had been driving out of Khartoum for about an hour yesterday when the Blue Nile suddenly snaked in on the left hand side of the road.
The sun was rising over a line of smoking, rectangular structures, built right up against the bank of the swollen river.
They were the kilns of traditional brick-makers who cut their building blocks from the river mud, then stack them up on top of furnaces, cementing them in to keep in the heat.
It was a scene straight out of the Old Testament - remember the Hebrew slaves who baked bricks a few hundred miles up the same river in Egypt in the times of Moses.
The Old Testament reference was doubly appropriate because we were off to see a flood.
Here is the story:
Sudanese lament loss of homes as flood waters riseSENNAR, Sudan (Reuters) - Asad Ali Fadla was sitting down to dinner with his family when a wall of water swept down his street and smashed into his compound in Sennar town on the banks of the Blue Nile in southeastern Sudan.
And here are some more photo of the brick makers on Flickr.
The Blue Nile is the branch of the river that flows out of Ethiopia's Lake Tana.
Posted by aheavens at July 9, 2007 10:35 AM