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Braving the hardships of stone quarrying
A woman uses a hammer to break rocks into small stones at the quarry. Photos by Benard Kahwa
Hard knock life. With no protective gear to shield them from accidents that may even lead to death, people at the Nsangi-based stone quarry use local means to blast stones, an activity through which they earn a living as Benard Kahwa narrates.
Unless you have toured a stone quarry, you are likely to think working there is a simple job.
Owing to the nature of work some call the earnings ‘hard earned money’, and often associate it with masculinity.
This isn’t true either. When you tour the quarry, you will discover it is a job for both men and women, and even children.
Just about 2km off Mbarara-Masaka highway in Nsangi Sub-county, stands a stone quarry, where rocks are excavated and ruptured into small pieces for construction.
On arrival, you may doubt whether there is any quarrying taking place. It is a quiet place surrounded by few houses at a distance.
But getting close to the mine, you will realise it’s a beehive of activities; with some people extracting rocks from underground, others transporting it to the surface and others breaking them into smaller pieces.
Here, time is key because the more you extract or carry or blast, the more money you get. It’s survival for the fittest. Gender and age are not an issue. You will find men, women and children excavating rocks, carrying them from a 15ft ditch to the surface while others are breaking them with a small manual hammer.
This may sound a simple task, but what people use to excavate rocks from underground and to crack them into small building pieces is something unimaginable, at least in this era. They use a small flat metal, which they place under the seating rock, and then hit it with a big hammer.
Timing is crucial as well, because when one misses the head of the metal and hits the rock, the price can only be pain in their hands.
“Sometimes we hit our fingers with the hammers we use. It is a tiresome job. I plan to leave it and start a small business when I save enough money,” says Hanifah Namukwaya, a 35-year-old who has been breaking rocks at the quarry for three years.
Most of them do not go take lunch breaks. They come with packed food to take them through the day. When it becomes dark, they stop other activities and start gathering what they have been excavating or blasting into one place.
“We don’t have security because no thieves can steal our stones,’’ says Elvis Saadi, a 22-year- old who has been at this mine since 2010. “Some of our fellow quarrymen live near this place so thieves fear being caught.”
A daunting experience
Whereas quarrymen say working in an open ground exposes them to scorching sunshine, they hate rain more than sunshine.
In rainy seasons, the pit gets filled with water, and they have to wait for it to dry-out in order to resume with extraction. This water also weakens the steep walls of the quarry and sometimes rocks collapse on quarrymen and kill them.
The man-made cavernous pits with steep sides are threats to workmen’s lives themselves.
“Sometime back, our colleague who was in the pit extracting was hit by a rock and he died,” Saadi says, as he points to the steep edge of the quarry where the rock fell from. “This happens mainly during windy periods. “Several quarrymen get injuries as a result of falling rocks.”
Even though they have lost some of their colleagues who were hit by rock during extraction process, safety is not a big concern to them as none of them has any form of protective gear.
But how why the risk?
Edward Musisi, who has been working at the quarry for two years, says he sells a full lorry at Shs85,000.
He, however, explains that it can take him a week to gather stones that fill a lorry. “If you work alone, it will take you about a week to break stones that fill a lorry.
But if you work with friends you can fill it in two days,” he says.
Namukwaya, a mother of five, who buys rocks from extractors and breaks them into small pieces for construction says quarrying helps her to pay school fees for her children.
“As a single mother, I have to work hard to cater for my children,” she says, adding, “but sometimes lorry drivers take stones on credit and delay paying me. Yet it’s the only source of money I have.”
Extracting rocks and breaking them into smaller construction materials is a hard task. Save for the crude methods they use, scorching sunshine, or cold rains, and lack of protective gears. The risk of death is eminent as the steep sides of the pit have no time of falling.
The only time the risk crosses their mind is when their colleague is hit by the rock.
Workers at the quarry extract blast stones from the main rock. Specialisation enables quicker work.
About stone quarrying
Transportation. Before you see them doing it, you may think they have means like a lifter of transporting rocks from the 15ft ditch. But these women, men and children normally use their heads to carry basins of rocks to the surface. There are no clear paths nor is there a standard pay for people who carry rocks to the surface. It is negotiable depending on the heap of rocks one has carried.
Extraction. Rocks are dug from underground with the help of a hoe and a flat axe-like metal. The hoe is used to remove sand that covers rocks. This exposes rocks which are excavated using small flat axe- shaped metal, placed under the rock and then hit with a hammer. Rocks normally come out in relatively big sizes. While still in the pit, they are gathered into one place. They are later put into basins or cut-jericans and brought onto the surface. It is here at the surface where they are broken into smaller pieces using a manual hammer..
The process. The process basically takes three phases; extracting from underground, carrying to the surface and splitting into smaller pieces. There’s kind of specialisation. They are those who extract and carry to the surface and those who break them into smaller pieces. The ones who extract normally sell to the ones who blast. However, the price at which they sell depends on the heap of stones. This normally takes place between 6am and 8pm, from Monday to Sunday.
