Harvesting the Earth: The Chigumula Stone Chippers
Along a busy
stretch of the highway leading to the Thyolo Tea Estates from Limbe, huge piles
of crushed stones line the roadside. Teams of men sit among the piles tapping
away at large pieces of stone. These are the stone chippers of Chigumula. They
are tireless manual labourers who literally chip out a livelihood from the
boulders of their valley. The process is staggering to Western eyes. It 
involves:
burning tires below overhanging boulders to create fissures in the rock;
smashing at these fissures with full-size sledgehammers until giant sections of
rock fall to the ground; again smashing these smaller sections into manageable
giant pieces that can be carried 100 metres uphill to the roadside; cracking
these pieces into smaller rocks with medium-sized sledgehammers; then sorting
these and breaking the pieces into 1 or 2 inch gravel with a small mallet;
shoveling this gravel into piles; and waiting for lorries to haul it away. All
by hand. The chippers work in teams and they do this everyday, with no shade and
no shelter from the rain. They are literally farming the rock for use in gravel
foundations for residences and shops in town. The photographs below show one
team of stone-chippers (led by Simon) working in the dry season in Chigumula.
