Visiting the First, Freed Families, from the Rossan Brick Yard.

The first day in Pakistan, my pastor friends, Shokaut Gill and his wife Rihanna, took me to visit Gulshan and her two girls. They are living in a small room in a city in Kasur. Gulshan now has a part time job working on shoes. It had to be hard, being a mom and not getting aid, abandoned by a husband who fled the brick yard two years ago, leaving her and the girls. We’re going to get them a big fan ASAP. We prayed with her and encouraged her. We brought them icecream.

Gulshan had a quota of 400-500 bricks a day. the Brick master made her work, even when she had fractured her foot. She’s working in this video taken just before Pastor Rihanna, told her of our plan to pay her debt. Her bandaged foot can be seen in the video.

We visited the Anwar family, His wife Sugra, had succumb to the heat and had to be hospitalized their last days in the brick yard. The young people had to continue making bricks, while Anwar was with his wife at the hospital. He had an initial loan for $400, that 11 years, and 700-1000 bricks a day later, had never been lessened. Rather, it had more than tripled to $1,300. There is exorbitant interest, that bonded laborers in subjection to powerful Brick Masters never get to ever about know or question.

Rauhul and his sisters, Ruvina, and Sbrihya working during the days, their mother was hospitalized with heat stroke.

We met with the Shazahd Family. All five daughters were born in the brick yard. Two hundred and fifty US dollars had been borrowed from the brick master for their wedding, and a thousand bricks and 15 years later, instead of a debt that should have long been paid down, by the thousands of dollars of bricks produced. their debt increased THREE FOLD. I asked him if he would have borrowed from a brick master if he had it all to do over again. He put his hands to his head and said never, that he repented every say his family was stick there. His wife said there were days that they all went hungry. The only food that they got to eat 99% of the time was flatbed, cooked without any oil and days OLD, vegetables. Shulzan works part time for a trucking firm now, and they have a low rent home with much more space than the 14 by 14 ft hut, built into the brick yard wall, that they lived in for 15 years.

A clip of the Shahzad Family, when they worked in hundred degree plus heat, 12 hours a day, 6 1/2 days a week. The oldest daughter is mixing and shoveling the water/dirt, clay, onto a wheel barrel. The second oldest is smoothing out the working areas ahead of her mom and dad. A total of four girls and a baby were subject to the cruel labor bondage that technically is not legal in Pakistan, and where the law is never enforced.