For a few years, a rock interests more and more people in Nosy Komba, it is the granite. An activity around this rock has developed and it seems lucrative given the growing influx of many stonecutters, from the highlands, who have landed on the island. They break huge granite boulders in order to extract blocks for the construction of houses, walls, roads…
Some of these blocks are used for local construction, but every week, blocks leave the shores of Nosy Komba via dhows bound for Nosy Be or the mainland of Madagascar. These stone cutters use very modest techniques and have no modern equipment such as mechanized tools or explosives.
The principle of demolition is long and tedious: armed with a hammer and specials chisels, stonecutters make rows of holes well aligned, of equal distances, then with the help of a sledgehammer they break the rock. The biggest rocks are heated with a wood fire in order to split the block more easily. All around the island there are construction sites ranging from landscaping to quarries that produce thousands of blocks of granite.
