Northern Tannery

Out here on 150 Feet Road in Jajmau, you can always tell where Northern Tannery is. The whole area is full of leather work, and we are right in the middle of it. It’s a messy, heavy kind of job working with hides all day. The floors are usually wet, and there is that strong smell that never really leaves your clothes, no matter how much you wash them. We’ve got big vats and machines for processing the skins, and it gets pretty loud when everything is running at full speed. We don't have a front office with air conditioning or anything like that. Most of the time, we are just out on the floor making sure the tanning process is going right. It’s a lot of physical labor, lifting and moving heavy stacks of leather. Jajmau is a tough place to work sometimes because of the heat, but the people here know their trade. We’ve been doing this for years, and we just focus on getting the leather ready for the people who make shoes and bags. It’s not a clean job, and your hands get stained, but it’s honest work. We take breaks when we can and try to keep the machines from breaking down too often. When the sun goes down, we lock up the gates and head home, ready to do the same thing again the next morning. It’s just how life is at the tannery, day after day, working with the same group of people.