daily tasks - going for water

As I had mentioned in one of my posts, people usually don’t have running water around here. All the drinking water, the bathing water, the water for washing clothes, doing the washing-up, watering plants, feeding animals, cooking, brushing ones teeth etc. has to be ardously brought from sometimes pretty distant wells or from rivers where it is being filled in 20 l cans and then carried home. Whenever walking or driving along a road one sees people lugging those heavy yellow cans to the wells or back home. Parents even send their kids to bring water, so they have to carry heavy cans even at young ages. The fortunate ones have bicycles to load a few cans on, so they don’t have to walk that many times. Riding these bikes is no fun, I tell you. They’re heavy and big and don’t have modern gears as our bikes do… plus they’re pretty uncomfortable and usually in a bad state but I’m somewhat biased as I’m used to ride modern, fully suspensioned mountain bikes or racing bicycles at home.

Depending on where the water was brought from (water from the river is not supposed to be used for drinking) and the purpose it needs to be boiled prior use. Boiling water on these local charcoal grills takes up to half an hour for  3 – 4 litres. Taken in consideration that one adult of my weight ought to drink approximately 1.5 – 2 litres when not doing any heavy work and that the local temperature is often up to 35 °C and a lot of people do have to do hard field work, the amount of drinking water per person can easily go up to 4-6 litres per person. Only to get and boil this amount of water one can spend several hours daily.

Now imagine, it’s 11:00 a.m., 34 °C, heavy sun, no clouds, you have been weeding hard since 07:00 a.m., you’re T-shirt is soaked in sweat and you’re super thirsty. You want to take a break and refresh yourself. As you lift the water can you realise that it’s empty! – No, there’s no drinking water left! And the charcoal grill is also cold and deserted… Now – before you can finally have a quite safely, refreshing gulp of drinking water - you’ll have to start making fire, then wait until the charcoal is ready, then boil some water (assumed that there is any water to be boiled left) and then wait until it cools down… Life can be pretty hard around here…

Wow, what a great place Switzerland is where one can just drink perfectly clean and refreshingly cold water from the tap!

wherever you go, you will find people carry yellow water cans to the next well or back home…

locals either get the water from rivers or wells

the fortunate ones may load a few cans on their bicycles and thus wouldn’t have to carry those heavy cans home


this is a typical local bike, very heavy, big, old fashioned, no lights, weak brakes, bad saddle, only one gear but with a solid carrier