Women & girls waiting to pull water from the river bed. Because of the high demand, the water often dries up periodically throughout the day, so people have to wait to pull water.
A young girl pulling water from the "traditional" wells in use before the cement well was built. This was the only source of potable water available at this time.
The traditional wells are dug in the river bed by hand, and water is pulled up in whatever containers can be found, such as old tin cans.
Banging the drum to round up the troops for a village meeting held (27 NOV) before the supplies were brought to village.
Much of the Peace Corps Partnership money went to buy these 90 bags of cement, to be used in the well construction.
The metal pieces will form the "frame" for the cement within the well moulds.
Discussing a point at the village meeting (3 DEC - Happy Birthday Dana!). There was heated debate of whether to scrape together the funds to pay six young men to do all of the digging, or to dig the holes in shifts by neighborhood. When it was determined there wasn't enough money to pay the men, it was decided to go ahead and dig by neighborhood.
At the village meeting. The village chief ("Amirou") sits in the wooden chair.
The women, as in most things, are shunted off to the side & more or less ignored. One of the highlights of the meeting was when one of the (male) religious leaders shamed the men for ignoning the women; the women all erupted in applause. The men then went on ignoring the women.
Digging Well 1 Day 1 (5 DEC): The site gets picked; time to sweep away the brush. The man front right is Issifi Sounou, the mason supervising the well construction.
Digging Well 1 Day 1: Measuring out the circumference of the hole (2m) so the well mould can fit comfortably inside.
Digging Well 1 Day 1: The village chief strikes the first blow.
Digging Well 1 Day 1: Tossing the soil out of the hole.
Digging Well 1 Day 1: While the wells get dug, everyone still must depend on the holes dug in the seasonal river bed. Many people are still harvesting crops out in the bush, where watering holes are scarce, so they bring cow carts and fill up jugs (such as the yellow ones on the ground) for a few days' worth of water. The well digging is still going on in the background.
Digging Well 1 Day 1: Well or no well, women have to get their work done. Women pull water in the foreground, and a woman sifts millet up on the river bank.
Digging Well 1 Day 1: The most common site at the well digging: one or two young men in the hole, with upwards of ten standing around, either waiting their turn or just chatting. You may or may not have noticed the complete division of the sexes here.
Digging Well 1 Day 2 (6 DEC): Granpo (L) and "El-Haji" Komé looking at the work done through day 2.
Digging Well 1 Day 2: Yours truly poses with a big hole in ground. How often will I get to do that in the future?
Digging Well 1 Day 3 (7 DEC): Pulling up the loose soil in metal buckets so those in the hole can dig deeper & deeper.
Digging Well 1 Day 3: A mini-assembly line keeps the work running smooth: two men in the hole, two men pulling up buckets, and two guys dumping the loose soil.
Digging Well 1 Day 3: Nothing keeps the troops in good spirits like green tea with lots & lots of sugar in it. That's why I bring some of it every day to the dig site.
Digging Well 1 Day 3: A view of the bottom of the hole.
Digging Well 1 Day 5 (10 DEC): Whatever work I end up doing in the future, the chances are slim a man on a camel will ever come trotting through my worksite. Niger's good for things like that :)
Digging Well 1 Day 5: Dropping the ladder into the hole so the workers can climb down.
Digging Well 1 Day 5: Easy does it! Climbing down into the well on what would prove to be the last day.
Digging Well 1 Day 5: Pulling up bucket after bucket of soil, hour after hour, is tiring work!
Digging Well 1 Day 5: Keeping the troops rallied. Note how the tea furnace is protected from wind so the charcoal lasts longer.
Digging Well 1 Day 5: Water! At last!
Digging Well 2 Day 1 (11 DEC): The second well site is selected.
Digging Well 2 Day 1: Saying a little prayer before the work begins.
Digging Well 2 Day 1: More praying.
Digging Well 2 Day 1: Look how parched that soil is! It won't get another drop of rain on it for six more months.
Digging Well 2 Day 1: A couple of kids hanging out in the hole after the first day of digging. They were subsequently chased away by a young man who thought they were using it as a latrine. Really, they were just curious what the heck the resident white guy was doing just standing in a hole in the ground ;)
Digging Well 2 Day 2 (12 DEC): This (dead) branch was determined to be a danger, as it could fall on the well in the event of a storm. Not determined such by any official body, of course, but by some of the men; there were also those who thought it posed no threat (such as myself). But you can't stop a determined man with an ax. (That ought to be a proverb!)
Digging Well 2 Day 2: Men standing around watching while one guy actually works.
Mould Well 1 Day 1: Assembling the metal frame, to be set inside the well mould.
Mould Well 1 Day 1: The well mason, Issifi, checks to make sure the well moulds fit together.
Mould Well 1 Day 1: What good are little children? When school's not in session, they're cheap labor! This boy applies old engine oil to the well mould; this oil will make it easier to remove the mould after the cement dries.
Mould Well 1 Day 1: An overview of the site as the moulds get prepped.
Mould Well 1 Day 1: It takes a village... to lower a well mould into a hole without killing the well mason waiting to place it just so at the bottom of the well.
Mould Well 1 Day 1: Slowly slowly, the well mould gets lowered.
Mould Well 1 Day 1: Issifi, the well mason, puts in the spacers that assure a more-or-less uniform width for the mould all the way around. The mould is of course fairly old and thus imperfect.
Digging Well 2 Day ?: Granpo, one of the more respected men in the village (as well as the son of the previous chief), holds some of the first water pulled from a puddle in the bottom of the second well, after they hit water.
Mould Well 1 Day 2: Issifi does most of the dirty work himself. It is he who guides the well moulds into their proper place while a crowd of men at the top lower it down.
Mould Well 1 Day 2: Cement is lowered into the hole half-bucket by half-bucket, then poured between the inner & outer moulds.
After 8 moulds have been placed in the "first" well.
This is the first woman I saw pulling water from the well. It's still pretty dirty--though no worse than the water in the seasonal river bed--but will clean up when more digging takes place.
On an off-day for well work, normal cold season work goes on as usual. Here a group of (mostly young) men are putting the roof on the traditional mud-brick house.
Mould Well 2 Day 1.5: The mason Issifi bends the metal rods that form the metal frame around which the cement is poured.
Mould Well 2 Day 1.5: The first mould dries. This day, it was still too wet to remove the moulds. The log puts pressure at the base of the mould, as this particular mould tends to bow out at the bottom. Also, the "Hellraiser" look inside the bottom of the mould is produced by individual pieces of metal, placed in the mould to create holes through which water can seep in from the sides after the well is complete.
Mould Well 2 Day 2: A dusty day for work. The men slowly congregate in the brisk morning weather as word gets around the village that the mason has come today.
Mould Well 2 Day 2: Sliding the well mould into the hole.
Mould Well 2 Day 2: The most common sight at the work site: the mason pouring cement in the mould, and everyone else who's not making the cement looking down at the work.
Mould Well 2 Day 2: The assembly line for the cement. It's mixed with shovels in the wheelbarrows, then dumped into the buckets, which are then lowered slowly by hand with ropes (not a treat on the hands with those ropes!).
Mould Well 2 Day 2: The cement is carried from this pile, where it was originally mixed earlier in the day with sand & rocks, to the wheelbarrows.
Mould Well 2: Pulling the mould off of the previous day's work is one of the first tasks of any new day constructing the well.
Mould Well 2: The well mason, Issifi, and his assistant, Dari, hammer the mould into place before the cement can begin to be mixed and poured into the mould.
Mould Well 2: It takes a fair amount of working it to get the mould a uniform width all the way around.
Man, things are really looking good! Psych! Actually, this is a photo of a village in the Dosso area of Niger affiliated with Plan. It's amazing what a real NGO with real money can do
The Revival: After leaving the village, and no work having been done on the well since January due to the combined absence of myself & the village chief, I went back in late April to try to motivate the village to get the work done before rainy season. Here, small boys are put to task to collect the sand to be used in the cement mixing.
Boys piling up sand to be used in the sand mixing.
With the wells dried out, villagers are still pulling water from traditional, hand-dug wells in the seasonal river bed or gardens. These girls are working while the young men have their evening soccer match.
Well 1 is nine meters deep. At the time of the photo, there was barely a puddle of water at the bottom, not enough to fill up a bucket. Well 2 (not pictured) is completely dry; it's being used to "store" the wood plank used in the construction.
