Water Women

In Maasai culture, most of the labor-intensive jobs are done by women. On top of the normal womanly tasks of cleaning, cooking, and caring for children, they must carry all the water the household needs. Girls are started young, maybe 3-4 years old, carrying 2-5 liters in jerrycans tied to a rope worn across their forehead. As the girls get older, the cans get bigger until they carry 2 20 Liter jerrycans at a time. That's about 90 pounds of water pressing into your forehead which they carry from anywhere between half a kilometer to 5 or even 10 kilometers. Every night we see the girls and women carrying their water home for dinner. They have nowhere to store water, so even if they could carry more at a time, it wouldn't help them. Some families have small dams near their houses but they tend to dry up quickly in the sun. This is just one of the reasons why we need to come up with ways to increase access to water, like sand dams!