Filling Up

Filling Up, originally uploaded by More Altitude.

A teenage girl fills up water pots in Kan-Karen-Kacha, central Niger.

This girl will fill up a lot of the pots lined up around to the right, then walk each one individually home on her head. The well from which she drew the water is about 50m deep, and she pulled the water up by hand using a small plastic bladder at the end of a rope. It takes several draws to fill up one of the pans she is pouring from. This will take several hours of her day, and she will do this every day until she has daughters of her own old enough to take care of this for her.

Niger ranks highest in the world for the proliferation of child labour. A recent Economist article observed that 60% of children between 5 and 15 are, according to technical definitions, engaged in child labour.

Photo by Tris, Niamey - NIGER.