We take for granted things, such as reliable electricity, cable, TV, reliable phone service, sanitary system to dispose of our human waste, and even such basic things as running water. But these things are not as reliable in other countries, nor are they as easy to maintain.
When I was in a remote area of India, I witness how difficult it was to obtain heat for cooking and also to obtain something as basic as water. These things that we take as a given is not a given in many parts of the world.
In the remote areas of India that I visited, most of the cooking of food is done on open fires. Quite rare, in fact, I don't even remember seeing an electric stove. But much of the cooking is done outside on an open fire made with wood. You can see the devastation of the forest because wood is used in many things there, including building materials. I can imagine it has become quite a chore to find something as simple as cooking fuel for the food.
But the one thing that struck me more than anything else in the remote areas of India was witnessing a well being dug for water supply. Now in the USA most people are used to being on city water. You just turn on your faucet and it's there. And in many cases, if not most cases, it's drinkable water. We don't even have to think about it and we don't have to maintain it. It's nearly 100% reliable, as long as we are able to pay that monthly bill.
In places where city water is not available, such as where I live, we rely upon a well. But it's quite rare that we are the people who dig the well. We pay somebody who has the proper machinery to dig us a deep well so we can have reliable water. Again, as long as we have the money to pay them, or simply added to the payments of our mortgage If it's a new house, we can have a safe and reliable supply of water.
In the remote areas of India, there is no city water. The water comes from dug wells. But the digging of wells is a manual process. It's actually often performed by young teenage boys. They are lowered into the well and they dig out the well manually.
No, I did not witness the digging of a well, but I was told it as I interviewed some of the workers that I saw, putting the casing in. Below are some pictures I took of the men as they were lowering the concrete casing down into the well. This has to be extremely grueling work. I don't expect their backs can hold out long doing stuff like this.
I can't speak to the quality of the water that they get from these dug wells, but I can assure you that I never drank the local water. Everything I drank, was from bottles that I bought at the marketplace. Knowing that the hygiene in this area of the world is not up to the standard which I'm accustomed, I was always quite concerned about the human waste, and how it infiltrates the ground there.
This is a different life in these remote areas of the world. The pay is extremely low with these boys digging the well probably only making a dollar or two per day. I think most people would be quite shocked if they ever visited these remote areas of the world to see how things are done.
I actually have quite a shocking post that I will put out one day on things that happen in this area of the world.
Again I say we are so fortunate to have resources to take care of our needs. When there is a disruption of electricity water or anything that we take for granted people are upset. Ice storms water breaks these are things that disrupt our lives but only for a short time. We are lucky people