I had to change the washers in my shower taps today and it got me thinking about how we take household running water for granted.

Back in 1982 I stayed in Morocco for about three or four months and one of the things that I really hated doing was getting water from wells. Many of the places I stayed didn’t have running water. Because Morocco is quite a dry place most of the wells are very deep, and it takes quite a bit of effort to haul up a bucket (about 4 L or a gallon) of water  50 m (about 150 feet). I never saw a well in Morocco with a windlass and the water in a bucket on the end of a slimy rope had to be pulled up by hand.

The people in Morocco wipe their backsides with their left hand (no paper) and one has to use both hands to pull up a rope. You can’t drink un-boiled water from the wells for the reason that they are all contaminated with E.coli.

In the town of Tarrazout where I stayed for about a month and a half it was always such a drag to go and get water, because there was only one well, and there would always be plenty of other people in front of you. It was usually women that had to haul the water and to me, it seemed to be quite a social event for them. Everybody would take their time just yakking away with each other, and quite often it would take me about an hour or two just to fetch one jerry can (25 L) of water.

What made matters worse in Tarrazout was that the village idiot used to turn up with a donkey, loaded with very big barrels and spent about an hour or two filling them up. Every time he turned up at the well all the women’s eyes used to roll.  They couldn’t stand him and you could tell it wasn’t because he was retarded.  It was because they had waited so long on so many occasions in the past, while he filled up his barrels.

I took the picture above when I was travelling between Tarrazout and Goulimine. The women were pulling up water from a well out in the middle of nowhere.  I couldn’t see any buildings nearby, they must have walked for miles and a very hot wind was blowing.