River Workers

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Reminders of how lucky we are to have nice desk jobs!! We stopped on the outskirts of Jodphure to chat to some of the ladies working on one of the government projects in the river. They were all digging out the silt in the river with large hoesand carrying it somewhere…not sure whether to make something with it or just to deepen the river. The soil went very quickly to clay underneath, so its possible they were using this to make their water jars. As you can see from the pix, there were hundreds of ladies, all in their beautiful saris, doing the work with two male supervisors. (There were more groups further along the river.) Apparently the government funds these projects for the wives in the poorly educated villages. They were lovely to chat too and had a great laugh at my ability to hoe and (not) carry the earth in a basket on my head (although I did ok till the hip wiggle sent everything flying. All captured on video, including the hoeing but as yet not the software to upload). Took the photos back to them as well

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Photos

Workers posing
Married women in the villages generally are all supposed to cover their faces. However, many of them were happy for me to photograph them

Hoeing the riverbed
In their beautiful saris!!
PS The hoes are very strong and heavy - a lot more robust than our garden implements! (i can vouch for that as I had a go myself) MYSELF9

The river workers (all ladies)
Group photo

Shy ladies
Notice the one with one eye peeping out - but she still wanted her photo taken.

The bosses
They wanted their photos too

More ladies
Everyone stopped work and crowded around for photos

More ladies
As mentioned there were hundreds in several different work groups

And more
Some with serious expressions, but they were all very excited and happy..especially when we came back and gave them the prints the next day