One of our pumps, built during the last project, was not correctly fixed with some kind of anchors in the sand. It still provides clean water, but is now uncomfortably low for usage. The lady however was still glad to have it, as carrying water cans is impossible for her.
Markus, her feet are astonishing. I can only think the toes—which appear to be almost prehensile—are the result of a life spent barefoot. So probably the way our feet were evolved to develop through life. Makes westerner’s shoe-constrained feet look almost like the awful foot-binding fetish/protocol of ancient China.
Carl, you could be right: When looking at the image in The Purpose Of The Work, you see (albeit unsharp) the same shape of the toes.
I just did a superficial check of the images of my last trip, where quite a number of feet are in the pictures, however I could not see another occurence of such a form of the toes. The reason might be, that these ladies were among the eldest, and, the others were from semi-urban environments where at least flip-flops are common even among the poor people. It would be interesting to get ask maybe an ethnologist or anthropologist if there are other (nutrition, ostheoporosis) possible reasons for this form of the toes.
Love how you’ve framed this. A whole story…being told!
Thx, Marcie. It happens rarely that you can condense so much into such a small number of visual elements.