Sunday, July 19, 2009

Children of the Laborers




They are rebuilding the drainage ditch outside the wall of our house, which is also the edge of the Neeti Bagh gated community. It has involved weeks of manual labor, digging sewage out of the old ditch, and then hauling that away and bringing in cart loads of bricks and sand for the mistries (brick layers) to build new brick walls to line the new channel. There are 3 driveways, including ours with newly laid marble slabs that have to be transversed (not a word apparently but it's what I mean~!). Two have been torn out - that is hammered into small pieces by two men with 20 pound sledge hammers. Ours is not yet done - can't imagine what the landlord will say when their brand new, costly driveway ramp is destroyed... But this is what the laborer's children did the afternoon that it rained on the driveway ...
The children are here every day - some days sleeping on the driveway, some days playing in the sand piles - they are pictured above. One of the women workers stops and breast feeds the baby. Two boys on their way home from school wanted their pictures taken too so here they are for all the world to see.

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