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Village well providing community water at Mai Chau
About this photograph
- Creator
- Margery H. Freeman
- Date created
- May 1997
- Location
- Mai Chau, Vietnam
- License
- This photograph copyright ©1997. Terms of use
See this photograph in context
- Rice farming and rural life in Vietnam: Photographs and text tell the story of rice and rural life in Southeast Asia, with an emphasis on the highlanders, or Montagnards. (Page 16)
Related media
Learn more
- Search LEARN NC for highlanders, hill tribes, Mai Chau, rural life, technology, Vietnam, water, and wells.
In the classroom
- See our collection of articles on visual literacy for ideas on using photographs meaningfully in the classroom.
A highland village well with a cement rim wall provides a community water source at Mai Chau. A red plastic pail suspended from a pole and washing basin are visible on the right. In the background, a young woman walks along a village path past a bamboo pole where laundry is drying.
Traditionally, Southeast Asian highlanders drew water for drinking, cooking, or washing from mountain streams. In larger areas, villages or households now build wells, which may require fetching water with pails, as seen here. Alternatively, the wells may be supplied with hand pumps or motorized pumps for accessing the water. Well water is clean enough for washing, but generally requires boiling for safe drinking.
