Water for Wanderers – Funding a well in Africa

6th November 2022

At Wild Images we’ve always believed that our cultural photography tours should be mutually beneficial with the communities we visit.  On our tours we always take much needed supplies like food, water, fuel and other items when we visit remote communities.

What many people need, however, is more sustained assistance, especially when these people have little to no access to any form of government help.

Sometimes, when the gods align and we have the right groups of people working with us, we are able to do something more.

This year, Wild Images has provided life-changing surgery for a little boy who was born with a congenital issue of bow legs.  Not only did our guests and staff work to fund his surgery, but we also helped his family to stay with him while he went through his rehabilitation for three months.

However, our biggest project this year has been the construction of a water well for around 300 families of Fulani people living in the Atacora Mountains of northern Benin.

Through the cooperation of US based Lantern Projects and Beninese NGO Ong Luz Africana, we have raised enough money to fund the construction of a well to provide people and their livestock with fresh drinking water.

The construction of a well for these families will negate the need for women to walk extremely long distances to fetch water, provide greater sanitation and take pressure off their surrounding land by avoiding the need to run livestock over vast areas to drink.

Wild Images General Manager Inger Vandyke, who visited this community of Fulani people on her 2022 tour to Benin, photographed an extremely beautiful girl in the community who had the traditional tattoos of her people on her face.  After much acclaim and an appearance at the Milan exhibition of the Atlas of Humanity, she raffled a frame print of this young lady to help raise money to fund the well.

In total Wild Images contributed almost 60% of the construction cost with the remainder raised through Lantern Projects.

As the well is progressed we will be posting images to our social media pages when we get updates. We feel very humbled by the generous donations and assistance we have received for this project.

Thank you for helping us to help these fascinating people.