“I Carry the Stuff of Life”: Jerry Can

I hold what no living being can survive without. I am what desperately poor women around the world must use every single day. I am not much to look at, but I am definitely prized by every rural household. Empty, I am nothing. Filled, I carry the stuff of life.

I am the humble jerry can.

You can find me strapped to the outside of jeeps, wrapped in burlap to keep my contents cool. My inventors fashioned me from metal and used me on battlefields and military bases during WWII. 

More commonly today, however, you will see me atop the head of a barefoot African girl or woman. There, I am not durable metal swathed in burlap. No, I am made of battered yellow plastic and filled with 40 lbs of precious water laboriously drawn from a distant creek or muddy lake. Almost always, it is women’s work to fill me, hoist me onto their heads and walk the long miles back to their village. 

Even after all these years and all those miles, I marvel at how these women so gracefully balance the heavy, sloshing load, hours at a time, day after day, year after year.  There are no vacation days for me or for the women.  

Eventually the wear and tear becomes too much for me. Dented and dirtied, faded, cracked and discarded, my usefulness ends. My owner then must find another way to transport water. A gourd, a bucket, an animal bladder, until she scrapes together enough money to buy another jerry can.  Families depend on me. I feel good about my place in life.