The harvest begins at dawn, and it takes about six hours -- before the sunshine damages the shocking pink petals -- to fill the big bags that the women carry on their heads to the weighing station.
Izza Ait Ammi Mouh, a Berber woman of "about 40" -- she doesn't know her exact age and can't spell her name -- doesn't complain.
The work allows her to feed her family of five, picking 20 kilos (45 pounds) to take home just under $7 a day during the short April-May season.
— Read more in Hard but sweet-smelling slog in Morocco's Valley of the Roses at AFP via Yahoo News.
This reminds me of when I would visit relatives in Panama as a kid and young adult. We would go up to David, and the surrounding farms had very hardworking migrant workers would picked coffee beans one season, collected chocolate fruit the next. And they were never paid more than a few dollars a case- so they had to work REALLY hard to make money to afford food & lodging for their families.
It is hard to believe when you think of the cost of rose oil. But that’s all I can say without moving into politics.