When her husband died in an accident 17 years ago, Vasanta (age 46) was offered her deceased husband’s job as a tapper, an estate tradition. Since then Vasanta has been working for the New Ambadi rubber plantation (where we source our eco-certified Fair Trade rubber for our sports ball air bladders), as well as bringing up her three children.

Meryn (23), her elder daughter, is married and lives with her husband, a lab technician in a hospital in Chennai. Vasanti visits them and her 2.5-year old granddaughter there once a year for about a week. The overnight journey by overland bus costs Rs. 450 one-way. Her son Manu Stephen (18) has three months until the final exams of a two-year hotel management course. The course costs his mother a total of Rs. 30,000 in fees. The youngest daughter Subi (17) is in the 11th grade at a government school where Vasanta pays for her books.

Vasanta lives with Manu and Subi in a small house in a village five km away from New Ambadi. The house has four rooms, a kitchen/bath, and an outside toilet. The house has electricity, but the communal water tap opposite her house only operated 1.5 hours a day, so it is only used for drinking. There is an open well next door, which serves all the other needs of the family - and of the neighbors next door.

Every morning, Vasanti takes a bus to work while it is still dark because as the sun and the temperatures rise, the warmer weather causes freshly tapped latex to dry up too quickly, which lowers the yield. As a tapper, she does two tapping rounds per day, usually ending up with two buckets full of freshly tapped latex.

Most tappers carry these by bicycle to the nearest collection station (some even have motorbikes now), but Vasanta prefers to carry the latex on her shoulders: 45 kg of liquid - 18 kg of rubber. For this she earns 126 Rupees (a basic wage equivalent to about $2 USD), plus 40 Rs. in bonus. The second round is worth another Rs. 72.

Officially, the work week is only six days but like most tappers, Vasanta works on Sundays as well because the bonus is much higher. On a good day she can make the same as working two to three weekdays. Fortunately, her colleague Nagappan is happy to help carry at least the first round of her harvest with his bicycle.