MAKABAYE, Cameroon
With a hammer in one hand and a piece of rubber in the other, dozens of women crush stones all day long despite the temperature often reaching 40 degrees in Makabaye, northern Cameroon.
Malloum, 25, only interrupts her work when her phone rings.
"Crushing stones makes us dream. I can dream and realize my wishes with the money I make here. I did not think that one day I would have a phone. This is the second phone that I have bought," Malloun told Anadolu Agency.
In the past, crushing stones was considered shameful work. Those who practiced the activity did it in secret and were despised by others.
Malloum, who has a physical handicap, says she did not go to school.
She had lived with many relatives and later found herself living with friends who were prostitutes, eventually becoming one herself.
"I finally arrived here thanks to a woman who had been crushing stones for nearly 10 years," Malloum said.
On the stone crushing site, the roles are clearly defined. Some women are responsible for picking large stones in the mountains and others break them into smaller pieces.
Every afternoon, buyers come to the site, mostly looking for gravel for roads or stone to build houses.
Malloum earns 1,200 CFA francs (roughly $2.2) per day, which seems trivial, but represents "a fortune" for her and the other women.
"I work every day. I earn about 36,000 CFA francs ($66) per month. With this money, I rent a small room, I buy clothes and shoes. I even made up a franchise and I opened a call-box [a kind of phone booth on mobile phone, popular in sub-Saharan Africa]."
Jeanine is another stone crusher and a widow.
She comes to work with her three children aged between 3 and 7.
"Here I find something to eat. I also save money and send my children to school," she said.
It is a risky job.
Some women hit their fingers while trying to crush the stones and others wound their feet while walking on the rocks.
"The stone is my life now. This is the stone that feeds me. Before I was begging, now I work," Zeina, another stone crusher, said.
