Herds Heading Home

As I've mentioned before, some of us from my team usually come to a Samaritan's Purse base in a nearby village on Thursdays to use the high-speed internet. Our schedule right now is to arrive at SP around 4:00 p.m. and leave by 7:00, just before sunset. Lately we've often almost literally "run into" and literally driven through herds of cows and goats heading home after roaming around all day.

Sorry, this first photo is a little blurry. It's kind of hard to take a decent shot since the road is full of pot holes and our truck bounces a lot.

House Construction Part 5: Thatching (Cont'd)

I forgot to mention in my last post that house construction is almost always done in the dry season (December-April). (You may have noticed how brown and dry things are in the pictures.)

One tool that the women use in thatching is a flat wooden mallet.

The woman on the left is using a mallet to tap and even up the ends of the bundles that have been attached.






Another use of the mallet is to tighten up the rows of branches so that they are securely fixed to the roof frame below. That is what the woman in the video below is doing.

As the thatching goes higher, the women have to work from up on the thatch itself. They use a very basic ladder with one rung to get up onto the roof.

They support themselves on the roof by kneeling with their toes resting on a row of branches.

When they're up on the roof like that, the women have their supplies (rope, grass bundles, sticks) delivered by a helper. That saves them having to come down and get them.

The video below shows the thatching bee and a woman bringing bundles over from a storage rack to the thatching site. It then also shows the two women on the roof in the photos above and bundles and rope being handed up to them.

House Building Part 4: Thatching

Now for the next installment in the House Building series that I began back in May (for previous posts see here, here and here). Today's post is about my favourite step in the process, thatching.

Thatching is always done by women. Sometimes a roof is thatched by one or two women over several days.

Sometimes there is a "thatching bee" where a whole group of women, usually friends and neighbours of homeowner, are invited to work together for a day or more. For smaller huts, it usually only takes a day for a group to finish the thatching. Usually no monetary payment is given to the thatching bee women, but they are given tea and lunch.




The basic materials used for thatching are:


1) Bundles of grass

2) Rope that is hand-braided from special grasses that are used for this purpose. The rope is soaked in water. I think this is so that it can easily be pulled and tied tightly, and then will shrink and tighten even more as it dries.

3) Thin sticks/branches

The thatching process involves lining up grass bundles, placing a line of sticks on top of them to hold them down, and then tying the sticks to the roof framework with rope. The photo below shows a side view of the first row of thatch on a hut.

This is an inside view of the lower level of the framework of a house. You can see a few of the rope ties securing the rows of sticks that hold down the bundles of thatch.

Here's a video that shows how the bundles are arranged and tied on. You'll see the "technique" of two different women, who were both working at the "bee" in the photo near the top of this post.

To be continued...  

Washing Dishes

The other day I came upon one of my young neighbours, Aluet, washing dishes. Since the Dinka don't have sinks, they wash their dishes in basins. They often put them out in the sun to dry.

Aluet is holding a stick that is used to stir porridge and other things while cooking them. It has a short piece of wood attached perpendicularly at the end of the stick (which she is holding), and this is placed in the pot. 

The Front of My House

Here's what the front of my house looks like these days. It looks a little different than it did in early 2012 when I first posted a picture of it here. My front door is now painted a nice blue, and I have a gutter to catch rain water from the front part of my roof and a cistern to collect the water. It's nice to have this water for washing clothes, various kinds of cleaning, and watering plants.

I have some vinca rosea (also known as periwinkle) plants in a bed next to my front door. They thrive this time of year with all the rain.

I also have quite a lot of aloe plants (which you can just make out on the centre left in the house picture above). The gel inside the leaves is very helpful for treating burns. The aloe also loves the rain and has been multiplying like crazy. New little plants sprout up from the roots of existing plants. In April I transplanted quite a few small plants out of this bed and gave some away, but now it's overcrowded again.

The aloe is in the midst of a flowering blitz. The long stems shoot up from the centre of the plant and the flowers form at the top of the stem. Each individual flower sticks out horizontally at first, then droops down, opens up, changes colour and then falls off.