Min tibetanska barndom i Zorgay - Life and Culture on the Tibetan ...

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LACKING WATER
W
ater was a big problem for our village, especially in
winter. It was a reason others made fun of us, saying
we lacked enough water to drink <strong>and</strong> to wash our
faces. No one helped solve this problem until 2005, when the
local government built a water system that led water to our
village from a high mountain near our summer pasture.
Villagers dug the ditch for the water pipe <strong>and</strong> contributed other
labor.
Our village has two distant water pools. Fetching water,
as I mentioned earlier, is culturally defined as the work of
women, who carried water in big wood buckets on their backs
before the water project. It is shameful for men to fetch water.
Only if their wives were not home, ill, or deceased did men
fetch water. If a man's wife was at home <strong>and</strong> he fetched water,
villagers gossiped that he was dominated by his wife <strong>and</strong> thus
he was seriously humiliated.
The pool nearest our village is special. If clothes are
washed there or if dirty water is poured in it, the water source
diminishes <strong>and</strong> may even dry up because the water deity is
angry. A monk must then be invited to chant <strong>and</strong> offer song for
one or two days to apologize to <strong>and</strong> appease the water deity
before the water will again flow into the pool.
Our pools freeze easily <strong>and</strong> are then covered with thick
ice, making it impossible to get water unless we cut through the
ice with clean or new axes. Before the new water system was
built, we never used water carelessly or we would not have had
enough to drink.
Our livestock suffered in winter. Their frozen dung was
like cement <strong>and</strong> they became so thin that we could count their
ribs. Some died, which was a considerable loss for us. We are
not nomads <strong>and</strong> have only a few head of livestock. Each family
has one or two yak-cow hybrids to milk. If they do not drink for
more than one day, they get sick <strong>and</strong> we would have to pierce a
vein in their tongues with a needle to make it bleed to save
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