Halpern M. Joel, Kerewsky-Halpern Barbara (USA)

12345
12345
12345
12345
12345
12345
12345
12345
12345
12345
12345678901234567890123456789012123
12345678901234567890123456789012123
EthnoAnthropoZoom
12345678901234567890123456789012123
12345678901234567890123456789012123
12345678901234567890123456789012123
accessible only by foot. The houses are rickety stone and wood affairs, with patches
of parched earth and rock outcrops all around. No crops are grown except in one small
cleared area where the big boulders and smaller rocks are cleared out by hand and then
used for a fence around the cleared area. A basis of the economy is selling wood.
Many of the villagers make trips into town with a little burro loaded with wood to sell.
Livestock raising remains crucial. Someone in each household goes with the family’s
flock for the three or four summer months. These shepherds live in reed lean to huts
during this period. The grazing areas are located on the other side of the mountain
where the pastures are better. A few times a week women from the village hike over and
bring some loaves of bread, garlic and onions, and take back the cheese. (This way of
life is now extinct).
This area is too poor to support expenditures for elaborate costumes, but the older
women did all have parts of their costume in their chests. Again, there seemed to be a
lot of children. Something that struck me was how pretty all the children in this particular
village seemed.
The houses are mostly two-story, with a store-room downstairs, and wooden steps on
the outside leading up to an overhanging balcony which seems to serve as a kind of
living room in good weather. The sleeping rooms are also on this floor. The rooms on
the second floor, as well as the ground, floor have dirt floors. This is so even though
there is wood in the area. Often there are no beds but a roll of woven corn husks,
designating the sleeping area in the corner of the room. Sometimes a small stove, like
half an oil drum on legs, is in the center of the room. There is also a stool or two, the
usual chest, plus a string of dried peppers. That is all. But the filth is amazing. In one
house we saw the most primitive set-up. It was of the kind that was in less progressive
houses in {umadija over 60 years ago. The old people in Serbia used to tell us about
how they lived in their childhood. In one two-room house built right on the ground,
with no upper floor, we saw in the first room a pot of beans cooking, suspended from
an iron chain from the ceiling.
The fire was open, on the ground. The door was open, too, as there was no other way
for the smoke to escape as there was no chimney or even hole in the roof. In the other
room was a baby sleeping on a pallet on the floor. The infant’s face was covered with
a rag to keep out the smoke. The whole house, however, was filled with smoke and we
were choking and spluttering, although they were all accustomed to it. In this house
there were seven people; the old man and his wife, their son and his wife, and three
small children. The old man indicated the dirt area in one corner where he and his wife
slept, and, pointing to a filthy flax stuffed mattress rolled up in the other corner, said
that that was where the others slept. They had a better place, he said, because they
were younger. (Now there is no longer the great rural - urban divide. During my (JMH)
recent visit I met an old lady at the local church who had recently returned from a visit
to relatives in Australia). (We have seen enough filth and poverty to last us for a long
time).
169
12345
12345