Village Life
A shipot is the only source of clean running water for villagers. It is similar to a well, consisting of a large metal pipe drilled directly into a hill that taps into an underground natural water source. Very cold water runs constantly and pools at the base. There are several shipots scattered throughout the village, serving as a gathering place and as a rest stop for traveling villagers. Each shipot serves dozens of houses, and residents use buckets to carry drinking water back to their homes. As a common practice, a small container is left at the shipot as a courtesy for weary travelers and for filling jugs with small openings.
The stones at the base serve two functions. On one side (closest to the viewer), the stones are set level, so you can walk up to the pipe, set your bucket on the large stone directly below, and fill your bucket with water. On the opposite side (closest to the wall), the stones are set angled into the water. Each large angled stone serves as an individual laundry station. Saturday has traditionally been laundry day. Women get up very early in the morning to get the best stones closest to the water source. Those who sleep late, go further down the line, where the water is not as clean, because of the runoff from the person upstream. In the summer, when the days are long, this process can start as early as Friday afternoon in an effort to beat the crowd. This event serves as a place to catch up on local news and to discuss important matters.
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Famous quotes containing the words village and/or life:
“While yet it is cold January, and snow and ice are thick and solid, the prudent landlord comes from the village to get ice to cool his summer drink; impressively, even pathetically, wise, to foresee the heat and thirst of July now in January,—wearing a thick coat and mittens! when so many things are not provided for. It may be that he lays up no treasures in this world which will cool his summer drink in the next.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Young, and so thin, and so straight.
So straight! as if nothing could ever bend her.
But poor men would bend her, and doing things with poor men,
Being much in bed, and babies would bend her over,
And the rest of things in life that were for poor women,
Coming to them grinning and pretty with intent to bend and to kill.”
—Gwendolyn Brooks (b. 1917)