Off to work with son

Pics here




Left at 6 for another market frequented by the Bonda tribe but first I went down to the bus station in the dark for a chai and saw how the housewives had already been out cleaning their front door steps and making patterns out of rice powder to welcome people.  The Bonda tribe wives shave their heads and cover them with beads.  Round their necks they have several huge silver torques (I think that is what they are called) and hung round their naked torso they hang lots and lots and lots of beads.  Their loins are covered with a home woven band of cloth in different colours.  They were a far more attractive tribe than yesterday. Since so many tourists have been coming they have taken to wearing cloaks and sometimes dresses but none that I saw brought a baby today. Their change of clothing may be due to the Catholic Church for they have bought souls by lending money to tribals in return for conversion.  I have seen several little churches and graveyards with crosses in them. The only other graves you see are for Muslims.  There was so much going on in the rice paddies too – there were oxen ploughing, oxen levelling the earth, women taking the nursery plots apart and spreading the clumps of rice into adjacent paddies for planting out in 3s or 4s. Over the last 3 days driving through the jungle and mountains we have seen signs warning of elephant, bear and reptile crossing the road but have yet to see a wild animal.  Perhaps it is because today a taddy alcohol seller arrived at the market with his bow and arrows and this is the favourite way of killing game by the tribals.  We stopped for a pit stop where there were coffee bushes and black pepper vines growing up the neem trees and all you could hear were birds – a golden oriel among them with its distinctive call. All the valley bottoms were full of paddies – there is lots of water available for irrigation. The tribals have a house where pubescent girls and boys in the village go to live and get to know one another.  A girl get married at 14 or 15 to a boy much younger whom she looks after and hopes that when she is old he will look after her.  The men hate being photographed so I was lucky today to get a shot of taddy alcohol sellers coming in to the market with their two 15kg pots slung on a pole over their shoulder as they crossed a river and my prize was seeing this man carrying his son to work in his field.  The extra is of two Bonda woman buying beads