Everyday I watch the most amazing women go to work. They are wives, daughters, grandmothers. They are home-makers but at any given time you can see them moving around the village carrying this or that.
Colorful chitenges of every pattern are curled up like cinamon rolls atop their heads. Each woman has a unique way of carrying her load. Some don't use chitenges (only for heavy loads), head tilted or straight, hands up to guide or down. I have seen women so skilled they carry multiply things piled on atop the other on their heads. I have seen a grandma crouch/runnign with a full bucket of water on her head to try and make it home before dark, only one hand on the bucket.
They are impervious to everything burdening about their load. Water drips onto their faces and clothes, whole stacks of trees that they just cut down are bundled onto their heads, so long the ends drag on the ground ebhind them and almost touch in front of them. The loads are so heavy their foreheads are scrunched up in a mass of wrinkles. They carry everythign from suitcases to a foot of sugar cane on their heads.
I've tried some of these and they are definatly an aquired skill. Small bags are fairly easy but firewood bundles are so heavy I can't walk and are liable to crush my neck like an accordian. Large buckets of waters slosh and wiggle with a mind of their own.
So hats, or shall I say buckets off to these hard working, though necked women who carry an entire nation upon their heads and never ever complain about it.
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