Day 112: Division of Labour

So let's talk division of labour, people.

Berber women cook. Before they can cook, they need to fetch the firewood for cooking. Great bundles of sticks and branches strapped to their back, brought down from the surrounding hills. In order to have anything to cook on the fire with the firewood, they need healthy well fed animals. Again, back to the hills for further enormous loads of long grasses. Then they need water. For the plants to grow and the animals to drink. So multiple trips in a day to the river to fill up the buckets. The largest bucket held about 20 litres and this lady carried it (semi) effortlessly - she only needed to do this trip four times on this particular day because there were two extra pairs of hands helping to fetch the water.

Well, Ok, yes it was more like just the one extra pair of hands as, admittedly, I was doing a fairly good impression of Margo from the Good Life. In my defence, the rocks were quite slippy in flip flops.

So yes, the heavy, physical work is definitely the woman's domain in the Berber household. Now I'm not one for advocating traditional labour roles but I was really quite shocked at the amount of back breaking work these women had to do in a day. I wouldn't be able to manage a third of their workload and what I did manage would only be achieved through a fair amount of tears and probably a tantrum or two.

Then there arel the domestic chores - the cooking, serving and clearing up the dishes. It is true that there are probably several women in the house that can share the tasks - in this place we stayed there were three generations, so really four women and girls doing the work.

But I have to ask, where exactly were the men when all this work was taking place and what exactly were they doing?

See next post....