| caption: |
Shankok's sisters; gifts within families |
| text: |
While I am sitting in Shankok's house late in the afternoon his sisters arrive heavily loaded down with banana stems and leaves but hardly have they emptied the baskets when they already go off again with large bamboo containers to fetch water. They both are married to Bala men. Liphu, the oldest, already for five years since she has been a small girl (184) but they still live in their parents' house as neither of them has born a child. At all feasts Shankok presents generous parts of the slaughtered animals to the households of his brothers-in-law and in return he receives gifts which are approximately worth half as much as his presents. (See notebook 9 p. 68). In his sisters' presence he is hesitant in speaking their husbands' names, apparently only as long as they do not yet live together with them, but he does mind to tell me their names so quietly that his sisters cannot hear him. |
