| caption: |
chapter two - the village |
| caption: |
description of rooms in house and the use of house space |
| note: |
footnotes indicated by boxes within square brackets |
| text: |
In front of each house there is a small level space (ki-soa: "before the house"), often with an outdoor bench. The front gable of the house juts out and shelters a shallow porch; there is usually another bench here along the outer wall. The doorway is always in the left-hand side of the front wall as you face the house. Inside the house itself there is first a front room (nam- sung) 10 feet deep, containing a store of firewood, a wooden mortar (kapa) for husking rice, a square enclosure of small planks set on edge to retain the bed of husks (kapaimbang) where the pig lies, baskets (nrui-rak) for sitting hens, and other impedimenta such as rain-shields, clothing, ropes for securing cattle, fishtraps, lengths of cane, coils of ready-cut bamboo ties, and the skulls of animals killed by the householder when hunting on his own and not as a member of a morung party. The doorways of this room have a plank (kamui-de) 2 feet deep set on edge across them to prevent the pig escaping outside or into the living quarters within. |
