| caption: |
attachment to villages; graveyards; water supplies |
| text: |
To their villages which are permanent, the Koupooees are much attached. The village and its immediate precincts form their graveyard, and when for a time, from whatever cause, they have been obliged to desert their village, I have heard them more often express their wish to return to it as being the grave of their ancestors, than to it as being their own birth place. Their attachment then to their village is created quite as much by its holding the tombs of their ancestors as by its being the place of their birth. Some villages draw their supplies of water from great distances, whilst others are more fortunate in having a perennial spring or stream in their immediate vicinity. The proximity of water one would consider would be much prized, more especially by the women upon whom all domestic labour falls, and who have to fetch it, but even in villages where the water is most distant I have never heard a wish expressed that it was nearer. |
