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cooking, am a reserve series of four wells sunk below ground inland
from the village and supplying brackish water suitable for bathing
and laundry.
Almost every house had near it an oi] drum or other
container which trapped rainwater from the house roof. Hach house
was practically independent in this regard, therefore, and supplemented the local supply with water from the cisterns as needed.
Only in extremely dry weather did the wells come importantly into
a basis for sharing beyond the
Kinship did not appear to be
use.
house group. Access to cistern or well when needed was measured
by convenience in walking and carrying the water,
The Kinship principle was more apparent in use of bathing
facilities. Although most house groups had their ow bath hut
attached to or located near the dwelling, and used only by the house
occupants, there were five instances of sharing by two, or three,
house groups.
Where this sharing existed it depended on a sibling
or other lineage tie.
Copra driers had been constructed at 13 different locations
in the village, and were equipped with fire hearths, sheltering
roofs, and racks on which pieces of ripe coconut could be dried
before sale to island
traders and export for world consumption.
Many of these had been built in the period 1953 to 1955 when the
U. S. government initiated a community development project to
assist the islanders in their adjustment to Kili.
Kilians regarded
them as private property associated with specifically named house
groups.
Regular use of the driers followed kinship lines in six
instances, the link being that of adult siblings in a joint family
or the membership of a single family extended two or three generations.
However, no difficulty was reported in obtaining permission
to use another's drier if the latter was not in use by the owner
group; if justification was needed, one could usually find some
kinship tie to refer to, the closeness of affiliation seemed unimportant.
All cases of sharing bath facilities were identified
with copra-drier share groups,
although the
more numerous and more inclusive.
latter were slightly
when it came to cooking hearths, I found that practically
every house group cooked over an open hearth a
short distance from
the dwelling, when the weather was clear, and in this sense was
autonomous.
But in rainy weather, some shelter was required, a
roofed cook hut,
sometimes attached to the copra drier, sometimes
not.
I found the same number of cook huts as copra driers, and in
all but two cases the complex of sharing was identical.
In the
exception, factors of convenience seemed to have brought adjacent
house grwups into a slightly different alignment, but close kin
ties still provided the
basis of cooperation.
Women, who did the
cooking, reported a change from time to time in where they cooked
if they wanted relief from the usual group or sought to gossip in
a more advantageous place, but these changes were essentially brief
breaks in routine.
Men did the fishing, most of them using a small paddle canoe
off the reef. I accounted for 12 such canoes, but 8 were at the
time either disabled or lost at sea, and one was still being built.