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Childbearing & Mothering
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Spanish
Mountain Life (continued)
by Juliette de Bairacli-Levy
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There blossomed also by the mill streams,
white may, and on the near grey rocks a sweet variety
of wild lavender. With these flowers came the nightingales.
Not a mere one or two birds as in most parts of Europe,
but a multitude, so that one seemed to sing in every bush.
Oh the wild piping of them! by day and by night, though
on the Sierra Nevada they sang mostly by day, for the
nights stayed cold that May month. Concerning the nightingales
the peasants again spoke beautifully: 'The ruisenors
have pearls and corals in their throats.'
The sun of the day had become very hot
by May, and the flies bred rapidly. Those swarming flies!
The curse of Lanjaron; carriers of disease including the
dread typhus fever. The flies are few around Granada,
but all upon Lanjaron they swarmed and even reached up
into the high sierra above the town and far around to
plague the people there on the remote farms. Many persons
who came to drink the waters of the medicinal springs
went away because of the flies. If the typhus fever had
not kept me in Lanjaron I believe that I too would have
fled from that insect plague.
The abundance of those flies is difficult to describe:
I have only met with a near likeness around the town of
Houmpt Souk on the island of Djerba, where they bred in
thousands upon the open cesspits. In Lanjaron there were
also most unsanitary conditions away from the clean part
of the town where were the hotels for the visitors to
the mineral springs: for that part was very clean and
cool and well-kept. For the rest, the children piled their
excreta in the back streets and then the sierra animals
which came nightly into the town further fed the flies.
I well recall two unpleasant things of the mountain town.
The square opposite the inn where I first lived and where
I used to see the unsanitary and miserable life of the
very poor: such as the children shut out in the streets
by drunken parents, and women picking from one another's
heads the lice and the nits which seemingly teemed there.
The other was a huge sow kept in the basement of a house
in conditions of indescribable dirt, so that the entire
house smelt of the pig. The animal itself was memorable
for the black coat that it wore over-all-a cloak of flies!
so that except for snout and tail there was scarcely a
centimetre of its grey-white body to be seen.
In the main street of the town the flies lay on roadway
and pavement like black treacle, and likewise they gathered
upon the walls of the houses and shops. The wares in the
shops were invariably speckled black with fly excreta,
fruit to crockery, lengths of dress material to bread,
all habitually bore the dirt imprints of the flies. It
is difficult to wash fruit clean of such contamination
without spoiling and losing most of the flavour. Therefore
whenever possible I bought my fruit direct from the sierra
farms, or asked the shop-keepers to sell me fruit only
from the lower areas of the boxes and baskets, in which
parts the flies had not had entry. It was impossible to
open one's doors or windows by day; only late into the
night until soon after dawn dare one do so.
To defy this rule of Lanjaron was to ensure the entry
of a black hissing fly swarm into one's house, soiling
everything, falling into water-jugs and milk, and at night-time
descending upon the beds to crawl over the faces of the
sleepers. They had the same fly habits as those of Arab
lands, they liked to be upon the human body. Favourite
places were the corners of the eyes and mouths of children
from which they sucked moisture and at the same time left
bacteria of disease. It was very general in Lanjaron to
see babies' faces speckled with fly excreta.
The people nearly all possessed fly-swishes, which the
gypsies made and sold: a stout cane on to the top of which
was wired a head of coloured paper streamers. With this
weapon one swished the flies out of one's home and back
into the streets, and also away from one's‚ body.
But the fly swishing was not so easy so far as the house
rooms were concerned. Through the opened door one beat
out the black hordes, but a large percentage of the enemy
went into hiding!
As soon as the door was closed, out of their hiding places,
beneath beds and in wall niches, they came, and danced
in triumph before one's angry eyes! What happened with
those flies in the water-mill during the three weeks of
typhus fever when I was half-insane and entirely unable
to defend my room and my children against the hordes,
I shall never know. There were vast swarms of flies habitually
around the mill. The fruit trees were blamed, the water,
the flour in the mill, but in truth the dirt of the place
was much responsible. The mill family never seemed to
notice the flies at all. They would sit placidly eating
their meals, their faces, hands and clothes black-plastered
with flies; also equally plastered was the food that they
ate!
Traveler's Joy,
Nature's Children, and Common
Herbs for Natural Health
by Juliette de Bairacli-Levy are available at Ash Tree
Publishing.
Go here to find out more
http://www.wisewomanbookshop.com/
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