The men had to go to thier farms as early as 4 a.m. They usaully walked for about hour and a half to two hours. The women had to wake up every morning earlier than the men to prepare their breakfast and lunch. When they were through, they bagan with their daily duties. It would seem that waking up early and doing thier chores would mean that by the afternoon they would be finished with everything, but it wasn't so. They always did other things like sewing or embroidery or they made baskets and things out of clay.
Having kids was one of the things that I guess they couldn't control. Haha..... They had one almost every year. Traditionally, they waited two years after their marriage to have their first child and another two before the second and so on, but I guess they couldn't keep up to that. A kid's life was not what we are used to neither. Most of the time, the father forced them to go to farm with him, even the mother. The children barely went to school.
The girls usually got tired of what they go through and they wished that someone would come to ask their hand in marriage. Little did they know that having a husband was worse than living with their parents. If they didn't get beaten at home, then they surely got it at the hands of their husband, especially if they didn't do what they were supposed to.
My father always told us how it was when he grew up. He wasn't my grandfather's favorite and he suffered more. More than once he made him walk home from the farm with a big bundle of firewood on his back. And that was like a two hour walk without stopping to rest. By the time he grew up, he went away. It was like that for most of the boys. They always ran away from home because they grew tired of the way they were treated and were convinced that life out there was hard too but better.
to be continued
