Doña Sandra's cigarretes and clay pots
Doña Sandra lives in the countryside in the foothills below Chaki Kh'ocha. She is a young woman, around 33 years old, but she already has 6 children, the oldest of whom is 16 and the youngest about 3.
She is an amazingly industrious woman. She plants all her maize plants herself and works the land. She also makes handrolled cigarettes which she sells at the market in Tiraque. There her customers are mostly people who work the land and they all smoke quite heavily. She buys the tobacco leaves from the tropical region of Santa Cruz de la Sierra. She pays 150 bolivianos for one arroba of tobacco which she then flakes and rolls in paper which she cuts to size. The cigarettes are sealed using a glue made from four. On market days she has to be down by the main road for 5am to get the transport to the Tiraque and set up her little stall. She makes packs of 10 cigarettes.
When we had seen the cigarette-making process we then went inside to see how she makes her clay pots. Most of her production of handmade pots is bought by the chicha producers. Chicha is a kind of beer made from fermented maize and the largest of Doña Sandra's pots hold about 20 tins of chicha or 200 litres.
She starts the process by making a ball of clay which she then places on a round base. She does not have a potter's wheel but turns the base with her hands. As the clay becomes thinner as the pot gets taller she wets the top and adds a new ring of clay to keep on building the pot up. The vessel she made for us as a demonstration was in fact a clay cooker. It is a cylinder about 1 foot tall and at the top she adds three little "wings" that the pot sits on. In the side she cuts a rectangular hole where they can put in the twigs for the fire.
As we watched the chickens and ducks and kittens and other animals all wandered around at will.
Two children were at home. The youngest child is still too young to go to school but the daughter, Noelia, was at home because she did not have any school books or pencils, notebooks etc. She will join the project too. Luis, the boy who has just joined, walks about 3 kms. through the countryside to school. Today it was dry but when it rains the tracks must be very muddy.
The water tap is about 1km from the house so every day water has to be carried up for cooking, drinking and washing as well as making the ceramic pots.
The clay for the pots comes from close by as the erth i that area is rich in silicates. Further up the mountain COBOCE, the cement company, exgtracts white clay which it exports for making porcelain.
Doña Sandra accompanied us part of the way and as we went she pointed out some families with children who cold also benenfit from some help. She also told us that her husband had been "bewitched". This probably means that he suffers from some kind of mental illness. He used to beat her a lot but now that her oldest son is 16 years old he does not allow this to happen any more.
I was most impressed with this woman - full of character, industrious, resouceful and always smiling ...
She is an amazingly industrious woman. She plants all her maize plants herself and works the land. She also makes handrolled cigarettes which she sells at the market in Tiraque. There her customers are mostly people who work the land and they all smoke quite heavily. She buys the tobacco leaves from the tropical region of Santa Cruz de la Sierra. She pays 150 bolivianos for one arroba of tobacco which she then flakes and rolls in paper which she cuts to size. The cigarettes are sealed using a glue made from four. On market days she has to be down by the main road for 5am to get the transport to the Tiraque and set up her little stall. She makes packs of 10 cigarettes.
When we had seen the cigarette-making process we then went inside to see how she makes her clay pots. Most of her production of handmade pots is bought by the chicha producers. Chicha is a kind of beer made from fermented maize and the largest of Doña Sandra's pots hold about 20 tins of chicha or 200 litres.
She starts the process by making a ball of clay which she then places on a round base. She does not have a potter's wheel but turns the base with her hands. As the clay becomes thinner as the pot gets taller she wets the top and adds a new ring of clay to keep on building the pot up. The vessel she made for us as a demonstration was in fact a clay cooker. It is a cylinder about 1 foot tall and at the top she adds three little "wings" that the pot sits on. In the side she cuts a rectangular hole where they can put in the twigs for the fire.
As we watched the chickens and ducks and kittens and other animals all wandered around at will.
Two children were at home. The youngest child is still too young to go to school but the daughter, Noelia, was at home because she did not have any school books or pencils, notebooks etc. She will join the project too. Luis, the boy who has just joined, walks about 3 kms. through the countryside to school. Today it was dry but when it rains the tracks must be very muddy.
The water tap is about 1km from the house so every day water has to be carried up for cooking, drinking and washing as well as making the ceramic pots.
The clay for the pots comes from close by as the erth i that area is rich in silicates. Further up the mountain COBOCE, the cement company, exgtracts white clay which it exports for making porcelain.
Doña Sandra accompanied us part of the way and as we went she pointed out some families with children who cold also benenfit from some help. She also told us that her husband had been "bewitched". This probably means that he suffers from some kind of mental illness. He used to beat her a lot but now that her oldest son is 16 years old he does not allow this to happen any more.
I was most impressed with this woman - full of character, industrious, resouceful and always smiling ...
Labels: Bolivia, chicha, clay cookers, clay pots, hand-rolled cigarettes
posted by Mary | 9:57 PM
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