Day 127 – 365 Days of Photography

5-7-2014

Back to the home series, this one is a family home in Cedros.  I remember going to visit some elderly aunts at this home, as a young girl visiting a house filled with women, I thought of them as nuns.   All grown, I asked my Mom, what about the Nuns we visited in Cedros when I was a kid, she had no clue who I was referring too.  Driving down and passing in front of the home, I pointed it out and said, “it was there”.  She chuckled and said, “Aunt Bo and Aunt Evelyn, they weren’t nuns”.  Matter of fact the home is now inhabited by one of the son’s of Aunt Evelyn.  We stopped by to pay my cousin Ben a visit.  This home has not changed.  They’ve not done any modifications to it.  Some of the floor boards felt like I would’ve fell through.

Now the concrete structure that you see in the photo with the white PVC pipes laying on top of it is a cistern, it collects rain water from the roof of the home.   What you see is half of the size of it, the rest is buried below the earth.  This particular cistern is big enough to supply the village with water when there is a water shortage.  That is exactly what occurs.  My mom told me that the village would go there to get buckets of water, when there was a water shortage in the old days.   At another older home, the family has another cistern, not as big.  I will make another trip and capture that home as well.

Now as stories go, Ben’s wife fell at the market and broke her femur, she is now bedridden, it is difficult when you’re older to suffer bone breakages.  Unfortunately she isn’t receiving any physical therapy to help bring the leg back.  When I saw her, I thought she had broken her hip, as she was perched on the bed in such an odd angle.  Her head was leaning over to the side as though her spine was curved.  She sat up when she realized she had visitors, she gave us the story of how she fell and how she cannot move her leg now.  Sad.  Hopefully they can find a way to exercise her, else she will lay there and lament till her last days.

Front of the house, through the fence

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