However, it is even more astonishing how much the women and children have to work. The best way I can describe it is by some of the photos I took.
The main diet in Humla, is Dahl Baht. Dahl is a lentil soup, and baht is cooked rice. This is often served with a bit of takari, which is a bit of a curry, mainly potatoes, sometimes spinach.
To make the dahl, the seeds have to be threshed from the stalks, and the lentil beans ground into a powder.
This image is of a woman griding the lentil beans.
The next image is of a woman threshing the stalks with a flail, to get the beans. They dry the stalks on the roofs of their homes.
They also need to gather firewood, to cook their meals with, as it is the main method of cooking.
They also use different grains, which need to be crushed and seperated from the husks.
One of the more difficult tasks they have to do, is extract cooking oil. This is extracted from walnuts, and other types of nuts in the area. They take the shell of the seed, crush the seed by pounding it, then mix it with water, to a paste. They then dry it, place some more water with it, then squeeze the paste with a rolling action over a wooden type bowl. This rolling action takes an extremely long time, and difficult on the hands. The whole process to extract about 2 litres of oil takes about 7 days. There is currently a project in RIDS to use hand crank oil expellers, using the raw seeds, and taking about 4 hours total for about 2 litres of oil.
This image is of the woman squeezing the seed paste with some of the oil she has extracted.
They also have to gather grass for the animals for feed.
I was also surprised on the way to Jumla, to see how young they were, carrying large loads of leaves for compost back at the village.
When we were in the Jumla area, we saw the family, mother and children, all carrying loads in the usual fashion you see porters carrying loads. With a basked on the back, and a strap around the basket and their forehead.
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