younger children are toddling by the side of their father or mother,
a small, dirty hand smothered in a large, labor-cracked one; or else
are carried on their father's back or shoulder, or perhaps astride
their mother's hip. The old men and women, almost always unsightly
and ugly, who go to the sementera only to guard and not to toil, come
slowly and feebly home, often picking their way with a staff. There is
much laughing and coquetting among the young people. A boy dashes by
with several girls in laughing pursuit, and it is not at all likely
that he escapes them with all his belongings. Many of the younger
married women carry babies; some carry on their heads baskets filled
with weeds used as food for the pigs, and all have their small rump
baskets filled with "greens" or snails or fish.

A man may carry on his shoulder a huge short log of wood cut in the
mountains, the wood partially supported on the shoulder by his spear;
or he perhaps carries a large bunch of dry grass to be thrown into the
pigpen as bedding; or he comes swinging along empty handed save for
his spear used as a staff. Most of the returning men and boys carry
the empty topil, the small, square, covered basket in which rice for
the noon meal is carried to the sementera; sometimes a boy carries a
bunch of three or four, and he dangles them open from their strings
as he dances along.

For an hour or more the procession continues -- one almost-naked
figure following another -- all dirty, most of them doubtless tired,
and yet seemingly happy and content with the finish of their day of
toil. It is long after dark before the last straggler is in.


Harvesting