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[2007-09-17-Bhutan-Menzel Photo Archives]

Bhu_mw_07_xxs.jpg

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Menzel Photo Archives

Bhutan
Bhu.mw.07.xxsEspecially fond of the children, Uncle Kinley Dorji (seated at right) has given up marriage to help with childcare in his sister Nalim's house. A typical task: feeding a weekend breakfast of sweet, thick rice soup to Tandin Geltshin, one of the two-year-olds. His namesake and nephew, Kinley (standing at left) observes the jumble of children from the lofty distance of his 17 years. A student at a boarding school an hour's walk away, he is home only for weekends. Namgay and Nalim’s family lives in Shingkhey Village, Bhutan. Published in Material World: A Global Family Portrait, pages76-77.{{The family of subsistence farmers lives in a 3-story rammed-earth house in the hillside village of Shingkhey, Bhutan. Nalim and her daughter Sangay work as partners—they take turns caring for the children and working in their mustard, rice, and wheat fields. Sangay’s husband Sangay Kandu does the plowing of the family fields but Sangay and Nalim do the planting and harvesting. Namgay, who has a hunched back and a clubfoot, grinds grain for neighbors with a small mill his family purchased from the government. They are paying for the mill as they can—often the payment is made in grain and mustard oil. Namgay is also a reader of sacred texts and conducts house cleansing and healing ceremonies for their 14-house village.Family members are: Namgay (50, family patriarch and husband of Nalim), Nalim (47, family matriarch and wife of Namgay), Sangay, (29, daughter of Nalim and Namgay and wife of Sangay Kandu), Sangay Kandu (33, husband of Sangay), Choeden (9, daughter of Sangay Kandu and Sangay), Chato Namgay (7, son of Sangay Kandu and Sangay), Sangay Zam (5, daughter of Sangay Kandu and Sangay), Chato Geltshin (3, son of Sangay Kandu and Sangay), Tandin Geltshin (2, son of Sangay Kandu and Sangay), Kinley Dorji, (61, unmarried brother of Nalim). From Peter Menzel’s Material World Project that showed 30 statistically average families in 30 countries with all their possessi
1994 Peter Menzel www.menzelphoto.com Material World

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- Himalaya - family - Kitchen - wood - fire - stove - barefoot - horizontal
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