Unexpected power

It’s chopping time. For months and months there has been a big pile of wood behind the house in which I live on the second floor. There are trees, there are the remains of walls of a former house, there’s rubbish, there are two dish antennas attached to the trees, and, as I mentioned, there’s wood. Pallets, boards, a broken door, things like that.

And now women come to chop the wood into pieces and take it home to heat the house. Now and then I sit on my balcony to watch it. Sometimes big, but also sometimes young, fragile looking women with their headscarves tied loosely around their heads, expertly and with unexpected power smash the wood to pieces with an axe. They don’t pause to rest, they just come, do the work and go again. I’m impressed. And sometimes even touched by the way these women just keep life going.