Eavesdropping by John L. Locke Read Free Book Online Page B

That’s when archeologist Richard Gould excavated an area in the Central Australian Desert and, while there, photographed the huts of the indigenous Pitjantjatjara people. 10 At that time there were just over thirty aborigines living a fully nomadic existence in the area where Gould was doing his archeological work. He found that inthe winter, when temperatures dropped to freezing, the Pitjantjatjara built “cold camps” by erecting windbreaks to shield them from ground winds. Like the Kung’s, the Pitjantjatjara camps were generally circular, with the huts on the periphery and the entrances of the huts facing towards the center. 11 In the summer, when there was sweltering heat, the aborigines built small, dome-shaped shelters from boughs. These “shade camps” provided relief during the hottest part of the day.
    Photographs indicate that the shelters of the Pitjantjatjara and the Kung were almost identical. Although Gould said nothing about any resistance to privacy the Pitjantjatjara might have felt, there is little indication from the design of their huts that they wanted to spend any time in them, or to be alone.
The Semai
    In the early 1960s Robert Dentan studied the Senoi Semai, another aboriginal group that lived in the mountains of central Malaya. The Semai people characteristically banded together in time of danger, and therefore needed to know who was under threat. Their houses were built to foster this awareness. “Because the outside walls are usually thin and the whole house open to the breeze,” Dentan wrote, “people near a house can hear what is going on inside …In the evening after the lights were out we would often chat through the walls for a quarter of an hour or so with any of our next door neighbors who were awake.” 12
    It would not be wrong to refer to the Semai huts as shelter, for they were designed to protect people against wild animals and the elements. But they were not supposed to shield people from each other. “To refuse someone admission to one’s house,” Dentan wrote, “would be an act of extreme hostility.” 13 Recognizing this, and secure in the knowledge that the friendly anthropologist would not want to hurt their feelings, the Semai sometimes entered Dentan’s house, even if he and his wife were sound asleep at fiveo’clock in the morning. In his book he described a typical entry. “They would cough a few times to see if we were awake or ask in clear, pleasant voices, ‘You sleeping?’ If we pretended to be asleep and they had nothing urgent to do,” Dentan wrote, “they would settle down to chat with each other. A person who dropped in by himself might just sit for a while, humming a little tune, or he might rummage through our belongings in hopes of turning up something interesting.” In response to these invasions, the Dentans tried tying the door shut, but this made little difference. “Serene in their knowledge that we liked them and were therefore always glad to have them visit,” he wrote, “they would reach over the top of the door and untie the fastening.” 14
The Nayaka
    The Nayaka, a forest-dwelling group in south India, were studied about thirty years ago by Nurit Bird-David. She reported that the “walls” of Nayakan domiciles were made of interwoven strips of bamboo, offering little or no privacy. The people moved into these huts before construction was complete, and lived there for many weeks, in full view, before they began to build walls. 15
    Even when the huts were finished, the Nayaka continued to spend much of their time outside. “They remain seated by their respective fire-places, and talk across space from fire to fire,” wrote Bird-David; “[and] they rarely try to conceal their domestic activities.” Almost all interactions are overheard by others, she went on. “Normally, they do not even try to keep their conversations private. 16
The Samoans
    The Samoans also lived in a fishbowl. In the 1980s the typical house (called