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INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY — PUBLICATION NO. 1 2 



and go to other people." "You should take a bath 

 every day," wrote another school boy, "so as to 

 clean out the pores. You should also put on clean 

 clothes, especially to sleep in. Your finger nails 

 should not be allowed to go dirty. The house 

 should be swept often. Sheets, pillow cases, and 

 blankets should be kept clean so that lice, bed- 

 bugs, fleas, and such things won't get in them. 

 The fruit and vegetables you eat should be well 

 washed." 



Acceptance of these principles, however, is often 

 reflected more in word than in deed, and the word 

 sometimes reveals this fact. "All of us should 

 have hygiene," wrote one of the same boys, "be- 

 cause hygiene is a beautiful thing." "Many people 

 think hygiene is a luxury," wrote the other boy, 

 "but it's a thing everyone should love. God loves 

 hygiene very much." 



The level of cleanliness varies somewhat 

 throughout the community. At least two of the 

 farm houses visited were well-swept, dusted, clean 

 and neat. The tablecloths on the kitchen and din- 

 ing-room tables were immaculate. Another farm 

 woman showed her freshly laundered household 

 linen with pride and said, "I like to keep every- 

 thing clean and ready to use when I need it." 

 Towels, sheets, and pillowcases had been wrapped 

 in a cloth to keep out the dust. At least a third 

 of the .38 houses in the village which were visited 

 during the course of this study ordinarily are 

 kept as clean as is possible, perhaps, under the 

 conditions of their construction. The members 

 of several families, including a few of the less 

 privileged economically, were observed always to 

 be dressed cleanly and neatly. 



Clearing the throat and spitting on the floor, 

 however, on the part of both adults and children, 

 is a generalized habit. At one of the larger houses 

 on the farms visited, dogs, cats, goats, and chickens 

 walked in the open door and roamed about at 

 will. The mother and other members of the fam- 

 ily paid little or no attention to these intrusions, 

 even when the animals defecated on the earthen 

 floor. Wlien the 11-month-old baby wished to 

 urinate, his aunt, who was leaning up against the 

 kitchen door holding him, merely turned his body 

 slightly away. Later, a 3-year-old boy went over 

 in a coiner to urinate by the kitchen stove. 



The floor of the kitchen in the house of a vil- 

 lager was covered with peanut shells and other 



refuse. A goat was sleeping in the center of the 

 room. None of the clothing of the grandmother, 

 mother, or children had been washed for a long 

 time. When the 8-month-old baby dropped on 

 the earthen floor a piece of bread which his mother 

 had given him to eat, one of the other children 

 picked it up out of the dirt and handed it to the 

 mother who dusted it off slightly and gave it back 

 to the baby. 



One of the more obvious facts noticed about farm 

 dwellings is the care given to keeping the terreiro 

 clean. The terreiro is a space around the house 

 completely cleared of vegetation. It is usually 

 somewhat more extensive to the front and back of 

 the house than along the sides. It is swept daily to 

 remove all free dust from the hard-packed earth. 

 Not uncommonly, it is kept cleaner than the floors 

 inside the house. A farm mother who was ob- 

 served carefully sweeping the terreiro remarked, 

 "I always like to keep it very clean." 



The discrepancy often seen between the cleanly 

 swept terreiro outside and the less cleanly kept 

 earthen floors inside is difficult to understand from 

 a hygienic point of view. It is perhaps possible 

 that the terreiro is one of the few traits of Indian 

 origin still extant in the local culture. A farmer 

 who was asked why flowers or other plants were 

 not put around his house, replied, as if the state- 

 ment were self-explanatory, "But that's the place 

 for the terreiro?^ Another farmer, however, who 

 was asked the same question, gave the rather plau- 

 sible reply, "We keep it clean so that the bickos *^ 

 won't get in the house. If there was anything 

 close up to the building, they would come right 

 in." In fact, the terreiro would seem to be a 

 rather necessary precaution, considering the pres- 

 ence in the region, in considerable numbers, of 

 scorpions, poisonous snakes and spiders, and 

 other noxious pests, and that all land which is 

 not periodically cleared is soon covered over with 

 dense growth. 



Although the range of behavior varies from 

 family to family, bathing is relatively infrequent 

 and usually only a part of the body is washed at a 

 time. By the i^hrase "taking a bath," local inhabi- 

 tants usually mean washing the feet or some other 

 part that is especially dirty. To take a hanho de 

 assento is to wash the lower extremities from the 

 waist down. The older children sometimes bathe 



' Any animal, reptile, or insect is called a bicho. 



