.... in between the two huts of my late grand uncle is a wide passage that passes by another hut belonging to yet another memberof the extended family and tappers to a narrow winding and descending pathway as one mianders through the farmlands to a stream less than a kilometer away.
Facing my grandmothers hut while backing my house the main road that led to my compound comes into the compound from the left handside.
To the back of my grad dads's hut was a huge barn in which the yam tubers of the whole compound are stored in racks and on raised platform after harvest. The barn is fenced around with small and big trees some of which are economical like the local pear tree. I will not tell you what I did on top of those trees even when there were restrictions. There were two pear trees to the south of the barn. The fruit of both of them were very oily and delicious but the smaller one situated at left hand of the barn as one enters from the north wasextraordinarily delicious and I seemed to be the only one with one of my uncles that could access the fruits. yum!
Before harvest, the gaps between the trees are are filled up with palm fronds and supported with extra logs of wood where necessary mainly to protect the harvests from rampage goats and other yam eating animals.
The fencing is carried out by tying two halves of split bamboo together one on each side of the tree line so that there will be a space in between them. Sometimes, the palm branches devoid of the leaves are used in stead of the bamboos. There are two sets of such setups in the framework. The tying material is a flexible layer scraped out of the inner side the palm branches.
When the tying is over, the palm fronds are inserted through the hollow created by the trees and logs all rounf the barn leaving on one entrance which serves also as the exit. the entrance is guided by a door made of grasses weaved to a wooden back bone.
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