the clay pot

The pot has a shape that always got me thinking. The clay has components that always got me wondering. The clay pot, a combination of my thinking and wondering. I have never taken time to analyze the reason for such. 

In the African tradition, the clay pot is a very symbolic item. “I have not heard about the it, but I have seen a lot of samples” do you think so?

It is said to be used in the olden times before the knowledge of metal pot. I have always imagined the scene where an African lady would carry a clay pot on her way to the stream. Her careful steps not to lose the clay pot which is fragile.

I heard stories as a child about the cautions mothers gave daughters who went to stream with the clay pot.

I remember vividly the midnight stories my relative told me way back, about a girl who went to a stream to fetch water and mistakenly, on her way back, the pot fell and was broken. She cried all the way home to sing to her mother about the pot.

The song “nne nne Udum araputam o” 
( mother, my pot has implicated me: meaning "my pot is broken") 

Would ring in some minds who heard such a story.

I remember also as a child how grandma sent me to a room where we had water in a    clay pot. Although we had refrigerator for cold water, yet she preferred the cool water from the clay pot. I also drank the water from the pot and I could till today tell the difference. Yes, the refrigerator is a good technology made easy. I can have cold water from it, but yet incomparable to that from the clay pot. The natural taste, so filling.

It is said that the water from the clay pot is not very clean compared to the filtered water and I would ask: what about making it cleaner? The content of the clay is so obvious (today known as ceramics). Our ancestors drank from the clay pot and lived. Do you think if we do same we would not live?

In my thoughts, what about having a design for the clay pot. Storing filtered water, making it safe and free from germs. This would give us a safe and free water.

The clay pot has many uses. Have you ever thought of how our ancestors cooked? How did they eat? Still the clay pot. Tell me your little stories about the clay pot.