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This is what I learned:
- The Kalash people live only in the 3 villages of the Kalasha valley.
-Language: the people of the Kalasha Valley speak a unique unwritten language called Kalash.
-Religion: They practice a pagan religion called Kalash. They often sacrifice goats for various reasons to please their god Mohadeo. Most serious religious ceremonies take place at their spiritual house called the Gestikan. The Gestikan is full of animal figures and effigies, and is a place commonly used for birth and death rituals. The Malosh is a holy place near the village where sacrifices are commonly made to Mohadeo. They believe in only one god, but a god with several deities that protect various aspects of life.
-Birth: - A holy ritual is performed at the Gestikan and a goat is sacrificed.
-Death:- if the deceased age is 10 years or older, all three Kalash villages will congregate and sacrifice 50-70 goats and a few cows. The body is placed in the Gestikan for two days, villagers visit the body during this period in order to pay their respects. The leaders/elders of each village will give speeches about the life and accomplishments of the deceased. The villagers then have a large feast of cheese, bread and joosh (boiled goat), they use up 40-50 bags of flower during the celebration. They also drink their fair share of home made wine and brandy during the funeral ceremonies. Bodies are buried in the village graveyard called the modokjol.
-Women: wear traditional clothes at all times. They produce all their clothing by hand and are all masters of their craft. Small tattoos on the faces of women are a sign of beauty and maturity.
-All women are considered unclean during menstruation (5-6 days a month), and are forced out of their homes to a small female only house called the beshali. The beshali has a yard but there is a line in the yard that they are forbidden to cross until they are “clean”. They are not to be touched by anyone during this period, and are not allowed to converse with other men.
-After childbirth, the Kalash woman must go through a purity ritual, and is sent to the beshali for ten full days.
-Marriage: Kalash villagers usually get married between the ages of 18-22.
Women are expected to maintain their virginity until marriage; men are not.
People get married only after falling in love, marriages are never prearranged. The man will surprise the woman and her family by randomly kidnapping her, after they elope the families will then meet. The families then have a month to get to know each other and to agree with the marriage and decide the dowry (gift from groom’s parents). After this is settled, they will perform a ritual, and sacrifice a goat to make the marriage official.
Festivals: The Kalash celebrate several festivals, most have to do with the beginning of harvest seasons. Timuk’s favorite festival is Chomus. It takes place December 18-20, and each family must sacrifice a goat for the celebration. The festival is full of dancing, eating, and drinking mass quantities of home made wine. (I imagine this is why Timuk likes it so much).Joshi festival is the festival of spring, and lasts an entire week. The heart of the festival is between May 13th-16th. Each of the three villages hosts one day of the festival with a large dance and celebration.
-Bumboret is the largest of the Kalash villages, and Birir is the smallest(Rumber is obviously somewhere in the middle).
Where on earth did they come from ??????
-There are three accepted theories to this question, however they have all remained inconclusive.
1) They are descendants of Alexander the Great’s soldiers, which makes them more or less Macedonian immigrants. This is plausible because Alexander the Great did in fact trample through Northern Pakistan sometime during the 4th century BC. He was also known to have occasionally planted groups of soldiers to start cities throughout his conquered lands. And of course the Kalash people generally have quite fair skin
2) They are from Asia, and migrated from the Nuristan area of Afghanistan.
3) The Kalash people migrated to Afghanistan from a place in South-Asia that the Kalash people call Tsiyam. The land of Tsiyam is talked about in Kalash folk songs, and their epic stories.
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