maylands - the pan hoarder
a couple doors from sherwood lives an african woman who decorates the roof of her shed with pots and pans. there are dozens of them and they have been on this shed for years, growing in number and spreading all over her yard.
i'd understand if they were turned the right way up, but the pots are all upside down and the rain just bounces off.
google says in india, people put pots on their roof as a natural cooling system because the pots create pockets of air that heat cant get through - but this only works with clay pots, not cast iron and stainless steel.
as wrong as it feels to ask the question, could this be an africa thing? i asked chat gpt why my african neighbour was putting pots and pans on her roof and it said it didnt know. perhaps it would help if i specified what culture, country or ethnic group she was from. i didnt know. i asked chatgpt to list every ethnocultural group in the continent and for each group provide the three most likely reasons for decorating the roof with pots and pans.
out of the three thousand ethnocultural groups in africa, chatgpt said all their reasons would be the same.
the most likely reason is "roof maintenance". the second most is "deterring birds" (because birds hate the sound of tinkling rain on stainless steel). the third most likely reason is "personal expression".
i feel bad for asking such a big prompt. scraping the data for 3000 cultural groups probably consumed a swimming pool's worth of water. probably as much water as my african neighbour would have saved in a year if she turned her pots and pans the right side up.