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The female Weaver bird in Botswana requires her mate to build the perfect home for her or she will reject it… sometimes dozens of times until she is happy!
The homes of the indigenous San People of the Kalahari Desert in Botswana have similar qualities to those of the Weaver Bird but unlike the birds, the female Sans are the main gatherers of their people and take on most of the task of home-building so are not likely to reject the end result. Simple, beautiful and functional, both human and bird have crafted homes from materials gathered from their environments; vernacular architecture at its best.
The gallery below contains images of a hut that is partially constructed, showing the intricate details, texture and rhythm of the materials used to build the home. Insulating walls are made with horizontal branches sandwiched between a vertical assembly of branches. The structural members of the roof are assembled in a cylindrical pattern to soon hold the thatch still being collected and dried.
— Jill Bosshart
Periwinkle Porte 
Reblogged this on taijanic0le's Blog and commented:
Very interesting article to read, hard to imagine building your own house as a woman. the detail that goes into the huts that from afar may look very simplistic and almost thrown together is mind boggling! kudos to those women! to be the main gathers as well as the main ones constructing the roof over the heads of the families, what an awesome responsibility.
Glad you enjoyed the post! Quite an amazing and intricate endeavor – and so different from what we are familiar with in the states, yet we can definitely learn from the apparent simplicity of it all.
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