ολοκύθι γιά αΐ και συμπεθέροι γιά συγγενείς (pumpkin for meat [literally: ‘food’] and in-laws for relatives).

The village family is a web of vital dependencies among its members: mother-wife, husband-father, children and grandparents. Each person has a place in the system, is sustained by it, contributes to it (especially as an adult), and is concerned about its well-being. To the villagers, interaction with relatives, neighbours, and friends is the spice that gives life its savor; but it is the family that sustains and gives meaning to life…. People perceive the family as the natural solution to the division into male and female, each with different skills and roles. Each sex is deficient without the other; each complements the other's aptitudes and natures.

The great importance of the family to the villagers rests partially on the fact that it is the only enduring social group with which they identify and to which their energy is directed. The family has many and diverse functions and is embedded in nearly every sphere of life…. the family constitutes an economic team that farms its holdings and most of the non-agricultural pursuits of contemporary villagers are also carried out as family operations. Even now, with the advent of bank loans, it is still the case that the holdings and wealth of a given family economic team originate mostly through inheritance and dowry from the family groups in which a father and mother were reared.[…]