Although people are always to be seen passing back and forth between villages, for most individuals a visit to another village is a comparative rarity. Women visit their natal homes at least once a year; children go to see uncles and aunts; animals, food and utensils are borrowed and returned, or bought and sold; craftsman are hired; cures and charms and advice sought; marriages discussed and arranged; weddings and funerals attended; the sick visited; loans asked, given, and repaid; crops shared, grain milled, border land disputed; refreshment and shelter offered and accepted. Even when kinship is not directly the occasion for contact, it almost always provides a channel.
On one occasion, Bektesh was escorting me from the town out to Sakaltutan on foot in deep snow. We arrived at the village before Sakaltutan late in the day and near exhaustion. We stopped to rest at the house of his nearest kinsman, the husband of a second paternal cousin, (father's father's brother's son's daughter), whom he called sister's husband, (enishte ), and were pressed to stay the night. Somewhat reluctantly, Bektesh agreed. On two occasions, to my knowledge, he went secretly to matrilateral kin in another village for a loan, once because his food supply was exhausted, and once because he needed treatment from a religious expert for a malady which he believed the doctor unable to cure. On another occasion, when two or three of us were setting out to negotiate for a bride from a somewhat distant village, we met a man of Sakaltutan, kin to our party, whose current wife - his second - was from the village we were to visit. He at once offered to come with us, partly to see his affines, partly to use his influence on our behalf- unsuccessfully as it transpired.