October 29
2016
We got up
around 3:00 AM for a trip to the airport after three hours sleep. We flew to
Kolkata about 2.5 hours then caught a short hop to Dimapur in the state of
Nagaland in extreme NE India on the border with Myanmar
(Burma).
For a little background, Nagaland is considered the ‘wild east’ of India. Until recently some 16 head hunting Naga
tribes fought off any intruders. The last incidence of head hunting occurred in
the 1960’s. I don’t have the history but the missionaries arrived and helped to
stop the practice and today this state is 90% Christian: Baptist, Revival and
Catholic.
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| A truck and a bus going in opposite directions on the narrow road |
A taxi met us
and whisked us away towards Kohima, the capital. Our driver drove like a bat
out of hell, passing everything in sight and did a good job but making us a wee
bit nervous passing cars on blind curves with a narrow two lane mountain road. The trip is two hours traveling 42 miles (68 km). We started with
paved albeit narrow road with no real shoulders. However as we started the climb
up the mountains the pavement was history and what remained was sub base and
native soil. I felt like I was on a ride at the fairgrounds, being jostled much
more than was comfortable. My brain was rattling around in my skull. The rocks
in the road were large as were the holes. Some places were mud and some heavy
trucks were mired in the mud. At times the driver drove on the other side of
the road because it was less muddy or fewer boulders. It was exhausting and I
arrived dreading the return trip in four days.
Our lodging
in Kohima was basic, including bucket showers. If you haven’t experienced this
let me describe it for you. There the hot water was in the hallway which we
could access from our bathroom. So I took a bucket out there flipped the geyser
switch and waited ten minutes and came back to fill the bucket. Since the water
was scalding I only needed to fill it half way. Then I carried in into the
shower area, no curtain and large 30 gal plastic container filled with cold
water taking up half the space. So I added cold water to my bucket and proceeded
to dip a two cup vessel in my bucket, poured the water over my body then soaped
up. You now get the picture.
The town is
located on steep terrain and the surrounding hills are quite beautiful. There
are areas in town where you can cut in between buildings and travel to the next
level up or down by taking stairs. Because of the elevation it is cool here,
requiring sweaters and heavy pants in the evenings and mornings as opposed to very thin and light cotton. I
love it after the brutal heat of Ahmedabad.
The staff was
terrific. We had a good view out of our bedroom of the mountains and town. The
sky is so blue and the clouds are magnificent. It was about 3:30 when we
arrived so we asked for a restaurant recommendation for lunch and headed a few
blocks away for some fried rice. Back to
the hotel to stretch out and rest from a long day. At this point we discovered
I did not have my eye medication. I take three prescriptions for glaucoma for a
total of six times a day to maintain the correct eye pressure. I couldn’t
figure out how I lost them. Then we realized what had happened.
Airport security
in India requires the
traveler to put the carryon bags, purses etc on the same kind of scanner we
have in the US.
So I took my meds out and put them in a tray and then the men and women are separated
for the body scan. That’s because the women go into a room that has curtains
for privacy because the female staff member not only waves a wand over the
traveler’s body but also rubs her hands over your breasts, pubic region and
between your legs. Good lord! A little too much. So it takes longer for women
to get through the process. Ron finished before me, so he picked up my purse,
sweater and carry on bag and off we went leaving the meds behind at security.
He didn’t know I had taken them out of my purse and I was so discombobulated by
security that I forget about it. So we went to a pharmacy and no luck but the
person there pointed up the street to the hospital pharmacy and I found one of
the three needed items. I just had to hope for the best because we were in a
remote area. We ate a simple meal at the lodge and I think we were the only
guests. For these 3 meds at home we pay about $500per month as co-pay. This med was only $7.50 with no insurance.
October 30
We got up
early and after breakfast we visited the WWII cemetery. There was a significant
64 day battle here between the Brits and Japanese. 1400 British, Commonwealth
and Indian soldiers are buried here. The battle was informally named the ‘tennis
court battle’ because this area had been the area where the Brits had their
club and tennis courts.
We are
transferring to our host’s second facility which is closer to the tribal villages
we will visit today. It is about 9 miles up the road from Kohima. This area
feels much more like Asia than India.
If you look at the map of India,
there is a tentacle in the NE that stretches over Bangladesh
and connects several states to India.
Nagaland is one of those states. People’s physical features, the way the
villages were laid out and the terrain which is mountainous all contributed to
the feeling of Asia. On our drive we saw huge, beautiful
Poinsettias, both red and white. On the way to Kigwema we stopped at Kisama Heritage
Village where the famous
Hornbill festival takes place. This village has a representative selection of
Naga houses and morungs (think bachelor dorms). We walked around for about an
hour taking photos and enjoying the various buildings. Some needed maintenance
but overall it was a good experience.
We drove
further to Kigwema and checked into our lodge. This is a family home built in
the late 1990’s and designed by an architect. It is truly beautiful and its
décor is accented with wonderful Naga weavings including several of the Naga
shawls from different tribes. Each tribe wears specific colors.
We then
toured two villages in this area, both Angami tribal villages. It is always
humbling to see how others live and to be welcomed into their villages is an
honor from our perspective. As we toured Mema, the first village we were amazed
at how ‘tight’ everything was in terms of space. Given that the village was on
steep terrain, houses are close together, yards were tiny but filled with
flowers, plants and veggies growing in very small spaces.
Each home had neatly stacked wood, often
forming a wall around the house. This is used for heating and historically cooking (but since gas delivery has come to the area most residents have switched to gas cookers). The
lanes were narrow so walking single file was necessary and the lanes were lined
with rocks. Typically the front yard is used for chicken and pig pens.
People were
coming from church, the men wearing their colorful hand woven heavy cotton
shawls. Our guide, Nino, is well known here as she is promoting tourism to
Nagaland. She encourages villagers to open their homes to tourists for home
stays. So she is greeted warmly. Nino is a Naga from the Angami tribe. One
couple invited us for tea and we readily accepted.
Their home was two stories
but we sat in the kitchen on the ground floor. They had a fire going in the
open hearth; the home was constructed of concrete which is one of the better
homes as some are made from either woven bamboo strips or thin stalks of bamboo
that is then coated with mud mixed with dung which makes a plaster like
coating. They had a three burner gas cooker like ours and a electric tea
kettle.
Most of the
tribal people are farmers growing rice in terraced paddies. We were surprised
to learn that they do not sell the
rice but keep it for their own use. As we exited
we counted seven large wicker grain keepers in the storage area outside the
house. I asked how many of these they would use in one year. The answer was
one. That means they have six in reserve. These grain keepers are at least five
feet high and have a diameter of at least three feet if not four feet. They are
huge. We asked how they retrieved the rice and they said a small person (child?)
would crawl in to get the rice. HA! Who knew? We also saw places where they
dried the rice outside in the sun on woven bamboo mats or the ubiquitous blue
tarps. We saw logs that had been carved with mortar and pestle for grinding
rice for rice beer. We had never seen anything like this.
While sitting in the kitchen and having tea we
were joined by the gentleman who invited us, his wife, his two adult sisters
and his mother. All treated us as honored guests. The man’s wife worked for the
state so that provided the family with income. We were served bananas, moong dal
(a dry crispy dal) and hot tea. The funniest thing is one woman was making tea
in the kitchen and another woman was making tea upstairs. She arrived carrying
a tray of milk tea which is the common way tea is drunk here and didn’t realize
the other woman was pouring black tea for us. We all laughed. The kitchen was a
large room and we sat against the wall on a bench with a cushion. It was a
lovely experience.
As we walked
we passed several places where young men or older boys were doing their
laundry. We learned that each khel or clan within the village has their own
water ‘basin’ for lack of a better description. There were five khels in this
village. I asked the age of the boys and learned they were early teens and told
them I was impressed and that our sons learned to do their own laundry at a similar
age. Of course the difference was these boys were doing everything by hand and
our boys had a machine instead of a bucket.
We went to
another village and watched men working to erect a tennis like net using the dao, the knife
used in head hunting, to shape stakes to help hold the net for a game they were
about to play.
We also talked to a gentleman who was sitting with other men in
front of the morung who spoke great English asked if we were having a good
experience in Nagaland. We said enthusiastically ‘yes’ and he replied ‘then I
am happy’.
We entered the morung and
there was a communal bed where the boys would have slept. This was a simple
single slab of wood that was about six feet wide and 15 feet long. Here is
where young boys would have learned the lore of their culture. The Nagas appear
to be a proud and very friendly culture, a big shift from their former days of
head hunting where it was considered manly to bring home the head of your
enemy.
Two young
boys were flying a kite and took to following us for awhile, making sure we saw
that they knew how to fly a kite. Numerous times they would send the kite aloft
and look to see if we were watching. Other children were playing cricket. We were surprised to see that many people
spoke English. Apparently this is another part of the missionary legacy. The
government provides elementary education but secondary is done by private
institutions. Higher education requires students to leave the area which is
hard on the parents due to the cost.
Since this
area is 90% Christian, cows are eaten here. In Hindu states it is against the
law to kill cows. So as a mark of status, when a wealthy man was building his
home there would be a big feast and the villagers would be invited. The carvings on the front of his house would
reflect how many cows had been butchered for the feast. Each cow head that was
carved represented one cow.
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| Village elders - Man on right showed us the viewpoint |
At one point
a man approached us and wanted
to show us a view point so we followed him
through a winding path up and down some stairs and got a beautiful view
overlooking their paddies. They were growing rice, millet, corn, guava, beans
and pomelo, a member of the grapefruit family that is meaty and not very sour.
He mentioned that they had bee hives too. I asked if they were having die offs of
the bees like much of the world and he said no; they don’t use any pesticides.
There crops were organic. Impressive!
We spoke with older man who was sitting
in the sun in the village square wearing a beautiful purple shawl. He is 88
years old. Because we are at a higher altitude it is cooler here. All the
adults were wearing either a homemade shawl or a store bought shawl. We didn’t
see jackets.
Women wore sarongs, a piece of cloth that is wrapped around her
waist and tucked into the waist. The women where we had tea changed into
western wear when they got home from church. We don’t know if this is an
influence from the missionaries or not. Perhaps the US churches send clothing to the
villages. We don’t have an answer but found it unusual to see western wear in
such a remote area. We saw no commercial activity and assume there is little
and that Sunday is a day of rest here.
MORE VILLAGE SCENES
Back at the
hotel we rested. Later we met a 15 year old girl who was with her ‘sister’ who
was a friend of Nino’s. Apparently the friend came to Kigwema to wash her
clothes because of the expense of water where she lived in Kohima. Hard to
believe that it is worth the expense of petrol which is very expensive in
Ahmedabad. Not sure of the price here since we are close to Assam which is
oil rich. The 15 year old asked to have photos of us. She took multiple photos with her phone. We
were reading our ebooks in the living room when this occurred and she asked to
see the photos thinking our ebooks were cell phones. We told her we didn’t have
any photos on the ebooks.
Ron got his phone out and she sat very close to him
and nestled her head on his shoulder
which melted my heart right then and
there. We learned later that her dad was dead, her mom had to work very hard to
support three kids and that Nino’s friend was not her sister but had taken
Sunita under her wing and brought Sunita to live with her so that it would
relieve the mom of so much responsibility and to give Sunita more opportunities
in life. Sunita was shy about speaking English, saying she didn’t do a good job
and that it was so hard for her. We told her she was easy to understand and to
keep practicing.
While we having dinner by the hearth in the kitchen she wrote us a note that said “I like people who are very smart just like
both of you. Thank you and may God bless you”.
I wrote her a note to keep and said ‘We also like smart people and we like sweet people... Just like you. Stay sweet and stay in school to get even smarter.”
She said “I want to see your money”. It took a few seconds to realize she
wanted to see what US dollars looked like but of course we don’t carry dollars
in India but Ron had a dime and a penny in his carry-on so I gave her these to
keep so she would remember us.
