We go head to head with the erstwhile head hunting Nagas

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.

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. 

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.