I was up about 7 on the morning of the 24th in Itanagar. Clouds again filled the sky, though the sun came out about 8 or 9, though there were still plenty of clouds in the sky. I walked over to the open market and saw a skinny old man wearing a small bamboo wicker hat with a hornbill beak and a long feather attached to it. His black hair was tied in a knot just above his forehead. I also saw thick yellow caterpillars, about two inches long, on sale.
I left on a sumo bound for the Ziro Valley, north of Itanagar, about 10:30. The sun was out on departure, but the sky soon clouded up. The ride was comfortable, with only four passengers. It took us about 20 minutes just to go the two or three miles along the clogged road through town to the outskirts, from where we headed downhill to the new train station five miles from town. The tracks had just reached Itanagar and train service had just begun. My map showed no direct road from Itanagar to the Ziro Valley through Arunachal Pradesh, so I thought we would have to travel through Assam. However, soon after the train station we turned north on a muddy new road through the forested hills along a river. On this new road we made a ten or fifteen minute stop, along with a bunch of other vehicles, while a backhoe cleared a landslide. A friendly crowd got out of their vehicles to watch the work in progress. An old man with a long machete in a scabbard on his back came up to me to touch the hair on my arms. A young guy in my sumo also had a long machete in a scabbard.
We eventually crossed the river and zigzagged up a ridge to 3500 feet and the village of Potin on the old road, where we had a tea stop. From Potin we headed down on the old road to a river and a dam at about 2000 feet, crossed the river, followed it for about five miles, and then climbed again through forested hills. I saw lots of bamboo and much other vegetation. Pines began to appear at about 4000 feet. The sun came out occasionally. The countryside was lovely.
A sign marked the summit at 5754 feet, and then we drove down to the little town of Hapoli at about 5100-5200 feet, arriving about 3:30. The clouds in the sky were now dark. I checked into a drab, cold hotel (my room temperature consistently seemed to be about 63 or 64 degrees), and took a walk around town, checking out sumos and looking, unsuccessfully, for a better hotel. Hapoli is at the southern end of the Ziro Valley and I walked up to a hill in town with good views of the little valley to the north. A few raindrops fell about 5:30 as I headed back to my hotel. I saw a woman with black nose plugs and a basket on her back. I have read that the reason Apatani girls and women were tattooed and fitted with nose plugs is that in the past, because of their beauty, they were kidnapped by neighboring Nishi tribes. The tattooing is on the lower face, a little like beards. The nose plugs fit into holes on both sides of the nose, considerably enlarging and spreading out the nose.
Early the next morning I walked to the open market in town. There wasn't a lot to see, though I did see some interesting stuff on sale: bamboo shoots, banana flowers, and six little piles of small black bugs. I saw one old woman with nose plugs and tattoos.
About 8:30 I started a walked through the valley to the smaller town of Ziro, only about four miles to the north, and spent most of the day wandering through villages and rice paddies along the way. The sun came out occasionally during the day, but the skies were mostly cloudy. I followed the main road out of Hapoli, potholed with very muddy shoulders and soon took a turn off to the east on a dirt road leading to the village of Hong, a village set up against the hills on the eastern side of the valley. I didn't go to Hong, but rather walked through rice paddies, turning off the road onto another dirt road that became a path paralleling the main road. Lots of women were planting rice. One old woman had nose plugs. I walked along the narrow dirt dikes of the paddies in places. In a little pool off an irrigation ditch I watched two guys catching fish. One used a bamboo racket to stir up the water along the sides of the pond and chase fish into a net held in the water by the other. The fish caught were very small, less than an inch long.
The small valley is flat and filled with rice paddies, with hills on either side and a river running through it. I again reached the main road and crossed to another village on the west side, where I saw some more women with nose plugs. The houses are made of wood and bamboo, but now all have metal roofs. I reached more rice paddies at the far end of the village and watched four little boys knee deep in the mud of an irrigation ditch catching very small fish with a net and with their hands. Walking through the paddies on a dirt path, I saw a very old woman with nose plugs carrying a basket on her back. She stopped, put down her basket, and started picking up some very small fish left on the dike of a rice paddy. Occasionally I saw frogs jumping in the water of the paddies.
Four women, two older and two younger, were working together in a small bamboo fenced paddy full of densely packed rice sprouts, bright green, ready to be replanted elsewhere. I walked over to watch. The younger two were pulling out clumps of the rice sprouts, while the older two were weeding the dike. They were friendly, the older two women talking to me in Apatani while the younger two continued to work silently. One of the older ones, with nose plugs and tattoos, brought me over a little bunch of yellow wildflowers that had been growing on the dike. The other one also had tattoos, but no nose plugs, though she did have slits on the sides of her nose for the plugs. I asked if I could take some photos and they let me. I kept watching them and that made them laugh.
About 11:30 they took their lunch break, after one of the young women checked the time on her smart phone! She spoke some English and told me that woman with nose plugs was her mother, the other older woman her aunt, and the other young woman her older sister. Her father, a thin, wizened guy joined them for lunch. He had been using a hoe to beat on the dirt of a nearby dike enclosing a paddy full of newly planted rice sprouts.
They shared their lunch with me, and I shared what little food I had brought, just some peanuts. Their lunch was sweet rolls, hot tea (from a thermos), and rice wine. The mother gave me a full plastic cup of tea and a full plastic cup of rice wine. I think she told me the wine is called "Oh." She asked her daughter to ask me to sing something, so I sang "The Battle Hymn of the Republic." I had once been told, decades ago, that that is the one American song everyone knows. I doubt that is true, and especially among the Apatani. She asked for another song, so I sang "Help." I then asked her to sing a song and she sang a couple, the last one very beautiful. As she sang, her daughter leaned her arm on her mother's shoulder. The mother served me another half cup of rice wine, with hot tea added. Her daughters drank no wine, but I noticed her sister particularly enjoyed it. After about a 45 minute lunch break. they went back to work and I walked on.
I continued walking through the paddies, with rice planting and dike construction to be seen along the way. I took a short detour into the hills covered with pines and found some freshly sawed lumber stacked together. Through the paddies I soon reached a large village, called Hija, with friendly people. Almost every house had some sort of totem in front of it, only two or three feet high and made of bamboo, egg shells, and feathers. A young guy showed me around the village for a while and said they were put there when someone was sick. The Apatani are small people (my guide was 5 foot, three inches, he told me) and he introduced me to a guy he described as the tallest person in the village, at five feet, eight inches.
In the village I also saw several very high poles, maybe 20 or 30 feet high, with pieces of wood dangling from cords from the crosspieces at the tops of the poles. And I saw several small wooden buildings, too small for people. A few women with nose plugs were around, too. As I was leaving the village I came across a thin old man with his hair gathered in front, in a sort of top knot, just over his forehead, and with some sort of thin stick, maybe a foot long, in it.
Leaving the village I reached again the main road and walked along it to Ziro, a little more than a half mile away. There isn't much to see in Ziro, though I did see some more women with nose plugs. I walked through the small town and back. The valley seems to end and hills rise again just beyond the town. An airport is under construction on the valley floor next to town. About 4 I caught a tempo back to Hapoli and stopped in at the market, now more active than in the morning. A couple of ladies with nose plugs were selling greens alongside the road behind the market. In the covered market itself only four piles of bugs remained. Two piles must have been sold since morning.
The next day was cloudy, with rare sunshine. A light rain fell in the early morning as I visited the market, which had few vendors and customers, maybe because it was a Sunday morning. About 8:30 I walked out of Hapoli heading for Hong village, which I reached on a muddy dirt road under a light rain. I saw an old woman with nose plugs pulling out clumps of rice from a paddy right next to her wood and bamboo house at the edge of the village. I also saw some tall narrow wood and bamboo buildings that perhaps are rice storage barns. The sun came out briefly over the quiet, scenic village. Not a lot of people were out and about. As on the day before, I think a lot of them were already out in the rice paddies.
From Hong I walked north on a dirt road along the east side of the little valley with rice paddies to my left and sometimes to my right. Bamboo and pine trees grew along the road and in the nearby hills. I came to another dirt road that cut across the valley to the first village I had visited the day before on the west side of the main road, and walked to that village again. I wandered through that village and then south to a nearby village called Michi Bamin, up against the hills on the western side of the valley.
I followed a path up an incline to the top of the village, up against the edge of the forest, and came across a small Baptist church. Two little girls were hiding (from me, I think) behind a flat stone erected on the ground with the Ten Commandments written on it in Apatani. I could see a woman praying inside with her hands raised. Another woman, the mother of the two little girls, came out and tried to reassure them I meant no harm.
I walked up into the forest of bamboo and pine, rising about 400 feet above the valley floor, with a few good views of the valley and hills beyond through the trees. In places bamboo fences lined the steep and muddy path. I picked up three leeches, one on each foot and one on my leg. I came upon a young couple repairing a gate. As I headed back down to the village, they passed me carrying bamboo on their heads. The little Baptist church was deserted when I passed by it again, at about 2.
I walked through the friendly village. As I was leaving it on its southern end, a man working in a paddy called out to me and posed for a photo. His son was kicking around a mostly deflated soccer ball and we kicked it back and forth. The son spoke some English. I walked back to Hapoli on the main road. There seemed to be fewer workers in the paddies than the day before. In marshes just west of the main road big clumps of purple flowers grew. I got back to Hapoli after 4 and visited the market.
The next morning I didn't get up until after 7 and went to the market, where I met an Indian couple from Guwahati in Assam. They had come to the Ziro Valley to buy kiwis to sell in Guwahati and were heading to a kiwi farm north of Ziro. On the way they dropped me off at the village of Mudang Tage between Hapoli and Ziro about 9. I walked just south to an almost adjacent village called Dutta on another cloudy day.
While I was wandering around Dutta I met a young guy, about 20, who offered to show me his mother's house, made of wood and bamboo and raised above the ground. We entered from the bamboo porch and the interior was dark, with no windows. No one was there. A clay stove was on the floor. Firewood and a big slab of pork were stored on shelves near the ceiling. On the walls hung a basket and a picture of Jesus. We went out onto the back porch, also made of bamboo, with a pig sty just below it. His mother, with nose plugs, came in and was friendly.
He next took me to his brother's house, a few houses away. It was more modern, made of concrete and wood, but still had a fire on the floor in a dark interior. Several women were inside, including the mother of a two-day old baby girl. He led me out back where about 20 men and boys were preparing for a feast the next day to celebrate the new birth. They were all very friendly and I ended up spending about five hours there.
When I got there they were killing chickens, plucking out their feathers after immersing the chickens in hot water, singeing the featherless chickens with a blow torch, and then pulling out their innards. The chickens were eventually cut up into pieces, the edible organs separated, and the intestines cleaned with water from a bucket. I was given a stool, rice wine, and milk tea as I watched and talked with them.
They were working for the most part under an overhang behind the house. Further back in the yard grew millet and vegetables. Nearby several men were cooking chicken organs and intestines stuffed into bamboo sections, with some green vegetables stuffed in on top, over an open fire. I went out to watch. The cooking done, they used machetes to cut the bamboo open and we ate the contents, which tasted spicy. Some other bamboo sections had bamboo shoots and leafy green vegetables mixed in with the chicken organs and intestines. I also ate some roasted bamboo shoots, which were delicious. Other bamboo sections had liver and blood cooked together in them, which looked like shit and tasted like liver. I was happy when they gave me a can of Sprite to help wash away that taste.
I walked back to the overhang as huge slabs, maybe five feet by four feet, of pork were brought out of the house to be cut up. A man used a machete to saw through the tough meat, making strips about four inches long. As he did, dozens of white maggots sprouted from the pork. The strips were then cut into more or less square blocks with a machete whacked by a piece of wood. The pieces, maggots and all, were then placed into baskets. I was told that each chunk of pork, along with a chicken piece and a hard boiled egg, would be put into individual plastic bags for the guests the next day. Three hundred women were expected. It seems the feast the next day would be primarily, or maybe even solely, for women.
More chickens were being killed. The men used a machete, but not to chop their heads off. Instead, they whacked the back of the chickens' heads with the dull side of the machete. Some flopped around quite a lot and needed extra blows. Once the chickens were cut up into pieces, the pieces were tied together with bamboo strips and boiled, then hung up along a wall under the overhang. I was told they would be roasted the next day before being placed in the plastic bags with the pork and hard boiled eggs.
I spent a lot of time just sitting on my stool and talking to whoever came over to talk to me during their breaks from other activities. Three quiet old men sat nearby on their stools. One introduced himself to me, saying he was owner of the house. One young guy told me he was the head of the clan and that all the men there were part of the Chinging clan. Women came out occasionally from the house. Two or three of them wore nose plugs. It rained hard several times during the five hours I was there. Occasionally the sun came out.
Several of the young guys were particularly talkative and spoke good English. They told me the names of the seven villages in the valley: Hong, Hari, and one other whose name I didn't catch on the east side, and Michi Bamin, Mudang Tage, Dutta, and Hija on the west side. They told me that Abotani ("Father Tani") was the ancestor of not only the Apatani,, but also the Nishi, Galo, Adi, and Tagin, and that they originally came from western China, near the Yellow River. I was also told that two tigers had been caught nine years previously and that they still hunt for jungle cats and flying squirrels in the forest. One guy, I can't remember if he was old or young, asked me how many wives I had.
About three we all had lunch, brought to us by the women inside. It consisted of a bowl with a heap of clotted cold rice with a broth poured over it and a plate of chicken intestines, organs, and feet. Everyone sat around under the overhang and wolfed it down. Or maybe I should say everyone but me. I ate most of the rice, one chicken foot (well, only bits of it), and several mouthfuls of the intestines and organs.
About 3:30 or 4 I thanked them and said goodbye. Three young guys walked me from the village to the main road, past women working in rice paddies. One yelled at me and I waved to her, and she waved back. The sky was cloudy and dark, but there was no rain, as the three guys waited with me for a tempo to take me back to Hapoli. All that came by were full, so they hailed a young guy from their clan passing by and heading to Ziro, a bit more than a mile away, and had him take me there where it would be easier to get a spot in a tempo for Hapoli. In Ziro I bought some cookies to help dilute the organ taste in my mouth. I got back to Hapoli about 4:30. Rain fell again and afterwards I took a walk around town.
I left on a sumo bound for the Ziro Valley, north of Itanagar, about 10:30. The sun was out on departure, but the sky soon clouded up. The ride was comfortable, with only four passengers. It took us about 20 minutes just to go the two or three miles along the clogged road through town to the outskirts, from where we headed downhill to the new train station five miles from town. The tracks had just reached Itanagar and train service had just begun. My map showed no direct road from Itanagar to the Ziro Valley through Arunachal Pradesh, so I thought we would have to travel through Assam. However, soon after the train station we turned north on a muddy new road through the forested hills along a river. On this new road we made a ten or fifteen minute stop, along with a bunch of other vehicles, while a backhoe cleared a landslide. A friendly crowd got out of their vehicles to watch the work in progress. An old man with a long machete in a scabbard on his back came up to me to touch the hair on my arms. A young guy in my sumo also had a long machete in a scabbard.
We eventually crossed the river and zigzagged up a ridge to 3500 feet and the village of Potin on the old road, where we had a tea stop. From Potin we headed down on the old road to a river and a dam at about 2000 feet, crossed the river, followed it for about five miles, and then climbed again through forested hills. I saw lots of bamboo and much other vegetation. Pines began to appear at about 4000 feet. The sun came out occasionally. The countryside was lovely.
A sign marked the summit at 5754 feet, and then we drove down to the little town of Hapoli at about 5100-5200 feet, arriving about 3:30. The clouds in the sky were now dark. I checked into a drab, cold hotel (my room temperature consistently seemed to be about 63 or 64 degrees), and took a walk around town, checking out sumos and looking, unsuccessfully, for a better hotel. Hapoli is at the southern end of the Ziro Valley and I walked up to a hill in town with good views of the little valley to the north. A few raindrops fell about 5:30 as I headed back to my hotel. I saw a woman with black nose plugs and a basket on her back. I have read that the reason Apatani girls and women were tattooed and fitted with nose plugs is that in the past, because of their beauty, they were kidnapped by neighboring Nishi tribes. The tattooing is on the lower face, a little like beards. The nose plugs fit into holes on both sides of the nose, considerably enlarging and spreading out the nose.
Early the next morning I walked to the open market in town. There wasn't a lot to see, though I did see some interesting stuff on sale: bamboo shoots, banana flowers, and six little piles of small black bugs. I saw one old woman with nose plugs and tattoos.
About 8:30 I started a walked through the valley to the smaller town of Ziro, only about four miles to the north, and spent most of the day wandering through villages and rice paddies along the way. The sun came out occasionally during the day, but the skies were mostly cloudy. I followed the main road out of Hapoli, potholed with very muddy shoulders and soon took a turn off to the east on a dirt road leading to the village of Hong, a village set up against the hills on the eastern side of the valley. I didn't go to Hong, but rather walked through rice paddies, turning off the road onto another dirt road that became a path paralleling the main road. Lots of women were planting rice. One old woman had nose plugs. I walked along the narrow dirt dikes of the paddies in places. In a little pool off an irrigation ditch I watched two guys catching fish. One used a bamboo racket to stir up the water along the sides of the pond and chase fish into a net held in the water by the other. The fish caught were very small, less than an inch long.
The small valley is flat and filled with rice paddies, with hills on either side and a river running through it. I again reached the main road and crossed to another village on the west side, where I saw some more women with nose plugs. The houses are made of wood and bamboo, but now all have metal roofs. I reached more rice paddies at the far end of the village and watched four little boys knee deep in the mud of an irrigation ditch catching very small fish with a net and with their hands. Walking through the paddies on a dirt path, I saw a very old woman with nose plugs carrying a basket on her back. She stopped, put down her basket, and started picking up some very small fish left on the dike of a rice paddy. Occasionally I saw frogs jumping in the water of the paddies.
Four women, two older and two younger, were working together in a small bamboo fenced paddy full of densely packed rice sprouts, bright green, ready to be replanted elsewhere. I walked over to watch. The younger two were pulling out clumps of the rice sprouts, while the older two were weeding the dike. They were friendly, the older two women talking to me in Apatani while the younger two continued to work silently. One of the older ones, with nose plugs and tattoos, brought me over a little bunch of yellow wildflowers that had been growing on the dike. The other one also had tattoos, but no nose plugs, though she did have slits on the sides of her nose for the plugs. I asked if I could take some photos and they let me. I kept watching them and that made them laugh.
About 11:30 they took their lunch break, after one of the young women checked the time on her smart phone! She spoke some English and told me that woman with nose plugs was her mother, the other older woman her aunt, and the other young woman her older sister. Her father, a thin, wizened guy joined them for lunch. He had been using a hoe to beat on the dirt of a nearby dike enclosing a paddy full of newly planted rice sprouts.
They shared their lunch with me, and I shared what little food I had brought, just some peanuts. Their lunch was sweet rolls, hot tea (from a thermos), and rice wine. The mother gave me a full plastic cup of tea and a full plastic cup of rice wine. I think she told me the wine is called "Oh." She asked her daughter to ask me to sing something, so I sang "The Battle Hymn of the Republic." I had once been told, decades ago, that that is the one American song everyone knows. I doubt that is true, and especially among the Apatani. She asked for another song, so I sang "Help." I then asked her to sing a song and she sang a couple, the last one very beautiful. As she sang, her daughter leaned her arm on her mother's shoulder. The mother served me another half cup of rice wine, with hot tea added. Her daughters drank no wine, but I noticed her sister particularly enjoyed it. After about a 45 minute lunch break. they went back to work and I walked on.
I continued walking through the paddies, with rice planting and dike construction to be seen along the way. I took a short detour into the hills covered with pines and found some freshly sawed lumber stacked together. Through the paddies I soon reached a large village, called Hija, with friendly people. Almost every house had some sort of totem in front of it, only two or three feet high and made of bamboo, egg shells, and feathers. A young guy showed me around the village for a while and said they were put there when someone was sick. The Apatani are small people (my guide was 5 foot, three inches, he told me) and he introduced me to a guy he described as the tallest person in the village, at five feet, eight inches.
In the village I also saw several very high poles, maybe 20 or 30 feet high, with pieces of wood dangling from cords from the crosspieces at the tops of the poles. And I saw several small wooden buildings, too small for people. A few women with nose plugs were around, too. As I was leaving the village I came across a thin old man with his hair gathered in front, in a sort of top knot, just over his forehead, and with some sort of thin stick, maybe a foot long, in it.
Leaving the village I reached again the main road and walked along it to Ziro, a little more than a half mile away. There isn't much to see in Ziro, though I did see some more women with nose plugs. I walked through the small town and back. The valley seems to end and hills rise again just beyond the town. An airport is under construction on the valley floor next to town. About 4 I caught a tempo back to Hapoli and stopped in at the market, now more active than in the morning. A couple of ladies with nose plugs were selling greens alongside the road behind the market. In the covered market itself only four piles of bugs remained. Two piles must have been sold since morning.
The next day was cloudy, with rare sunshine. A light rain fell in the early morning as I visited the market, which had few vendors and customers, maybe because it was a Sunday morning. About 8:30 I walked out of Hapoli heading for Hong village, which I reached on a muddy dirt road under a light rain. I saw an old woman with nose plugs pulling out clumps of rice from a paddy right next to her wood and bamboo house at the edge of the village. I also saw some tall narrow wood and bamboo buildings that perhaps are rice storage barns. The sun came out briefly over the quiet, scenic village. Not a lot of people were out and about. As on the day before, I think a lot of them were already out in the rice paddies.
From Hong I walked north on a dirt road along the east side of the little valley with rice paddies to my left and sometimes to my right. Bamboo and pine trees grew along the road and in the nearby hills. I came to another dirt road that cut across the valley to the first village I had visited the day before on the west side of the main road, and walked to that village again. I wandered through that village and then south to a nearby village called Michi Bamin, up against the hills on the western side of the valley.
I followed a path up an incline to the top of the village, up against the edge of the forest, and came across a small Baptist church. Two little girls were hiding (from me, I think) behind a flat stone erected on the ground with the Ten Commandments written on it in Apatani. I could see a woman praying inside with her hands raised. Another woman, the mother of the two little girls, came out and tried to reassure them I meant no harm.
I walked up into the forest of bamboo and pine, rising about 400 feet above the valley floor, with a few good views of the valley and hills beyond through the trees. In places bamboo fences lined the steep and muddy path. I picked up three leeches, one on each foot and one on my leg. I came upon a young couple repairing a gate. As I headed back down to the village, they passed me carrying bamboo on their heads. The little Baptist church was deserted when I passed by it again, at about 2.
I walked through the friendly village. As I was leaving it on its southern end, a man working in a paddy called out to me and posed for a photo. His son was kicking around a mostly deflated soccer ball and we kicked it back and forth. The son spoke some English. I walked back to Hapoli on the main road. There seemed to be fewer workers in the paddies than the day before. In marshes just west of the main road big clumps of purple flowers grew. I got back to Hapoli after 4 and visited the market.
The next morning I didn't get up until after 7 and went to the market, where I met an Indian couple from Guwahati in Assam. They had come to the Ziro Valley to buy kiwis to sell in Guwahati and were heading to a kiwi farm north of Ziro. On the way they dropped me off at the village of Mudang Tage between Hapoli and Ziro about 9. I walked just south to an almost adjacent village called Dutta on another cloudy day.
While I was wandering around Dutta I met a young guy, about 20, who offered to show me his mother's house, made of wood and bamboo and raised above the ground. We entered from the bamboo porch and the interior was dark, with no windows. No one was there. A clay stove was on the floor. Firewood and a big slab of pork were stored on shelves near the ceiling. On the walls hung a basket and a picture of Jesus. We went out onto the back porch, also made of bamboo, with a pig sty just below it. His mother, with nose plugs, came in and was friendly.
He next took me to his brother's house, a few houses away. It was more modern, made of concrete and wood, but still had a fire on the floor in a dark interior. Several women were inside, including the mother of a two-day old baby girl. He led me out back where about 20 men and boys were preparing for a feast the next day to celebrate the new birth. They were all very friendly and I ended up spending about five hours there.
When I got there they were killing chickens, plucking out their feathers after immersing the chickens in hot water, singeing the featherless chickens with a blow torch, and then pulling out their innards. The chickens were eventually cut up into pieces, the edible organs separated, and the intestines cleaned with water from a bucket. I was given a stool, rice wine, and milk tea as I watched and talked with them.
They were working for the most part under an overhang behind the house. Further back in the yard grew millet and vegetables. Nearby several men were cooking chicken organs and intestines stuffed into bamboo sections, with some green vegetables stuffed in on top, over an open fire. I went out to watch. The cooking done, they used machetes to cut the bamboo open and we ate the contents, which tasted spicy. Some other bamboo sections had bamboo shoots and leafy green vegetables mixed in with the chicken organs and intestines. I also ate some roasted bamboo shoots, which were delicious. Other bamboo sections had liver and blood cooked together in them, which looked like shit and tasted like liver. I was happy when they gave me a can of Sprite to help wash away that taste.
I walked back to the overhang as huge slabs, maybe five feet by four feet, of pork were brought out of the house to be cut up. A man used a machete to saw through the tough meat, making strips about four inches long. As he did, dozens of white maggots sprouted from the pork. The strips were then cut into more or less square blocks with a machete whacked by a piece of wood. The pieces, maggots and all, were then placed into baskets. I was told that each chunk of pork, along with a chicken piece and a hard boiled egg, would be put into individual plastic bags for the guests the next day. Three hundred women were expected. It seems the feast the next day would be primarily, or maybe even solely, for women.
More chickens were being killed. The men used a machete, but not to chop their heads off. Instead, they whacked the back of the chickens' heads with the dull side of the machete. Some flopped around quite a lot and needed extra blows. Once the chickens were cut up into pieces, the pieces were tied together with bamboo strips and boiled, then hung up along a wall under the overhang. I was told they would be roasted the next day before being placed in the plastic bags with the pork and hard boiled eggs.
I spent a lot of time just sitting on my stool and talking to whoever came over to talk to me during their breaks from other activities. Three quiet old men sat nearby on their stools. One introduced himself to me, saying he was owner of the house. One young guy told me he was the head of the clan and that all the men there were part of the Chinging clan. Women came out occasionally from the house. Two or three of them wore nose plugs. It rained hard several times during the five hours I was there. Occasionally the sun came out.
Several of the young guys were particularly talkative and spoke good English. They told me the names of the seven villages in the valley: Hong, Hari, and one other whose name I didn't catch on the east side, and Michi Bamin, Mudang Tage, Dutta, and Hija on the west side. They told me that Abotani ("Father Tani") was the ancestor of not only the Apatani,, but also the Nishi, Galo, Adi, and Tagin, and that they originally came from western China, near the Yellow River. I was also told that two tigers had been caught nine years previously and that they still hunt for jungle cats and flying squirrels in the forest. One guy, I can't remember if he was old or young, asked me how many wives I had.
About three we all had lunch, brought to us by the women inside. It consisted of a bowl with a heap of clotted cold rice with a broth poured over it and a plate of chicken intestines, organs, and feet. Everyone sat around under the overhang and wolfed it down. Or maybe I should say everyone but me. I ate most of the rice, one chicken foot (well, only bits of it), and several mouthfuls of the intestines and organs.
About 3:30 or 4 I thanked them and said goodbye. Three young guys walked me from the village to the main road, past women working in rice paddies. One yelled at me and I waved to her, and she waved back. The sky was cloudy and dark, but there was no rain, as the three guys waited with me for a tempo to take me back to Hapoli. All that came by were full, so they hailed a young guy from their clan passing by and heading to Ziro, a bit more than a mile away, and had him take me there where it would be easier to get a spot in a tempo for Hapoli. In Ziro I bought some cookies to help dilute the organ taste in my mouth. I got back to Hapoli about 4:30. Rain fell again and afterwards I took a walk around town.
No comments:
Post a Comment