THE YAKHA: CULTURE, ENVIRONMENT AND DEVELOPMENT IN ...

performing on the front porch. The soldier showed me a large plastic
flip-leaf album of photos he had taken in Lebanon. These were mainly of
friends he had made (from the Irish, Ghanaian and Fijian armies),
although there was one shot of a horse-drawn iron plough which aroused
much comment. The radio and watches he had brought for both his natal
and marital family members were already being talked about around the
community, Unable to place me in the normal circle of gift-giving by
returnees, I was presented with a dollar bill by the man. His
generosity perhaps reflected the relative rarity of trips abroad by
Nepalese army soldiers, and his desire to make the most of his visit in
terms of his social status and prestige.
North-east Indfa, Sfkkfm and Bhutan
After military service, a second major migrant destination was Assam
and the other hill states of north-east India, together with Sikkim and
Bhutan, Yakha families with kin permanently residing in these places
(of which there were many) were likely to use these links to find
employment there in a wide range of activities - wood-cutting, house
construction and agricultural labour, to name but a few. To the outside
observer, this movement could seem sudden, but it was certainly not
spontaneous. A young man threshing rice straw one day in November
passed us by on the path out of the village the next with a cheery "I'm
off to Nagaland today, see you in April!". Arrivals back were equally
nonchalant. I was at an informant's house one day when his brother
arrived back from six month's carpentry work in Nagaland, having been
summoned by his father. He hadn't made much money he said. It was
biDfs (Indian leaf cigarettes! all round as his returning present for