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

functions (such as the Bri tain-Nepal Medical Trust's end-of-projec t
function, to be described below), and were much involved generally in
cornmun i ty events. Their role as local activists in the political
changes which took p!ace at national level while we were doing our
fieldwork was, as we shall see in the next section, particularly
pronounced. Often there were features of their lifestyle which were
quite unique. Sharada, for example, had brought a knitting machine with
her from the Tarai which she kept in one of the hostel rooms she and
Bhaskar shared with their small son, She used it to supplement her
income by knit t ing sweaters to order, part icular 1 y as Dasai- approached
when people traditionally gave themselves and their children new
clothes. Another teacher, a Brahmin from Madi Mulkharka, rented a room
in the Yakha hamlet of Otemmatol and deserves mention as a 'closet
anthropologist'. Renowned for his un-Brahmin love of pork and raksi, he
quite often surprised me by his presence at ostensibly Yakha functions
(such as funerals) and expressed a keen interest in Yakha culture.
Although as teaching staff the Yakha were not present in numbers
reflecting the demography of the pancdvat as a whole, the student roll
(and more important, the numbers of students actually attending the
school regularly) was more representative. Over half the students in
primary levels were Yakha, but this was of course mainly due to the
location of the school in ward 6, part of the 'heartland' of Yakha
culture in Tamaphok, and the availability of local primary schools in
parts of the pancdyat more heavily populated by members of other castes
and ethnic groups. What was more interesting was that at secondary
level the Yakha constituted nearly 40% of' students on the roll, Of
course, this must also have partly reflected the location of the schoo!.