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

For students in ward 9, Okhre-Bhote, for example, the secondary school
in Basantapur might have been more accessible than Sri Chamunde Schoo!,
Tamaphok. However, for most places in the pancgvat Sr i Chamunde School
was the obvious choice and, with no other secondary schools in the
pancgvat, the school's location was not so significant a factor in
explaining the large numbers of Yakha students attending.
The growth of Yakha education was perhaps surprising considering the
lack of formal education ss a component in the more ' traditional'
culture of the Yakha. 'A man who can't write cannot lie', one Yakha
dh6mi told us, 'An old woman's eyes don' t see to study', said one woman.
However, sentiments like these did not seem particularly unique to the
Yakha in their manifestation. An old Nepali proverb goes 'What's the
point of studying, ploughing brings food?'. More te!ling, perhaps, were
what we saw in Chapter Three of Yskha indifference to Sarasvati, the
goddess of learning. It was also perhaps significant that there was
apparently no indigenous Tamaphok Yakha word for reading or study: the
Nepal i paDh6 was used. However, the si tuat ion vis-A-vis education was
obviously changing: there were few Yakha in Tamaphok who denied their
children at least the first five free years of education, and there was
pride in those Yakha children who went on to reach higher levels in the
education system.
The pradhgn ~6-c, himself a Yakha, had been a leading 1 ight in the
development of education in the panc6vat.-. One had the impression that
his greatest efforts at the political level went into the improvement of
the school. He took a keen interest in school affairs, and was a member
of the school committee. It was interesting that the map he drew of the
pancgyat (Map 3) showed the schools of each ward as a major feature on