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

top of the map, Contours and paths are shown, end Tamaphok, and some of
its satellite communities, are shown as centres. The ward boundaries of
the two maps also differ quite significantly.
Our days during the first year were very varied but tended to follow
something of the following pattern. Our family usually began getting up
at around 4.30am and, having ascertained early on that no special
rituals or other activities took place in these early hours, we tended
to follow suit between 5.30 and 6.00. The sounds of the kitchen fire
being fanned downstairs by someone blowing down a hollow bamboo tube,
and the poundlng of the rice pounder (Dhiki) from across the yard, were
familiar accompaniments to our early morning slumbers. We usually
started the day in the kitchen with a cup of sweet black tea, a snack
such as pounded rice (cvura), or rice with turmeric fried in pork fat
(camre), or soyabeans (bhatmas, cembek) and maybe a glass of warm raksi
(spirit distilled from fermented millet or maize and millet). I then
liked to sit on the porch to see who came to visit the pradh6n p6-c
(whom we called Apa - 'father'). Between 6.00am and 10,OOam he was
often busy dealing with a lot of 'out of hours' panc6yat business, as
well as organizing and administering the loans he gave people. Friends
and relatives were often invited into the kitchen for bowls of millet or
rice beer (jaJ, cuha> which were 1 iberal ly dispensed. At about 9. OOam,
after a trip to the dh6ra for washing, we had our morning meal of dB1-
- bhat in the kitchen. Shortly before 10.00am during term time, Kamala
would leave for school and Apa would go to the off ice. Ama ('mother')
stayed home, working with the goats, pigs, chickens or ducks which
formed the livestock in our house, doing some work in the house fields
(phar-bari! or entertaining the various nearby female relatives who came