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

to visit during the day.
Our own days were very varied. Sometimes we would walk the 500' or
so up the hill to visit the school. It was somehow expected we would
want to go to the school every day (and people we did not know often
assumed we worked there), but while we quickly realised the importance
of the school in the eyes of the community, and helped out with some
conversational English lessons, there were only four Yakha teachers out
of a staff of seventeen and we did not want to get too involved in the
sometimes lethargic life of the staff room. There was a small tea shop
and general shop just below the school along with the panctivat off ice.
This nucleus formed a service centre of sorts and provided some other
public venues in which to sit and pass the time of day with varying
degrees of profit. We tried to attend any public events that took
place, together with life cycle rituals such as weddings and (later)
funerals. We helped in some of the agricultural activities in which
people were involved, such as preparing rice fields for rice planting,
although we found that the amount of effort expended in this form of
'participant observation' was often not matched by equivalent rewards in
terms of ethnographic information, We also sometimes stayed at home in
order to consolidate the language and other work we were doing.
At 4.00pm there was usually another snack at home, perhaps of
potatoes (boiled in their skins, which were removed with the fingers for
eating), roasted maize or boiled soyabeans (depending on season) served
with a cup of black tea or cuha (beer), Evening d8l-bh8t was usually
served soon after dark (which varied seasonally from 6.00 to 7.00pm),
after which we would have an intensive evening language session with
Kamala in our room until 10.00 or 11.00, or until our eyes could not