The real village view: Hekiye Village and goats

After Thokihyi, the next village I saw was Hekiye, less than an hour's walk from Zunheboto. I went by foot with a friend and a cute baby :) and it wasn't too bad... though it was a very brief visit, what struck me deeply was the stark difference between peoples' lives even within 5 km radius. I somehow feel that the divide is widening more and something ought to be done.

Nagaland is made up of hundreds of villages with nearly 90% of the population living in villages and therefore to experience the real Nagaland or any rural region, in my opinion, is to experience how majority of people live everyday. I don't think a one-off  special display of traditional finery and costumes, some stunts and dances once a year can be a true representation of one's culture and how people really live. Although it is wonderful to showcase our festivals and our rich cultural activities, I think it is as important to pay attention to people at the grass-root level, in remote and road-less, water-less, electricity-less, medicalcare-less villages who have no idea if they have the right to live life to the full potential and if they'd  always be under the mercy of the changing seasons and people who govern them from far away.

Photos of Hekiye Village

The real village view: Guavas and mud - a short trip to Thokihyi

I've been wanting to visit as many villages as possible in Zunheboto area and this year the first chance came a few weeks ago - a visit to a village on the other side of Tizu River. It's been many years since I have seen Tizu and the villages around so I sort of forced my dad to take me along on his trip to Thokihyi Village - a small, quaint village on a hill above the gold and yellow paddy fields of Tizu... and what an eye-opening guava-experience it turned out to be!

                                            The road to Thokhyi and how the vehicle almost turned ulta.

For me the trip was all about guavas - the rows and rows of guava trees laden with juicy, plump guavas - yellow and green and pink weighing down every branch and no one to eat them, not even pigs! :( Guavas ripening and rotting everywhere, on trees, in the small gardens around every house and on the roofs of make-shift toilets and pig sties, I even saw a bunch thrown outside the village church building so I helped myself greedily which amused the villagers quite a bit. (Sometimes it's not such a bad thing to let people laugh at your expense :)...the villagers brought me two big bostas stuffed with guavas!)

                                               Guavas thrown outside the village church building.

Although the star attraction was guava, there were a lot more that caught my interest...mushuthi (pomello), sugarcane, gourd, bamboo, 8 wild fowls (killed) and roads as muddy as can be. It's a pity that our land has so much resources, fruits and vegetables that grow abundantly without much human effort and everything that grows here from a blade of grass to huge alder trees are organic but most of the produce go to waste like these guavas!

Guava trees

The Chief's house with Mithun heads

                              Tizu river and paddy fields - on the way back from Thokihyi