7.1 C
New York
Friday, March 29, 2024

Buy now

Friday, March 29, 2024

Dispatches from Ri Bhoi: The Village of Mawpat

How those in power feel for a village can be judged by how invested they are in creating a road to the homes – and thus hearts – of that village. In Mawpat, Ri Bhoi, there is no “road”. Like villages that have come before and after it, it is “remote” only by virtue of how neglected it is. Saiñkupar Syngkli chats with the residents about their thoughts.

By Saiñkupar Syngkli

The village of Mawpat in Ri Bhoi falls under the Umsning C&RD Block of the Mawhati Constituency. It is at a distance of 67 kilometres from Nongpoh, the district headquarters. Mawpat, also sometimes called Mawchanam by the locals, borders the Raid Namsha and Thaïang, and so its people speak the Namsha and Thaïang colloquial variants of the Bhoi dialect of Khasi.

The history of the village is sketchy – given the orality of their records, but it is known at least that the village was first established by a small group of farmers in the year 1913. These first settlers of the Mawpat region scattered and no one can tell why. Within a few decades, they had joined nearby settlements in Korhadem, Sohnidan and Lamalong, among other. It was only in 1978, just six years after Meghalaya’s statehood, that thirteen households came together to re-establish Mawpat at the edge of Raids Namsha, and later on the other side of the hill over which Raid Thaïang begins, thus straddling the two raids. Today, the village has flourished to a modest 73 households – about 421 souls.

Pios Shadap, the rangbah shnong of Mawpat, says, “Our village is one of the oldest, but as farmers, we moved around a lot. Where we farm is where our home is. So the official age of the village is only from 1978”. This is when the thirteen households settled on a hill under Raid Namsha, and they came from the five clans Khymdeit, Lamare, Marsing, Marten and Shadap. “We don’t know much about our forefathers who settled here in 1912”, he says.

Like many villages, Mawpat relies on broomstick and ginger cultivation. Wan Marten, a resident, says each household produces at least three tons of broomstick and one ton of ginger. But what they are most keen to share is their delight for a special recipe of ktungdung, ground dry fish. The ktungdung of Mawpat is especially known in the surrounding raids. Banri Shadap says, “We like to put ktungdung in every meal, whether by frying or cooking it with pumpkin, yam and its leaves and herbs foraged from the wild”. Every house stores its stock of ktungdung in bamboo. Another delicacy, rarely found in jadoh stalls in Shillong, is the lung ranchong, a pickled chutney of bamboo shoot processed with pork. Ben Khymdeit says, “We keep our lung ranchong sealed in a hung basket for one year. Under it, we place a jug to collect fats that dribble through the porous straws of the basket”. This fat is collected and used for cooking. Once a year is completed, the preserved pork is consumed as a delicacy.

Despite their distinct Bhoi home cuisine and the high production of broomstick and ginger, the village does not reap much because of poor roads and even poorer education. Rigil Matlai, the general secretary of Mawpat, says, “There is only one government lower primary school in our village from class A [nursery] to class IV”. This lower primary school was inaugurated in 1988. Since then, the school has never been repaired or upgraded. Most of the children study till class IV and drop out to join their family’s traditional occupation of farming. For most households, the choice is between investing in their own farmlands or investing in education, and most choose the former – given the state of the school and the village, a rational decision. “If we have a proper school in Mawpat”, says Malti, “at least half of the youth will be educated and improve the standard of living”.

Mawpat is reached through Umsning via Mawhati. Despite being only 47 kilometres from Umsning, it takes three-and-a-half hours – longer than the Guwahati–Shillong journey – to reach the village through its broken, battered, nearly non-existent roads. Klen Shadap says, “The price of broomsticks in other places is Rs 120 per kilogram. But we sell for only Rs 70–75. The merchants who come here exploit us because of the road’s condition”. The same problems plague healthcare services in the village – there are none. The Mawhati Primary Health Centre, the nearest health unit for Mawpat’s residents, is a taxing 13 kilometres away, about the distance from Law Sohtun to NEHU in Shillong, a journey reserved only for major health ailments. At other times, the people prefer to take folk remedies and therapies.

Maltai says it is not only farmers who suffer tremendous losses in sales because of the road. “We get no chance to improve education in our areas here because we are remote. I was surprised even you wanted to collect a story of a poor village like ours, but it brings us hope that more attention will help change our village. In this generation, school is important to make us into real men and women. As they say, the pen is mightier than the sword. So we hope to have better education and better roads to improve our standard of living”.

Related Articles

Stay Connected

146,751FansLike
12,800FollowersFollow
268FollowersFollow
80,400SubscribersSubscribe

Latest Articles