| caption: |
the Ouliengbu or spring festival |
| text: |
Shankok and his whole household do not eat beef therefore his half of the steer is only there to be served to his guests and to be used as gifts. As I heard from others the reason for avoiding beef is as follows. There have been some leprosy cases in the family of Shankok's mother and it is believed that eating mithan, cow or buffalo meat encourages an outbreak of leprosy or may even cause it. Shankok himself has always given me an evasive answer to my question. Nothing remarkable happened this afternoon. |
