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Difficult journey from Pedi to Choloma; decay of Kacha villages en route; recent burning at Tehema - houses not rebuilt; crops at Tehema damaged by rats and elephants |
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I started out with the sanguine intention of reaching Thekrojenoma but did not even quite reach Choloma. The Naga path is very bad and long going up and down over the spurs of Paona and seems hardly used by the decayed villages that lie on it. I started down the old bridle path from Pedi to Samaguting where the going is good enough but left it at Chama, a steadily decaying Kacha Naga village, then passed through Rawuma, another even more so, and thence reached Tehema. This village had its houses burnt six months ago and its crops practically destroyed by rats and elephants - chiefly the latter - before the harvest, yet no attempt has been made nor, apparently, is being made to rebuild. Nine households have deserted the site and the remaining forty odd are living in extreme congestion and extreme squalor 3 or 4 families to a miserable hut. I asked when they were going to rebuild and they said "when they felt inclined" which may be distant, as the Sekrenyi genna, after which date no man may build, is at hand and the men were loafing about the village doing nothing at all and this not because I was coming as they had had no word and did not know of it. I assessed the village as well as I could in the absence of real houses to count and pushed on to try and get to Chowuma, my loads being already so far behind that it was obvious I could get no further. Eventually I stopped and waited for them to arrive (which they did just before sunset) at the stream and field houses a mile below Chowuma and there I camped. Everywhere today there were wails about the elephants and they have really caused very serious destruction of crops. |
