I’ve been to Niyamgiri! It was an amazing experience, camping out in the open listening to Dongria Kond women singing and laughing. It was a 12 hour bumpy car journey from Bhubaneswar with my newfound friends that I went to the festival in Puri with, where I was also lucky enough to meet Felix Padel, the main anthropologist who has worked in this area and with the Konds. The festival was good fun and saw some great films including my friend here Surya’s short films about resistance against mining in Orissa (see http://www.youtube.com/user/Samadrusti) and British film maker Simon Chambers’ film ‘Cowboys in India’ – really worth watching – I think I’ll set up a screening for these back in Bristol.
Puri was also a beautiful place – pretty touristy but there’s still a thriving community outside of this, and it’s also one of the 4 main Hindu pilgrimage sites in India so it’s always busy. We stayed out of the main town, very close to the beach, and spent a day down on a quiet beach too – blissful although dead turtles sprawled for miles, killed by trawling the waters around.
So back to the journey. After 12 hours and some serious travel sickness, we arrived at our contact’s house, in a small village, and were introduced to some of the main activists in the area. We stayed in one of these guys houses, 4 of us along the floor, asleep not long after we arrived. Waking up in the morning there was a lot of confusion about when and how we should go up the mountain, a mixture of language difficulties (my friend speaks Oriya, and most people do in this area but the main language is Kui, which is a local tribal language. There’s also Hindi and English floating around all the time so misunderstandings are a common occurrence!), our hosts wanting to make sure we had supplies and general village life laidbackness.
When it was decided, we drove a little way up the hill, going through a couple of villages where Vedanta’s ‘development’ was clear in a locked up child care centre, a leaf plate project, and a hospital which looked as quiet as the child care centre, also with broken glass along the walls!
Then the ascent began. It was pretty hardcore, and although I began with lots of energy, it ended up consisting of 2 minutes climbing and 5 minutes rest for the 5 of us (another researcher from Bangalore, two journalists, also Indian and my friend the activist and guru on the area)! Beautiful forest, peaceful, birds singing and a welcome breeze the higher we climbed. To the top took about 3 hours, less than we thought and apparently the flat top where the puja (prayer, ritual) to Niyam Raja, the Dongria Konds’ god, was to happen is about 5000 feet up.
We could hear drumming as we reached the top, and eventually saw a group of people gathered around a fire. Also the shrine to Darni Penu (the earth goddess) was visible from here, facing the top of the mountain. Here is grassland, a break in the trees, perfect for a gathering, and the tip of the mountain is ahead, which is known as the homeland of Niyam Raja (sky god). We were welcomed and many of the men came to shake our hands. Women sat back at first, but in time we started meeting and taking photos of each other, as I gave them my camera to try too. Not having a translator became very frustrating, and I didn’t get a chance to really talk to any of the Dongria while we stayed on the hill. However getting to see their puja and festival was amazing, and being a part of the dancing, music and food also.
Camping out under the stars was something else. Not quite sure how I managed to sleep, as we’d lit a fire so men gathered round it, singing, spitting and talking. I was tired enough though and got a few hours in. Apparently the Dongria rarely sleep through the night, even in everyday village life, talking, laughing, singing and watching out between 2-3 hour sleeps at best.
It was good to witness sacrifice, which was a long ritual, happening with a pig on our first day and a goat on the next. The first stage was the women dancing and singing, with the female shaman leading with an axe. Then after a break the men began their dancing with their beautiful small axes which they all have. Drumming continues throughout. The actual sacrifice happened very quickly, after carrying the animal around the shrine a few times. The head of the animal was left at the shrine and the body taken for cooking. A younger woman also went into trance in the first stage of the puja.
The mountains of rice the women prepared are to haunt us for a while! This was eaten with a sort of daal or potato and millet curry. I also tried flattened rice – uncooked and mixed with water and sugar. Having had my first bout of Delhi (or Orissa) belly this was a welcome plain meal.
Dongria Kond women dress beautifully, with many nose rings, hairclips, flowers in their hair, and piles of beads and bangles. They also wear colourful shawls and skirts and some have many simple black tattoos. The way they are with each other is also beautiful, embracing and holding each other while watching, singing, no doubt some bitching. However they’re also incredibly tough! We tried their trip to get water with just a few 1 litre plastic bottles and struggled. These women are carrying massive metal pots full of the stuff, and it’s not an easy climb back up from the waterfall!
Axes and knives are common themes amongst Dongria, with men tending to carry them over their shoulder and women wearing small knives in their hair, which they then use for peeling veg and anything else needed.
The second day of the gathering was very different. We had been really lucky to have a chilled out night with only us and the tribal group. The next day many more outsiders came as well as other Dongrias, along with a generator and electric lights. By the evening, there were all sorts of political characters taking over on the singing and dancing, quite invasive really but still so was I by being there! And in all it was still a celebration of the victory against Vedanta mining Niyamgiri so can’t really complain. We did imagine though that this is going to become something big in no time – thinking it might be good to get some tshirts printed up to show we were there in the early days…!
After another long car trip back to Bhubaneswar last night, now I’m sitting in my friend’s house, which is like an open studio for various things – his film making and research, his wife’s textiles organisation which looks to preserving local textile types and communities, and any other researchers and journalists that are staying. A peaceful place, a little away from the main city.
Now very tired...Good night and speak soon xx
