March 29th on to Kohima the capital of Nagaland

We were up early and ready to leave by 8am. We drove into the village and parked below the Baptist Church while we waited for the guide to come join us. It was interesting to watch everyone headed off to church for Good Friday. All were wearing the traditional Angami shawl which is red, black and green. Women can substitute the red color for pink. The older women were dressed in the Angami skirt which, like the shawl, is woven of cotton and is really very plain and comes to mid calf.

Arriving at Kohima in a little over an hour, along the steep hill slopes of terraced wet rice cultivation, we unfortunately found the museum and the war memorial closed because of Good Friday. Interesting as this is not a Government Holiday. We took our next best options and drove south Kisama Heritage Village where the annual Hornbill Festival of all the Naga tribes occurs in December. The village has a representative selection of traditional Naga houses and morungs (bachelor dormitories). David enjoyed playing the various log drums that were in several of the morungs.

Detail of Women's shawl

We then continued down the road to another Angami village which had a 20ft stone engraved commemorating that this village had been converted to Christianity 100 years before in 1905. Mission activity by Baptists and Catholics have left their mark - 98% of the tribe are now Christian and of those 80% are Baptist.

We met an old classmate of our guide who just happened to see him from her Grandmother's house as we walked by.  We had just finished having rice wine (not Leslie) and freshly cooked liver (again not Leslie) at another family's house. In that house the older couple had not covered to Christianity. It was interesting to note that this village was not wearing the carnelian (orange colored stone) necklaces of  Khonama but rather some blue green stone but the beads were the same shape and worn the same way.

Angami clothing

This delightful classmate invited us for tea and snacks at her Grandmothers. Leslie mentioned she was interested in weaving and out came the most outstanding pieces of Angami weaving. The grandma and the aunt are very skilled weavers - fast weavers too! They could weave the shawl in 4 days.  They had included many fine designs in their skirts and shawls and noted that they were in the old style before Christianity came to the village. The grandma was busy dressing us and a lovely time was had by all. The traditional Naga snacks were served which included land snails, pork rind, and some other worm like creature. The guide informed us how to bite off the end of the shell and spit that put before you then sucked put the snail. Both David and Leslie declined this kind offer.

Larger than life Rice storage baskets

Other information gathered is that land is the most valuable property one can own, followed by livestock. This property is generally divided equally among sons and daughters. The youngest male in the family inherits the parental home, which also signifies that the latter is responsible for taking care of the parents in the old age. They are Indo-Mongoloid so their facial features are much different from the southern Indian peoples.