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GLOSSARY Lesotho glossary |
transcript |
| Section 1 | I am ’Mateboho Phakisi from Mohale’s Hoek Thoteng, I am married in Maseru Thabong. I work with Sechaba Consultants. What is your name madam? I am ’Manthatisi Motsoane. Where is your home? Do you mean, where I was born? Yes madam. I was born at Ha Ralifate, Ha Tsiu. How did you come here? I came here by marriage. When did you get married? 1976. Who is your husband? Mr. Phakiso Motsoane. Do you remember when you were born? I was born in 1959. Do you have children? Yes. How many are they? They are six. How many girls and how many boys? There are three girls and three boys. Where are your children now? We are living together with them. Do you mean they are here at home? Yes. Have none of them got married? No. |
| Section 2 | When was the first one born? 1977. Are they going to school? The first and the second born are not going to school. Did they ever go to school? Yes. Where were they attending school? In this same village school of ACL. Which level did they reach? They reached standard 7 and standard 5 respectively. Why did the other one end up with standard 5? He left school for circumcision. Did he show no interest of going back to school when he returned from circumcision school? He did no more have interest. What are other children doing? The third one is attending school, she is going to Form 1. The rest? They have not yet gone to school because of age. |
Now madam, let’s come to another issue, how did you meet and marry your husband? You mean in marriage? |
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Where did you meet? Just on the way. |
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Where did both of you come from? We were both living at this village of Ha Koporala. |
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I want to know exactly how you met? We met at Ha Tsiu. |
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What were you going to do at Ha Tsiu? I was from the church. |
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| Section 3 | Where was he from? He had visited my Catholic Church. |
Had he gone to see you? He had gone to church then he just happened to see me. |
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What happened then? We fell in love. |
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Did he just tell you to go to his home at that time? No. |
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Please explain. After we met, he proposed marriage, which I accepted. After that he informed his parents who went to my parents to ask for permission to let their son marry me. When everything was agreed upon, the wedding followed and thereafter, I came to his home. |
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You mean you did not elope? No I didn’t. |
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Was your church not very far from his village when he went to see you at the church. No it was not far. |
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Was he also attending your church? He wasn’t. His church is LEC. |
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Coming to another issue, what games were you playing when you grew up? We played houses when we grew up, or we could go out and gather wood. |
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What kind of wood? Kolitsane (tree known for the quality of melamu - ornamental and fighting sticks, made from it) and lengana (South African wormwood). |
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What were you going to do with it? We gathered it for fuel. |
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Was it used as paraffin? Yes. |
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Which other games did you play? We were doing traditional dance called mokopu (pumpkin song) which was for girls. |
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Can you remember one of the songs you sang, and sing it for me please. I have forgotten them. |
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Don’t you remember some words even if you cannot sing? Do you want the songs we sang? |
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| Section 4 | Yes madam. Do you want even the wedding songs. |
I want both mokopu and wedding songs. You can sing one first and another after. I have forgotten them. |
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Say the words if you have forgotten how to sing a song. Truly speaking I have forgotten them. I think its because I was not expecting that I would be asked to sing. |
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Don’t you remember a wedding song? This is a wedding song: Koko oe! ’m’e re bulele Ngoan’a rona ha re sa matla Koko oe! ’m’e re bulele Ngoan’a rona ha re sa matla Simone ngoana rona re mo nkile Ngoan’a rona ha re sa matla Simone ngoana rona re mo nkile Ngoan’a rona ha re sa matla (knock knock, mother open for us, Our child we no longer want her again) Oh what a nice song! Can’t you remember another one? No there is no other one. |
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Thank you for the song. Besides singing songs you talked of playing houses. Can you explain how you used to do it? We were cooking food that we stole from our homes. |
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Where did you actually get the food that you cooked there? I said we stole food that we cooked from our homes. We never asked them. Even if we could try to ask our parents to give us, they could refuse. |
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What about sugar? We stole sugar as well as salt. Were you singing the wedding songs for the real wedding or not? We were singing for the real wedding. Were there any other games besides? There were still those games that were played at night. Did you go to school madam? Yes. Where? And which level did you reach? I went to Poloko School at Ha Tsiu. Which class did you do? I did standard 5. Why? We had problems in the family. When I was to do standard 6, my sister-in-law had an accident. My mother took her to Maseru in hospital. While they were in Maseru, the boy who was looking after the animals also had an accident. He too was taken to Maseru to be hospitalised. So I had to look after the children and the animals. So I had to withdraw from the school. During that time, my husband-to-be arrived and we got married. Did you not have brothers to look after the animals? I had two brothers. One was still very young to look after animals. Another one was a little older than that one. So you had to look after animals? Yes I had to look after the animals. My father was disabled in the mines. He made his living by building houses. That is why he could not also look after animals. |
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| Section 5 | You were then like a family woman. Yes! |
What did you decide to do after that? When? |
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When you were unable to go to school, before you got married... I stayed at home. |
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Were you awaiting your husband? Yes, I was awaiting him to come and marry me as I had now been staying at home for a full session. I had then forgotten my schoolwork; therefore I could not make it at school. |
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You thought going back to school was useless? Yes. |
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Is your husband working? No, he is doing nothing by now. |
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How do you manage living without work? We are helped by our son who left school at standard 5. He got a piece job with LHDA, though people were not happy about that. |
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Why? They objected to him being employed when he is unmarried |
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| Section 6 | Was the employment for married people only? They said he was too young to work. |
Isn’t he supporting his parents? Do these people think about that? I really don’t know because the chief together with his committee complain that the boy was never on the list of those who sought jobs. It is true I didn’t give them his name to be listed because he was then at the cattle post, but when he came home, he found that his companions were working with LHDA, he also went to queue for employment and he was lucky to be employed. |
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Do you have animals? Yes, though they are not many, they are at the cattle post because they destroy crops here at home. |
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Do you have short animals only? I have short and tall animals. |
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Are the short animals sheep and goats? I have goats only. |
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Are they all yours or they belong to someone and taken care of by you (Mafisa custom)? They belong to Phakiso my husband. |
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You showed earlier that both your husband and you are not working, are you crop farmers? We do plough fields but we have just been stopped from ploughing our best fields that manages to feed the whole family. Now we don’t know what to do. |
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Why have they stopped you? It is within the area that will be covered by the water. |
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Which water are you talking about? The water from the dam, which is going to be built. |
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Do you mean LHDA dam? Yes. |
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What is going to happen with you? They are promising to give us either food or money for fifty years as compensation for the loss of our field that will be our choice. |
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Are they going to work this out according to the number of fields that are taken? They said they will come and see the number of fields we are left with, then they will compensate our field. |
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Do they ask for your opinion on this matter or they just use their discretion? They are the ones who have a say on this compensation because my husband said they told him that they are going to give us M820 per annum if we need money. |
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| Section 7 | Per annum? Yes. |
What is your feeling about this? Do you find that amount fair as compared to what you produced from your field? We got the satisfactory produce in that field, but now we are just going to be given money for buying mealie-meal which now which now costs M120 a bag. Besides mealie-meal, we need other food groups to go together with mealie-meal. For these reasons, that amount of money is little, but there is nothing we can do because they are the ones who are having a say in this regard. |
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Do you mean that this amount is less than the amount you would get if you were to sell what you usually get in your field? Yes it is. I say this because you will find that when I plant maize in my field, I mix in with beans and pumpkins. Which means that in one field I get different food crops. I also have access to eating maize while still fresh (lehoetla-autumn harvest) which will not be the case when I get the money for my field. |
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Did you follow this method of mixing different crops in one field? Yes madam. |
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Did you find it good? I found it helpful because the crops were going on along very well. There was no hinders of any kind. I started eating the leaves of the pumpkins before pumpkin was ripe. |
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Did you get this style from agricultural demonstrator or it was just your discretion? I copied it from my parents. They have practised this system since we were children. So I liked it and applied it in my own fields. |
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Did you find it successful? Yes. It also helps if I don’t have a garden, because I am able to plant even those vegetables that I would grow in my garden. |
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If you have maize, beans and pumpkins in field, what are you going to plant next year in that field? The following year I plant wheat. |
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Why? For the sake of changing crops so that the soil does not get tired of the same crop. When I had planted maize in all of them, I used to fill a bale but I did not count the number of bags that filled the bale. I want to know whether it was a good crop or bad? It was good. |
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| Section 8 | Were you satisfied? Yes I was satisfied. Thank you madam. You are welcome. Did you say you are going to be moved from here or not? Not yet, but they said they are going to watch and see if this will come closer to us as it goes up in the dam. If it happens that any kind of fault is observed, they will move us from here. Where will you be going to? We shall just choose a place where we shall build our houses. |
I want to hear you talking about your two remaining fields. I haven’t heard you saying something about them, yet they are also your fields, you only talk about the one which is taken. What should I say about my two fields? You told me about your field, which has been taken, how much you get from it and things like that, but said nothing about your other two fields. Yes, I told you of the field I trust. There are others I don’t trust that much. They are on a plateau, where the soil is not very good. They do not give me enough crops. I want to know if those are not going to be involved in the building of a dam. No, they are not going to be involved in the building of the dam. |
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Thank you for your answers madam. Do you have gardens? My garden has been taken already. I am no longer using it. Are you no longer using it? No, I am not using it anymore. How big was it? It was equal to an acre. Do you mean the size of a field or … It was as big an acre. Did you not have a simple vegetable garden? Even if it is of a size of those in town? I am trying to have something like that though the animals destroy whatever I have planted because it is not fenced. Don’t you have even a small plot in front of the house? I have it. Are you working on it? Yes I usually plough it with oxen though I don’t actually plant vegetables for fear of chickens, which usually eat up vegetables. Where do you get vegetable seeds. We buy them from bigger shops like that one of Ha-Selikane. How are the prices? The vegetable seeds cost M2. A teaspoon size packet. What about others, do they differ in size? Yes, there are those that are about a tablespoon size, but people say that shops sell teaspoon-sized packets. |
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| Section 9 | Why do they sell small packets more than bigger sized packets. It is because they sell better? I don’t know because I never asked? |
Thank you madam. You are welcome. |
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How long is it going to take you to make a plot? I beg your pardon. |
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I mean to say, how long will it take you to dig, prepare you plot and sow vegetable seeds and also see about protecting it against animals like you have just shown. I see. It will take me quite a long time because I have to buy fence. As I told you that I am not working as well as my husband, that will take me about one to two years before I can use it. |
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What are you doing now in preparation to use your plot, though you don’t have the means of...? Right now I have planted potatoes. |
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Where did you get your seeds? I bought it at Likalaneng at a cafe |
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Are the prices not high? Yes, they are high because the seller asked for M25 a big dish. After our negotiations she came down to Ml5. |
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I see, you negotiated? Until she lowered the price. |
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What is your opinion about the harvest? Do you mean that one of potatoes? |
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Yes, or have you planted potatoes before? Yes, I used to plant them in that garden that has been taken by LHDA and I got a very high produce. This is the first time I plant them in this one. I don’t know how much I will get, as they were planted a bit late. |
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| Section 10 | What was your problem. That you made a late plantation? It was because of the absence of seeds. |
Was it delayed? Yes. |
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Thank you madam. Do you have springs here? Yes, we do have springs in the village. |
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Are they many? There is one. |
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Is it only one? Yes madam. |
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Is it supplying the whole of this village? Yes it is supplying the whole of this village. |
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Does it supply this whole area? Yes. |
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Does it work well? It works very well, but the problem is that it is one hot rock, so it is not easy to dig it deep down so that is collects a lot of water. The water keeps on flowing away so that when we are many, water gets finished and we have to wait for it to collect again, but people do not wait for a long time as the spring is powerful. |
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Is it covered or just open? It is covered, we have just left an opening to let us draw some water. |
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In what way has it been covered? Is it fully or slightly covered? It is not quite well done. |
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Have you just done a simple thing? Yes madam. |
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Don’t you think it needs to be fully and well covered? We would like very much to cover it in a proper and advanced manner. |
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What is your problem then? Our problem is money for buying cement, which is needed to do the work well. |
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| Section 11 | Where are you going to get such money? Actually we have to join hands - contribute some money to buy cement, but since we are not working, that seems to be impossible. We just wish, but we cannot afford. |
Now that you are using water from an unprotected spring, have you never contracted disease due to unclean water? I don’t know, because we don’t identify the disease that is caused by unclean water from other diseases. Sometimes children and adults suffer from diarrhoea, we do not know if the cause is the water we drink. |
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Have you ever had such epidemic? Yes madam, like diarrhoea, which I have just mentioned. |
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Does it usually spread the whole village? Yes madam. |
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Then what do you do? Do you mean when there is an epidemic? |
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Yes. We usually go to Likalaneng Dispensary. |
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Do they not ask you about the type of water you are using? Yes, they ask such questions and also advise us to try to get better water supply, such as water from the taps. They also tell us that in summer when there are flies, we are in danger of diseases that spread, so we need toilets in order to reduce these transmitted diseases like typhoid. |
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Don’t you think it is necessary? Yes it is necessary. Our problem in the past was that there were no roads coming here, so if one thought of making himself a toilet, it was a matter of carrying sheets of corrugated iron on the head for a long distance or hiring men to go and carry a ready made one on their shoulders for a long distance, which was very expensive. |
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Were there no roads? No there were no roads. |
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How did this furniture, which I see, come here if you had that problem of roads? We carried it on our shoulders. |
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It’s shocking! Because you are a woman in the family you told yourself that you wanted this and that? Yes, I paid for transporting it from Maseru to Likalaneng, and from there to a place near home in a lorry, then from there I hire people to carry it home on their shoulders. |
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How much were your expenses altogether? There were much expenses. A wardrobe for instance, which I bought earliest than others, I paid M10 per person I hired. Nowadays it has gone up to M20 or M30 with other people. How do they manage to carry it? They carry it on something like a stretcher Like when they carry a person? Exactly like that. They tie it up with ropes and carry it on their shoulders with sticks. Do you mean to tell me that there was no road at all coming here? There was no road at all. How did it come? It was built by LHDA. Has this road been built by LHDA? Yes. How did they built it? Did you ask for it? We have long been asking for a road, even our husbands while they were working in the mines, they wanted so much to join hands and build a bridge, but all in vain. LHDA has come to our rescue because of the water they are looking for. Did they just choose to build a road? Yes, they did so for the sake of water. You were lucky to have a road in that way We were lucky. |
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| Section 12 | Is this road important to you? It is very important. What is its importance? If I go to Maseru now, I return the same day. In the past, in the past I had to go to a nearer village to the road, in the morning wash myself and wait for a bus. Are you sure? Yes I am. What else happened? When I reached Maseru, I did my business and thereafter, I had to ask for accommodation from somebody’s house to spend a night so that I should wake up early in the morning to go and queue for a bus coming back home. If I was left by the bus, I asked for a lift up to Nazaretha. From there you ask for another lift to take you home. We usually got those vehicles that transport cafe stock. You mean vans? Yes madam. Are there rivers or streams here? Yes they are there. Do they have names? Yes they do. Can you tell me those names? This big river is Senqunyane. |
| Section 13 | Why is it called Senqunyane? Since were born, we found it called like that. |
Did you just accept the name. Yes. |
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Was it because you were not in a position to name it? Yes. |
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Are there other small rivers besides this big one? Yes they are there. Rivers like Likalaneng and Jorotane. |
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How much is it important to you? Do you mean Senqunyane? |
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Yes. Do you want to know how it helps us? |
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Yes madam. I don’t see its importance to us. It is important to whose people who are living nearest to it, because they do their washing there. But with us, it just gave us problems because when it was over flowing, we were unable to go to the other side of it because there was no bridge. Sometimes we had to cross it the previous day and spend a night on the other side if were sick or we had dead person whose body has come home. |
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To which places were you going across the river? Those places are Likalaneng, Maseru, Thaba-Tseka or Mantsonyane. |
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Do you say that this river is of no importance to you? I did not see any importance with that river. To me it was just a troublemaker. Well, these days the problems are over because of the bridges. |
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For which places do you use the bridge? To places like Maseru, Thaba-Tseka, etc. |
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Is it a footbridge or a vehicle one? It is a vehicle bridge. |
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Is the footbridge not there? It is not there. |
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| Section 14 | Do you know the reason why this village was called Bethani? Or Letsatseng Ha Koporala? We found the names already used. |
So you just accepted? Yes we did. |
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What is your opinion about moving from here? Do you want to know if we are happy about it? |
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Yes madam. Do you want to know if we are satisfied? |
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I just want to know your opinion, whether you are happy or not. If you are happy, which are the outstanding points that make you happy? If not I would also want to know why. You should also tell me the things you would miss if you are to move. Those things that you think you will never get where you are going. I don’t think that there are things I that I will miss because I will not be changing the place completely. We are still going to the place we are quite familiar with, same place, same chief. It is just changing of positions. Anything that helped me while I was living here, will still be helpful when I am at a new place. Coming to my opinion about moving, I can just say; I have accepted. Whether I like or not, we simply have to accept. |
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Did you not like to move? No, I did not. |
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Which village would you like to move to? Ha Koporala — Moreneng. |
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Moreneng? Yes. |
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Which are other villages besides Moreneng? There are no villages nearby. The villages which are there are a little far, and they are also going to move. |
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I mean those villages under the chief of Ha Koporala Moreneng. They are villages like, Lekhalong, Ha Rantsatsi, Khamolane, Limapong and Thoteng. |
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Don’t you want to live in one of them? Villages like Thoteng and Khamolane are also going to be affected by the Project. |
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What about Lekhalong? It is as if Lekhalong will not be affected. |
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| Section 15 | Then why don’t you want to go there? That village is a bit far, and the sites are not very good. Another thing is when one buys furniture, it will be a bit far from the roads. |
Do you still want to buy furniture? Yes. |
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There must be something you are hiding from me, how are you going to buy furniture yet you said your husband and you are not working? We have children. |
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Yes madam. As I am educating my child, I hope that when she finishes at school and works, she will help me. |
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I see. Did you say you don’t want to move to Lekhalong because it is far? Yes. |
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What difference do you think this water project has brought to our lives? This project has brought a great change in our lives in the country as a whole. There may be some problems here and there like in any other things in life. But generally our lives have changed. Though our husbands are no longer working in the mines, our sons are employed by the project they are helping us. |
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I see. Our children manage to buy clothes for themselves, which we could not afford if they were still looking after animals like my son was. If it were not because of this project, my son would look after somebody’s animals to get money for clothing. He is now helping his father who is unemployed. |
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Have they promised you something for moving you from your village? Do you mean something, which will be helpful to us? |
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Yes madam. We have learned from people who have been moved already. They are given money, which is called compensation. This money covers many things like houses, fields, kraals (livestock enclosures), gardens and others. The houses that are built for them are also very beautiful, though we do not know whether they are strong enough to stand up to rain and wind. |
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Do you like what has been done to those people? I personally don’t like it, but what else can one do, it has come to our lives, we simply have to accept it. |
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Besides those things you have mentioned, have they not promised you jobs? Are they going to supply you with food when you are moved from here as you were producing food from your fields, now you part with your fields? What is actually going to happen? People who are affected by the project are usually promised jobs, but it is just a promise, which is never kept. Some whose fields are taken have been employed, but people like us with big gardens, which are also taken, our husbands’ names never appear in the list of those who were going to be offered jobs. |
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| Section 16 | Were the owners of the fields and gardens which are taken offered jobs? Yes, they were offered jobs. They were taken by M&C and they are working by now. |
Were they not all taken? They were not all taken. Some of they are still unemployed. |
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It is not clear to me. Who are taken and who are not taken? We don’t know. |
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What is your opinion about these many men and a few women who are working here? Are you happy to see them working here? Many people are hungry and therefore need work. So I don’t mind when people are working. The only thing that does not satisfy me is that most of these people come from outside our area, our people here are just watching them work and they do nothing. We are told that these people are experts, they know this and that. It is not fair. |
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Where do these people come from? Some of them come from Butha-Buthe, while others come from Thaba Tseka. We are told that they are the ones who built Katse Dam, they are experts. |
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So, this means local people have not gained any benefits in the Project because they are not getting employment. After the chief of the place complained to the officials of the Project about the employment of the outsiders, many local people got employment. |
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By the way, how was the employment carried on? In the beginning, each village made a list of those people who wanted to be employed. The lists were sent to Likalaneng. When the names reached there, there would be a selection by the officials. Those whose names were taken from the list were notified through their chiefs to go and report. |
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Is it still working like that? It is no longer working like that. Our husbands have waited and waited for their turn in the list, but all in vain. People just go there and queue, if they are lucky, they get employment. |
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So people were told to register their names but later that list was no longer considered? Yes madam. |
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When some people are retrenched do others get employed? Yes. Sometimes you hear people saying there are no jobs and workers are retrenched, but immediately new workers are employed. |
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| Section 17 | Do they employ skilled people, or what is the criterion of their selection of employees? I think they take people who were never employed by the Project so that they do not get influence from anywhere, because the old workers will have been retrenched. |
Where do the workers live? There are those who live here at Ha Koporala, they foot the way to Likalaneng every morning, but they say M&C is better because it picks workers in the evening and drops then near home. |
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I hope there are those who come from Butha-Buthe even as far as Mohale’ s Hoek? Yes. |
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Where do they live? They live in the compound. |
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Is there a compound here? Yes, it is there for those who come from far. |
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Are the village people not encountering problems brought by these workers living in the compound especially during the weekends when they are off? They do not often come to our village. But what we know is that they are under strict control in their compound, but still, they go out for beer where they usually fight among themselves with the result that some are admitted at the hospital. |
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What is actually the cause of their fight? I don’t know but hopefully they fight for women and beer. |
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Besides that, are they not interfering with your lives in your village? So far we haven’t observed any interference. Maybe they are far from us. We shall only see what happens when the tunnel comes closer to us. |
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You still know about their behaviour? Yes. |
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Thank you madam. Tell me, what else do you like in this place you are leaving? Do you mean our land? |
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Yes, I mean this place which you are about to leave. Actually there is nothing I will miss when I leave this place. There is nothing special here that I will not find where I am going. This includes wild vegetables and firewood. |
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So you don’t see any difference? Yes. |
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You don’t mind moving? Yes. |
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| Section 18 | Does it mean you don’t mind whether you move or stay here? Yes madam. |
Did you say the river is of no use to you? Yes. |
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Are there churches here? Yes, they are there? |
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Are they near or far? They are near. |
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Are they easily reached? Yes. You can go in the morning and return back in the afternoon. |
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What about schools? We have primary schools only. The secondary schools are found in the lowlands or Mantsonyane. |
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Which lowlands are you talking about, is it Maseru? Yes, it is. |
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Are there no secondary schools between Likalaneng and Maseru? There is one at Likalaneng which I don’t know exactly whether it has Form 1 only or not. I am not quite sure. |
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Do you go to Maseru in most cases? Yes. |
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Do you have a clinic? We go to Likalaneng for our clinic. |
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How does it work? The services are good but they have transferred better-qualified nurse whom we trusted and loved. They have left a lower qualified one now. |
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So you became discouraged? Yes madam. But the nurse were having now is helping us. It is just that we confided to that one who has gone. She did her work to the top of her ability. |
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Was she acting like a village doctor? Yes she acted like a doctor in that clinic. |
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That means you took her as a doctor. Yes madam. |
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Don’t you think secondary schools are essential here? Yes we need them. |
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| Section 19 | What are you doing to show that you need them? We are doing nothing because we don’t know what to do. |
How is it going to be known that you need secondary schools if you are not taking any initiative? We are talking to our nearest primary school teachers about this issue. We ask them to report to the government that we need help and if we are helped, we promise to do something in addition. |
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What are you going to do? Even if it will mean to contribute to a certain amount of money, we are prepared to do it. |
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You are not working, where are you going to get money? It’s true we are not working, but there are some means of making money like brewing and selling of beer. If an amount of Ml 0 is needed we can afford. |
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So you are going to brew? Yes. |
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Where do you get ingredients for brewing? We use maize meal, brew, sell and get money for mthombo (fermented sorghum meal). We carry on the process of brewing and leaving money for mthombo. |
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Are you no longer making sour porridge? We make it. |
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What are you using for making it - because I don’t remember hearing you mention sorghum among the crops you plan here? You have mentioned maize and wheat. That is true. |
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Why are you not planting sorghum? It is just that we have never seen sorghum planted here since we were born. |
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So you don’t plant it at all? We don’t plant it at all. |
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What do you do when you need to use sorghum? We use maize. |
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So you make your porridge with maize meal? Yes. But if you need the sorghum one, you buy sorghum flour and use it. |
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Is it found locally? Yes you get in local shops. |
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| Section 20 | Going back to the issue of moving, what steps will you take if after moving LHDA breaks its promises? Do you want to know what we shall do if they do not do what they promised? |
Yes madam. I don’t really know what we can do. |
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Why? I just don’t have a good answer for that. |
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Does it mean you are just going to accept whatever is done to you? I fail to understand how you can just be silent if such a thing happens to you. After so many belongings of yours have been taken from you. I do not know what to say. But I tell you there is nothing one can do. I have just told you that promises are easily broken like when the owners of the fields, which were taken, were promised jobs, which never worked. Another thing is that of money where people were promised M500 per annum. The next year the money goes down to M400, which makes M100 less. Some people went to complain at Matsieng, where they were told to go back to their committees, which link them with LHDA. Do you see there is no use to think of doing something under these circumstances? |
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It is not a matter of having nothing to do, it is only that they were returned by the Principle Chief which was correct. Those people had not followed the procedure. They had to begin their case at the lower level then go to the higher one. Yes. |
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Is that not how to work out things? You are right, but what about if you had reported to the committee but there was no action taken? I really feel it is useless to go up and down trying to settle case between you and LHDA. |
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It is true, but I don’t think our committees know their duty. If you put your complaint in front of them firmly, they are surely going to see what they are going to do. Being leaders, they cannot just sit down if they see that many people have complaints. Sometimes the committee members are just not working for people because of jealousy. Yes. |
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Sometimes committee members are not eager to work for their people because their sites fields and other are not affected therefore they are not going to get any compensation, that is why they do not care about what is going to happen to their people. That is true. |
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| Section 21 | Those are problems A good example of what we are talking about is that one of speaking for our names in the list of those who seek employment. Committee members know us all and very well, but they can never short-list the names of those who are really in need. Jealousy is controlling them. |
It is always the case. Yes. |
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Generally, people work like that. Coming back to your moving, what are you going to do with graves? We are told they are also moved. |
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In what way? They say they are going to buy coffins, dig up the remains of the dead and put them in the coffins. After that they will be taken home where burial rites will be conducted. |
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The corpse, from grave, brought into the house again! Exactly. Whether buried many years ago or recently buried they will all be dug again and brought to the new graveyard where they will be buried. |
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Have you accepted it? LHDA is going to do everything. Digging of the grave, transferring the corpse from old grave to home, from home to the new graves. You need not worry, yours is the house which will keep the corpse over only. |
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Are people coming for food only, I mean the community? Yes, they come for food only. |
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Besides food, there is always a cow, which is slaughtered for burial. What is going to happen if one family has more than one corpse? Do you mean in case of slaughtering of animals? |
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Yes madam. At the beginning they were slaughtering cows when transferring graves, but nowadays they say if the cow was slaughtered when you buried your corpse, there is no need to slaughter it again on transfer. They will slaughter only one cow for all and some sheep, which will be slaughtered and used the night before burial, but I don’t know their number. This is not for one corpse, but for all corpses belonging to one family. |
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Do they not care how many corpses a family has? No. |
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If you have one corpse, are they going to slaughter one cow and a number of sheep for all your corpses? Yes madam. |
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How do they carry them? To the graves? |
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