“In the past, we would pack the trash in a big bag and threw it into the lake at night. When the flood would come, all of the trash would come back out with the water,” she said laughing.

We asked her then, “Did any of the elders (your parents, the governor of the quarter, etc.) say anything about it?" 

She answered, “at that time, all people in the village did like that. We didn’t really care as other people did the same thing that I did.”

 Since 2007, I have been assisting Kojo Opoku Aidoo of Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana, to develop a humanistic Syllabus on ‘Mobilities of Grassroots Pan Africanism’as part of the Humanities  across Borders Program.  The project attempts to contextualize the praxis of mobilities as a grassroots pan Africanism issue in its multiple manifestations and nuanced dialectics. It also examines the tensions and contradictions of the academy and the community dialectic, bringing up questions of social mobilities and intellectual inquiry.

In the initiation ceremony, people borrow horse cart from me. But they prefer the bullock cart that is well decorated with the crystals and golden paint over my horse cart. In the last 20 years the bullock cart has become more valuable and fashionable.

This was shared by a lady who is one of people who lends cart to others.

I found that the people are still proud to use the bullock cart for the initiation ceremony. 

The housing pattern is usually with bamboo matting in Htan Taw Village. The people in Htan Taw village depend mostly on natural products like this kind of bamboo matting for their housing pattern rather than artificial products. On the other hand, in contrast, these kinds of natural products are more perishable than artificial. They have to cope with this problem with their intuition. Some of them apply emulsion paint, oil rust and the substance that drive the insects away on these bamboo mattings to protect the roof from insects and the climate condition.

"I think we were too fast with it all. Perhaps it was World War II that shaped the Naga soul. People come of age or in the process of coming of age, I think, in many ways we have been too idealistic. Instead of trying to work towards national construction, we were caught up in idealistic nationalism and I think traces of that idealistic mission still linger on today especially among the older generations... but the younger minds are beginning to be very critical and analytical at the same time, so I wish that the Naga movement began today.