In 2006, in a village called Womanang a few hours walk from Betsamang, a child was shot by a poisoned arrow. The child was returning from school in the evening and a cow didn’t let the way so he walked into the field and got shot. Earlier, people used to plant poisoned arrows in the field to keep away the predators. Usually the bow is installed late in the evening and removed in the morning but that day the man forgot to remove it and was busy elsewhere in his farm. The man was sentenced to three years of prison but he had seven children at home and some were blind and disabled. The government provided monetary grant to take care of the children and he was later released with royal decree but the man ended up paying Nu 20,000- 30,000 (Gup, pers comm.). It is very unclear if villagers still use such methods of managing wildlife but the incident has instilled fear in a lot of villages in and around the district that it is now cited as an example.People assess the incident as misfortune and justify it as his ‘karma.’
We work very hard every day throughout the year says the Tshogpa (spokesperson) of Betsamang. There is no difference between men and women here, everyone has to work equally. We get up early around 5 AM and work till eight then take a break to eat breakfast and we disperse again to work in the fields. We are usually not back till lunch time. Sometimes we have to lock our houses and go since everyone is at work but if there are grandparents around they look after the children else the house is mostly locked. Usually in the evenings, the day ends with sun set. We also have community labour system; we work in groups on a rotational basis helping each other. Usually the person we work for provides food and drinks, there is no money involved. He then silences his child from his third wife who is sitting on his lap, simultaneously chases the flies away and resumes his talk. We have to work hard else we do not get good harvest he says.
By the fourth month we have to finish ploughing the fields, the fifth month we plant millet, then we plant potatoes, rice, chillies and maize one after the other but throughout the year all the crops get eaten either by wild pigs, sambars, porcupine, barking deer or deers. Every animal eats something or the other. The deers love chillies and the porcupine eats potatoes like a human being, it is quite impressive, he peels the cover and eats the insides. If its maize he first gets the plants down by by nibbling the bottom and eats the fruit, very clever (Khandu, pers comm.).
Last year and the years before because of wildlife zai (my!) the pigs, sometimes at night there were five or six of them in the fields, you could see them from your house since most of our fields are far from our houses, but they wouldn’t budge even if you screamed at them, if the dogs went near them they would kill the dogs. For few years we had a lot of problem. Then we requested the forest department and they sent two foreigners, we even formed a pig committee and after we informed them where pigs turn up the most they fenced a farm with wire mesh which is still there but we were not allowed to kill them under any circumstance. We even put some potatoes in the farm to lure the pig but the pigs wouldn’t get in, instead some deers got in (he laughs) but they did cull some pigs. There was one pig that would walk into the fields in broad daylight, after he was killed his bones were sent for examination to a nearby town, it turned out that the mother of that pig was from the wild and the father was from our village that is why he would never leave the village! Not only him (the pig), these pigs are like humans, they come in groups sometimes there are eight or nine of them and they would empty the entire field. It is as good as we are raising these pigs. There is now a rule that you can kill if the pigs are within 200m inside the farm but by the time we bang utensils and shout, they are already out of the fields, these pigs are very intelligent (Tshogpa, pers comm.).
