Rynji Waterfall

On Sunday some friends and I visited Rynji waterfall near Larymbai here in the Jaintia Hills. Seven of us borrowed a friend's Gypsy jeep and drove an hour and a half to the area where the waterfall was, carrying drinks and food along with us for a cookout. Once we reached the river where the falls were, our path took a slight detour through the stream and up the other bank before we finally reached a parking spot at the head of the path to the waterfall.

The waterfall was really beautiful, and huge. We started a campfire above the falls next to a small lake, and as lunch cooked (have I told you how good Pnar food is?) we explored the rocks, had some drinks, and generally chilled out. It was awesome to be with friends and try to understand what they were saying in Pnar. I found I could catch most of it, and could even respond - my production skills definitely need work. The bag of styrofoam plates we had brought blew into the lake, so I stripped down and jumped in after it and almost froze to death. Fortunately the sun was shining and the wind dried me off pretty quickly so I could change into warm clothes once I got out.

On the way back after a really fun day, at the ford where we crossed earlier a couple big Tata trucks were blocking the road, getting washed in the river. So we took a breather and hung out on the rocks where some of the locals were making dinner. I took the chance to scale a huge rock and bathe in the sun (from which I took this picture). What a wonderful day!

Jowai

After a week in Shillong with some friends, I arrived in Jowai. This is a busy town that serves as the gateway from the Jaintia Hills district to the rest of India. There's a lot of coal mined in the area and all the big multicolored Tata trucks ply their slow way along the windy one-lane roads through the town. I spent one night with my friend Henry in Nongbah village, which is where Kiang Nongbah, the famous freedom fighter of the Pnar, hails from. I stayed in Henry's wife's house, which is just up the hill from the house where Kiang Nongbah lived, which is now home to the village headman. Henry told me that all of Kiang's family was hunted by the British, so that to this day no one knows who his descendants are.

The next morning I returned to Jowai where some other friends helped me find a room near the Presbyterian Mission Hospital. I've enjoyed staying there for the past week or so, though the room is rather bare. At a local woodworking shop I ordered a small dresser, and another friend may be able to build me a rack for hanging clothes. My time has been spent working on a phonology paper and building a dictionary for Jowai-Pnar and getting example sentences. I'm hoping to begin recording traditional stories in the next week or two.

NEILS 7, Guwahati

I arrived in India last weekend in time to attend the NEILS 7 conference. The abbreviation is short for the North-East Indian Linguistics Society, and this year there were quite a few great presentations on the many and diverse languages of the northeast area. I got to meet quite a few local linguists from Guwahati, as well as those from farther afield in India (JNU, Mysore, Kerala), from Switzerland, France, and a few working on Burmese languages, and quite a few from Australia (ANU and Melbourne U). It was great to meet others working in this area, and after the conference ended I got a ride from Guwahati to Shillong with some of the folks from ANU who will be working near Shillong. In the picture below from left to right: Peter Appleby, myself, Paul Sidwell, and Keren Baker, at a lookout point just outside Shillong.