How Women Lead By Example In Manipur Relief Camp That's Also A School

An elderly woman cuts betel nuts in Samurou relief camp. She gets 50 paise per chopped betel piece

Imphal:

Like many relief camps in Manipur, Samurou government high school in Imphal West district has also kept aside some classrooms with mattresses on the floor for internally displaced people to sleep. The children of families living in the camp walk to the classrooms next door every morning, and sit with the regular students who come from outside.

During the day, cats tiptoe into the classrooms that have been converted into dormitories and make themselves comfortable on the neatly-folded blankets, for no one is around – all the displaced people who are staying at the camp have gone out to do odd jobs, earn whatever little money they can. Many are tailors, carpenters, plumbers, etc.

Seven women, however, have got work to do at the camp, so they stayed back. The money is not much, but it is the best thing they can do under the circumstances than sitting at the dormitory and worrying about the future, they said.

“We break betel nuts into chewable sizes for 50 paise per piece. We have been getting 300 pieces every day for the past one week,” Hemawati Ningthoujam, 67, told NDTV.

Ms Ningthoujam and five other women sat on a straw mat in the middle of the school playground, and picked up the betel nuts one by one. The chorus of children talking in class after the teacher had left reached the playground.

“We make Rs 150 a day, which we divide among the six of us. We are not doing this for the laughable amount. It just feels very bad to sit here and do nothing all day,” said Ms Ningthoujam, whose house in Sugnu in Kakching district remains only in her memory.

“Five of us came here in May last year after our house was set on fire and looted. They removed the pipe from the gas cylinder and left it there. It exploded,” she said. Her husband is a tailor, and he has been able to find work in Imphal city. All of them want to return to Sugnu. “At least in this camp the officials help us a lot. That is the only reason we are able to bear this pain,” she added.

The seventh woman, Vijaylakshmi Oinam, 74, sat at the far corner of the field alone. She is the eldest among them, and she got a batch of 300 betel nuts for herself. “I’m also from Sugnu. You must have heard there was a bomb attack in Sugnu last night,” Ms Oinam said, and cracked a betel nut in half with a pair of heavy scissors. She stays in the camp alone. “My son does not want to come here. He is in Sugnu, guarding the town. He is not afraid of dying there, but won’t live in any relief camp,” Ms Oinam said.

The women get the betel nuts from paan shops in the neighbourhood. The shops do not need their help as it is an unnecessary expense had the times been normal, but as a tiny gesture of help decided to give the betel nuts to them. “They do not want free money. They are very angry over losing their homes, so we came up with this idea. Sometimes, we can give only 150 pieces a day. We are also small shops,” Shyamo Naorem, who owns a paan shop half-a-kilometre away from the camp, told NDTV.

The camp gets help from the state government for everyday expenses on food and other essentials. Three men who have long experience in managing leikai or neighbourhood clubs are looking after the relief camp. Though they have adapted their administrative skills into volunteer work – the Samurou facility is among the better ones in Manipur – they work from one small crisis to another in what they said has been a never-ending challenge.

“We spent Rs 15,000 to treat a displaced person who met with a road accident. Then we ran out of money to buy firewood because we paid for the medicines. We don’t use cooking gas. We use the firewood for meiphu (perforated tin bucket to hold burning charcoal) too as it gets very cold at night. The electric lines cannot handle heaters,” Shandham Bijoy, one of the three administrators of the Samurou camp, told NDTV. The camp spends approximately Rs 6,000 a week to buy firewood for cooking and other uses, he said.

The camp records show it is sheltering 67 internally displaced people – 35 males and 32 females. Thirty of the 67 are children in the 5 to 15 age group.

Over 180 have died in the ethnic clashes between the hill-majority Kuki-Zo tribes and the valley-majority Meiteis, and thousands have been internally displaced. The state bordering Myanmar – the junta nation that’s struggling for its own survival – is yet to see peace 10 months since the first clashes happened, primarily over serious disagreements on sharing land, resources, political representation, and affirmative action policies.