Hetauda (Makawanpur), 9 March: Santamaya Bankariya, 65, the head of the endangered Bankariya community living in Manahari Rural Municipality of Makawanpur, remembers how she used to sleep under a hut made of Bankariya leaves, wrap her baby in banana leaves, and eat boiled tubers when she was pregnant. It has been about 19 years since the then District Development Committee provided land for 20 years to the Bankariya community, which was living a nomadic life, to establish a settlement near the community forest in 2062 BS(2006 AD). The mother of nine children still remembers the same life and the painful days she spent in childbirth.
Santamaya, the head of the Bankariya community, who lives in only one place, spent a nomadic life in the forest for 22 years. Since she is the daughter of Chepang, she used to live in the settlement before marriage and said that she liked to go with Bankariya to search for tubers and got married there. Santamaya gave birth to nine children.
“Four children were born in the forest and five in the settlement,” she recalls. “We were nomads because we had no place to live in the dense forest, and we used to live in hollows after people died.” Santamaya says that she has suffered a lot since she came from a nomadic life to his current life. According to her, although she eats yams, bhakur, mushrooms, khanyayo, and kurilo for three months a year, the rest of the time the men work as fishermen and the women work as weavers to find food.
Santamaya says, “Even if we take the fish and kurilo to the village and sell them, where can we eat? It was not enough. There were many children.” The main food of the forest dwellers is khanyayo, nemaro, mushrooms, fish, and kurilo. Recalling the huts made of banana leaves and the use of banana leaves, Chief Santamaya said that forest weeds are used for medicine. She does not know where she was born, but she only remembers spending 20 years in the forest after getting married.
Santamaya says that gittha is the main food during weddings and festivals. The Banakariya community does not perform any other rituals except marriage, birth, naming, and death. She says that after a death, those who have a lot of money move to their homes and do Kajkiriya for 13 days, and those who do not have one for seven days. She says that even after giving birth, she sprinkles water from the tree and gold water on them within seven days.
Santamaya, who got married at a young age, came to live in the forest. She says that gradually she became less afraid of animals than of outsiders. She remembers that menstruation and childbirth were especially difficult. She mentions that children in the Banakariya community are not allowed to drink milk except from their mothers, and she feels like crying when she remembers that when her children were small, Santamaya raised cows and buffaloes and had a pot full of milk and curd.
Despite spending two decades in the forest, Santamaya is happy to be living at home now. She says that she still visits the place she used to live when she misses the forest sometimes. Santamaya says that she did not know about farming and raising cattle while living in the forest on the basis of eating tubers and sometimes ground flour and rice. She has the experience of living in the forest for 20 years after being born in the village and marrying a man from the Vanakaria caste and now living back in the village and leading the community. Santamaya is currently involved not only in farming and buffalo rearing, but also in soap production. Stating that his community, which has a forest-based lifestyle, was caught by the army when they went to cut brush after they were in the buffer zone of the Masine Shanti Community Forest, he said that they are currently making soap from herbs like Wormwood, Ghiukumari,
and Neem that are found everywhere in their village and outside the buffer zone. Along with Santamaya, the women of the settlement are also making and selling soap from Titepati and Neem that are wasted on the river banks and in the forest. They have now become entrepreneurs by starting a forest-based soap industry. Santamaya said that the forest-based Stating that they have to work hard to eat food, Santamaya said, “Whenever they want to eat food, their husbands go to the settlement with brooms, brooms, and fish, and expressed happiness that their children are getting food.”
The local government and Green Foundation Nepal are supporting the enterprise being run by the Banakariya community. They are running the Banakariya soap industry. According to Chief Santamaya, although it takes hard work to make soap, the raw materials are available around the village. She says that the soap produced here is good for wounds, itching, and skin diseases. Chief Santamaya said that Green Foundation Nepal is supporting the development of forest-based enterprises as there are problems in increasing production and marketing.
In recent years, the Banakariya community, which spends half of the year relying on wild roots, has gradually changed. Five girls and one boy from the Banakariya community, who are far from modern life skills, have passed the SLC/SEE exams. Two girls are engaged in technical fields. Pampha, who passed the SEE exam (2016) for the first time from the forest community, is currently working as a lab assistant technician in Rajaiya, Manahari, according to Mukhiya Santamaya.
In recent years, the government has started providing Rs. 4,000 per person as a monthly social security allowance to the forest community, which has improved their financial condition. The endangered forest community, who have been living as squatters in Musedhap, Manahari-4, Makawanpur for eighteen years, has no land in their name. The government has allowed the minority forest community to live in the forest concession since 2062 BS, saying that they have suffered while living a nomadic life in the forest. They have been demanding collective land titles in the same place where they have been living. Currently, 93 forest community members in 25 families live in Musedhap.
The forest community is one of the 10 endangered tribes in Nepal. The ‘Banakariya’ tribe was listed as an endangered indigenous people in 2059 BS(2003). The citizens of this tribe, who lived as nomads in the forests until about two decades ago, now live in the Banakariya settlement of Manahari Rural Municipality-4 in Makawanpur.
