Collecting buffalo milk is the highlight of our morning. Lukey knows the way now, tearing off down the path with a Tupperware container flapping in a nylon bag over his shoulder. He takes each step at a leap, perfecting his jumping skills, he likes to save his biggest jump for the gutter at the bottom of the stairs where the tap used to wash everything from hair to nappies runs constantly, eroding the bank into a satisfyingly large slurry to leap over.
The path becomes a road and then a path again narrowing into a hairline crack above a 3 meter drop entering Bossanda yard by the bagra ( goats). There is another entrance, but Lukey prefers this one.
Bossanda milks in the morning and evening at 6. In the UK buffalo are notorious for not letting down their milk to a milking machine. Here she gently unties the calf, and bucket firmly between her feet, she milks two teats whilst the heifer calf sucks the other two. Bull calf's only get one teat, being destined for the table, not Bossanda s table though, her caste eats only milk, chicken and vegan. Every 2 days , she will take her rice life and a rope and head up into the jungle collecting grass for the buffalo and the goats,a 5hour trip.
Pasteurizing the milk on the pen fire I the kitchen. Smokey and sweet:-)
She churns the milk and collects the butter leaving a tasty curd like butter milk called mue.
Stone walls with a clay render on floor s and walls. Tidying up is easy with a wet clay mix to sooth out cracks and marks.
Lukey feeding a bagra
This house is 100year old but the style is typical of houses 30 yrs old. All the stone and wood were collected by hand. The wood comes from the jungle an hours walk away. The smoke billowing up from the kitchen into the room above makes it unusable for sleep ing but disuades the rats so it is the storage room for corn. The family sleeps above the buffalo.
The buffalos urine collects in a purpose built stone sump. Mixed with water it fertilizes the crops (sag and aloo) with a nitrogen rich boost.
Neighbours house still with original slate tiles. There are two types of rock in the region to my untrained eye. A durable sandstone used for building and a flacky slate that flakes into thin flat tiles that a hole can be bored into to attach to the roof.
Bossanda greets us with a grin. If there is time we sit and drink piping hot tea sweetened with heaps of suger and flavored with ginger and tea and milk. Lukey and I race to finish the pot, scalding ourselves in the race. Bossanda and I talk in a mixture of signs and gestures, usually settling down to pointing and naming things in Napalese and English. " buffalo : Boise" "milk: doot" etc
She ladles half a litre of milk into our pot. We pay 50 rps Lukey and I argue over who carys the pot. Usually settling on him with the bag and me the milk. We carefully carry our Boise doot home.
