From the Wikipedia:
“Mindat is one of the British administrative towns during British time and also the second largest town in Chin State. It is situated on the mountain range at an altitude of 2500m. Most Chin villages located on the hill sides and in the valleys of the Chin mountain ranges. Most visitors visit houses of the Chin tattooed faces women, by making trekking trip to their villages around Mindut. Most of them keep their traditional customs and still wear their traditional costume. Hill tribes’ people are animist and Shamans are highly respected in their community.”
The tattoos are supposed to disfigure a woman’s face and protect her from abduction by the enemy. Besides, they are supposed to help a woman get to the holy mountain, because only those will come. Women with tattoos never go to school. Approx. 20 years ago women stopped applying the tattoos.
Children work here from the age of 6. Short childhood, isn’t it?. Girls skip the rubber, like everywhere else in the world, and boys have their fun - the fight for the “prescription” elastic bands. Everyone put their band on a 5-cm stick stuck into the ground. The elastic bands hang down from the stick. From a distance of about 10 m boys shoot with rubber bands sequentially like a slingshot. Who will shoot and knock off the bands, takes them. A difficult skill!
The skill is needed for hunting with a bow in adulthood.
There are only a few women left who can play the flute by blowing air through their nose. We listened to a short concert performed by a women decorated in a huge wooden "drums" stuck in holes in her ears. She confirmed that pulls them out for the night.
