As a part of a unit on
community in our class we were exploring local indigenous knowledge with
students through discussion and group work. The next day a student came up with
a nut and handed it to me. He said, this is called kiling se. "In my
village, it is used by women to apply to their nipples to stop breast feeding
for their children," he added. I took the nut to class and we had a class
discussion around the nut.
I made a short post on wechat moments about this nut. Later one
of my friends after viewing my post told me that his father collects these
nuts. I was curious to see him and that evening I approached his dad. He was ex
army and has spent a lot of time outdoors and has a lot of other local
knowledge besides the nut.
I learned from him that
the nut was used by elders in the community as a natural soap to wash their
clothes. Their parents use to soak this nut in water along with clothes. I
tried with a piece to clean my hands and it was very effective in removing the
dirt. If we keep on rubbing the nut shell, we can see white foam starts to
appear. It is very much like modern soap.
The round, black seed
inside can be cracked, he said, to extract nut for consumption. We tried
together to crack one and it tastes like a less-greasy walnut.
The nut in large
quantity can be sold in ne
‘’Kiling
se’’ is a term in the Sharchop language (the most widely
spoken language in East Bhutan). It is a rough round dark-red kernel with a
black seed inside it. Besides traditionally being used by the women in the
village to ween their children from breast feeding, it was also used by
villager as an anti-leech, medicine to heal the cracks on our heels and can be
used as natural whistle for many children.
Another friend of mine
recounted that, when she was a kid, she visits her aunt in a neighbouring
community. They used to make use of the nut to wash their hair as a natural
shampoo. She said it gives a shiny appearance to hair.
A monk from Martang
said the nut is beaten into small pieces, mixed with a few pinches of salt; it
is wrapped in a cloth piece then tied onto the end of a stick. It is ready for
use to remove leeches and sometime the mixture is applied on the skin directly.
Later I learned the
English name of the nut from Brodie, a visiting English teacher. It is called
''Soap Nut''. He told me that the nut is used in the west as a natural soap. He
said now China is planting this nut to export to the west.
Personally I feel there
is potential for SJI to take up this as a project for small-scale production
after doing some research on it. LME students can take this as a community
project to collect seeds and plant it around Shedra.
