leisure time

The name of this tribal community is ‘Sabar’ or ‘Saora’ tribe, living mainly in Odisha and West Bengal in India. This is a forest community, which falls in Denotified Nomadic Tribe category. These photos are taken in Purulia district in West Bengal, India. Traditionally hunters, they are adept at collecting fruits, leaves and roots and hunting animals in the forest. They generally eat rats, rat snakes, ant, ant eggs, birds, rabbits and monitor lizards if they find some in the forests. They are making rat traps with a cane. It looks like a cone shape and puts any type of fruit inside the trap. When a rat eats the fruit, an iron hook is stuck around the rats’ neck. The community scoops out paddy stored by rats in their holes, puts the trap and catches them. The ‘Sabars’ are by and large the poorest of the poor, mostly living on nothing. Government facilities are so scanty that they have to survive on tree leaves and ants which they eat after baking on. The only things the ‘Sabar’ owned were small mud houses or small huts and a few household utensils. Their access to quality services such as livelihood, good hospitals and schools remains a serious challenge.