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Bijaya Rai Bantawa has been learning Lungkhim, his native language, these days.

The Language Commission is running a 45-day class at his village of Kerabari in Suryodaya Municipality, Ilam, to preserve the dying language that belongs to the local Lungkhim Rai tribe.

Bijaya, 56, gets up early in the morning, finishes household works, and heads to the class, which takes place from 8 to 10 am.

“Being a Lungkhim Rai, I was interested in learning my mother tongue. Hopefully I will be able to say a thing or two in it after completing the language course,” says Bijaya.

According to Janga Bahadur Rai, chairman of Lungkhim Rai Society, 30 people, including women, youths and elderly, are attending the class. He says Lungkhim language fell into near obscurity as their elders stopped using it.

“I come from the Lungkhim tribe and I know Bantawa Rai language. But I don’t speak my mother tongue,” says Janga Bahadur, who is also attending the class.

Durgaman Rai, local Lungkhim community leader, says it is unfortunate that their native language has reached a point of near extinction. “We had forgotten how to speak our tongue. So here we are learning the Lungkhim words used in everyday conversation,” he says. 

Thirty-two year old Ganga Bahadur Rai feels grateful to the Language Commission for organizing the class. He feels his native language is not dying after all. “Our elders didn’t speak the language. We are learning now,” says Ganga Bahadur.

He hopes to teach the language to young members of the community.

The role of the language instructor is being assumed by Arun Rai, a 58-year-old retired police officer. He says parents and siblings used to speak Lungkhim in their household, unlike other families in the community.

“I spoke the language from my childhood. My father and two siblings can also speak Lungkhim but since they don’t know how to read and write, the Language Commission picked me as the language instructor,” he says.

Besides Lungkhim tribe members, people from other Rai tribes like Sampang and Newahang are also attending the class.

“Some people from the neighboring Rong Rural Municipality are also learning. They plan to conduct a similar class in their area,” says Arun.

He expects at least 40 percent of his students to be able to speak Lungkhim tongue by the end of the class.

The current class is composed of 30 days of writing and 15 days of speaking lessons. The lesson-plan was designed by linguist Dr Taramani Rai with the assistance of the class instructor, Arun.

“The essential aspects of language learning are listening, speaking, reading and writing. In this course, however, our focus is more on listening and reading since this class is aimed at those who can already read and write Nepali,” says Dr Taramani.

Janga Bahadur, the chairman of Lungkhim Rai Society, is pleased with the progress.

“The use of our language was limited to only five families and it was only being used during tribal rituals.  The class has at least helped people reconnect with the language spoken by their ancestors,” he says. “Those who didn’t know a single word of Lungkhim are able to formulate simple sentences because of the class.”

Encouraged by the interest shown by young people, the Lungkhim Rai Society plans to spread the language to every Lungkhim household of Ilam.

Dr Taramani says raising the number of speakers is the most effective way of reviving an endangered language.

“When we conducted a survey on Lungkhim speakers some five years ago, we found only one family in Ilam spoke the language. So we decided to start this language revival process from Ilam itself,” he says.

The Lungkhim Rai Society estimates that there are around 100 Lungkhim Rai households in Suryodaya Municipality of Ilam.

“Some more families from the tribe could be scattered in other parts of the district. According to our estimates, the population of Lungkhim Rais in the country could be upward of 10,000, ” says Janga Bahadur.

Disaster-hit Tonga has gone into lockdown after detecting its first community transmissions of COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic, Aljazeera reported.

The lockdown began at 05:00 GMT on Wednesday, days after the Pacific island nation began receiving foreign aid in the wake of a deadly volcanic eruption that also generated huge tsunami waves around the Pacific.

While the first of Tonga’s community cases were detected in two port workers in the capital, Nuku’alofa, on Tuesday, officials said the men were not on the docks being used by foreign navies to deliver aid.

Australian navy ship the HMAS Adelaide was known to have at least 23 COVID-19 cases on board when it docked at Vuna wharf last week and offloaded 250 pallets of aid to a quarantine zone.

Crew members on board aid flights from Japan and Australia also reported infections.

The workers showed no symptoms but Tongan radio station BroadcomFM reported on Wednesday another three cases had been detected among three of the workers’ family members of the workers, bringing total case numbers to five.

Tonga has previously recorded only one case – in a quarantined traveller returning from New Zealand.

“The most important issue at the moment is for us to slow down [the spread of the virus] and stop those who have been affected. That is the reason for our national lockdown,” Tonga Prime Minister Siaosi Sovaleni told an emergency press conference on Wednesday.

He said the COVID situation in the country would be reassessed “every 48 hours”, and the government would decide whether to end or extend the lockdown depending on the outcome.

The stay-at-home order means all businesses and schools must close, with only essential services allowed to operate.

Meanwhile, in Australia, officials played down concerns that the crew of the HMAS Adelaide may have been responsible for Tonga’s outbreak.

Tonga’s deputy head of mission in Australia, Curtis Tu’ihalangingie, told the Reuters news agency that the community cases were detected at a different wharf and “not the one that the HMAS Adelaide used”.

“The wharf that had the case is a different one, used for commercial cargoes,” he said.

The Australian Defence Force’s Chief of Joint Operations Greg Bilton also said it did not appear the HMAS Adelaide was the source and samples from the two wharf workers would be sent to Australia for testing to verify the origin of the COVID strain.

“I don’t think there’s any connection, there’s no evidence of that,” he told Sky News.

Tu’ihalangingie also told Reuters the delivery of aid would not change as a result of the COVID-19 cases but that “front-liners will need to be more careful”.

The Tongan government, in a bid to keep the virus at bay, has insisted on contactless delivery of aid, and all pallets unloaded from aircraft or ships are isolated for 72 hours before being distributed by the local emergency service.

Tonga has maintained border restrictions since March 2020, allowing it to contain the virus, while also implementing a nationwide vaccination programme.

According to the health ministry, 83 percent of the eligible population – about 77,000 people over the age of 12 – have been fully vaccinated, while 96 percent have received at least their first dose.

Tonga and several other small Pacific nations, such as Palau and Fiji, were among the last places on the planet virus outbreaks arrived in. The three island nations have also managed to ramp up their vaccination programmes in the last two years.

On Tuesday, the International Federation of Red Cross Red Crescent Societies warned that a record surge in COVID-19 cases was threatening to overwhelm hospitals and fragile health systems in some other Pacific island nations, including the Solomon Islands, where vaccination is still low.

The emerging BA.2 form of the Omicron coronavirus variant does not seem to be any more severe than the original BA.1 form, an official of the World Health Organization said on Tuesday, Reuters reported.

Police have arrested a man in possession of one kg gold from the Tribhuvan International Airport (TIA).

The detainee has been identified as Dawa Tshering Sherpa of Sindupalchok. He had arrived in Nepal on an Air Arabia flight.

According to a source, Sherpa had brought the gold by concealing it in his rectum.

Sherpa with passport number 09368618 had gone to Dubai on November 16.

SP Bhim Dhakal of the TIA said that Sherpa had brought the gold by concealing it in his private parts and stomach.

Police suspected that something was wrong with the man after he was spotted behaving suspiciously. During the interrogration, he admitted to concealing the gold in his rectum.

He was arrested during the security screening, SP Dhakal said.

Further investigation into the incident is underway, police said.