Day 84 “Jungle
Tripping with John
Lennon” In the morning, we leave Long Iman with some of the Penan (including Tinggang) for an overnight stay in the rainforest. The men bring their blowpipes and shotguns in the hope of landing a wild boar. Todd and I bring our blowpipes (he borrows one from Mutang) and dart holders in the hope of not shooting ourselves. The men beached the longboats at an area that suspiciously seemed to be within national park boundaries, not that I disapproved. The people should have a right to hunt here. (And hey, if we’re going into the area without a pass, why not be a party to poaching too?) Todd and I put
on our Penan rattan backpacks and follow the men up a hill. I suspect we
have a long hike ahead of us, but when we soon reach a
clearing, the Penan put down their loads. We find the remains of two
jungle huts, each with strips of rattan holding some of their wooden
skeleton still intact, but with some of the floor logs rotted or missing
and only a few dead leaves left from the ceiling. The Penan set about
fixing up these two shelters, with Tinggang cutting down small trees
with his parang for the floor. Both shelters feature four poles stuck
into the ground, with crossbeams a foot off the ground and again at the
top of the poles. The floor logs are then lain across the lower
crossbeam, creating a bumpy floor of felled trees. After this, several
tarps are hung over the top crossbeam and then staked out using small
sticks and rattan. The other shelter serves as the cooking area and is
constructed the same as the bedroom, except that instead of a tarp
ceiling, giant jungle leaves are used. A fire is started and wet wood is placed over it on a rack to dry for later use. After restoring camp to working
order, Tinggang and another man leave with their shotguns to go hunt wild
pig. Apparently this is not feasible when there are a couple of orang
puteh (white men) thrashing about the jungle. Todd and I are taken on
our “hunting” expedition by a family of three: mother, father and a
small boy. We carry our blowpipes and dart holsters, but as we are
not equipped with any poison it is more an act of living out boyhood
fantasies. I remember having a record as a kid that took me on a bear
hunt in the jungle. Now I was actually here, but the animals lurking in
the jungle may well be as imaginary as that bear; though we hear
some strange bird calls, we don’t see a single creature. The jungle
is like that—like most people, I came to Borneo with an image of a
jungle filled with exotic creatures, colorful flowers and spectacular
scenery. But in reality, the beauty found here is more sublime, found in
the great diversity of plants in all shades of green (but mostly just
green) and the tiny but fascinating insects that are the only fauna that
one is likely to encounter. Though this environment takes more effort
to appreciate it, it is nonetheless spectacular. An apt description was
penned by Eric Hansen in his book, Stranger in the Forest: “We were frail and
insignificant creatures, and at any moment we could be swallowed up by
the forest. When a plant, animal or human dies in the rainforest, it
soon becomes part of the forest. Flesh is digested, nutrients recycled
and body moisture reclaimed. The realization that the rainforest was a
living, breathing organism capable of consuming and digesting me was
disconcerting, but also rather exciting. It made me feel as if we were
traveling through the intestinal flora of some giant leafy creature.” (Eric Hansen traveled across the
interior of Borneo for seven months in 1984, starting in Sarawak and
crossing over into Kalimantan before coming back over into Sarawak.
Along the way he traveled for weeks with two Penan men and learned about
their jungle skills, such as recognizing any animal or bird noise,
communicating by whistling and stalking game. He described the
inspiration for his trip as “a masterful piece of scholarly lunacy
based on anachronistic information and my own half-baked notions of
Sarawak that had been gleaned from a twelve-day drunken visit six years
earlier.” Now we too were out in the jungle with the Penan, though not
quite as immersed in their lifestyle as Eric Hansen.) After a few hours of jungle
walking we return to camp and take a longboat to go up a side stream
to go swimming and string up some fishing nets. When we return, I ask the father of the family, with
whom we had walked, why the bodies of our
dart holsters are the color of shiny bamboo, but his is blackened and
looks well used. He goes off into the jungle and comes back with a
chopped-off branch. On the tip of the branch, sap is dripping from
several red wavy lines in the grain. The tree seems to be bleeding and
the pattern of the dripping red lines reminds me of that oatmeal, where
you swirl the red syrup into it. The father wipes his finger on the
bottom of a blackened pot, mixes this with some of the sap and shows us
how to color our bamboo holsters. Just like arts and crafts time at
grade school. While we work, the mother takes out a radio and turns it
on. When we hear what she tunes in, our minds are blown—Capitol FM,
a radio station we knew from our time in London! (We later find out
that neighboring Brunei somehow receives the station from London and
rebroadcasts it, but at the time I wonder if it was a bizarre
atmospheric fluke.) Needless to say, it is a little strange listening
to American oldies played by a London radio station while sitting in the
middle of the jungle in Borneo. There is also quite a bit of John
Lennon. He would have been 60 years old today. Well after dusk, Tinggang (who goes barefoot, as usual) and the other man return from their hunting trip with news that they had a shot a boar. We all go down the river to look at the carcass sitting in one of the longboats. As Todd and I crouch down near the boar, Tinggang cuts a square opening out of one side of the animal and pulls out its lungs and some other organs. He carries the goods back up to camp and makes a second fire. Taking out the square of skin, he cuts it into smaller squares and puts it on skewers over the fire, hair and all. When it starts to blacken, he takes off the strips and runs his parang over the burnt hair to scrape it off. Everyone then gathers to ingest this “treat.” It is actually alright, as well as pure pig fat goes (the day before we had eaten old pigfat at the longhouse—it was the most gamey tasting thing I can ever imagine.) Some of the meat is then cooked and sago is made up. Tinggang uses some jungle leaves to make a serving spoon for the pig juices. After sitting by the fire for awhile, we
go over to try out the
Penan’s cleverly constructed bedroom. The novelty wears off after about
ten minutes—the logs making up the floor still have knots on them and
are far from straight and smooth. It is the most uncomfortable night I
have ever spent. |
