In the last episode, the missionary travelled by a small, rather unstable boat called a Chinese launch, braving rough seas and a sleepless night before reaching the river estuary and landing at Sibuti. Welcomed by a kind young Chinese couple, the group rested before heading upriver to meet the Iban people, known as the descendants of Borneo’s famous head-hunters. The journey continued by canoe through dark waters and thick jungle, ending at a ramshackle longhouse where the visitor learned about local customs, family life, and the unique way these communities live together, making the experience both challenging and memorable.
I do not know if I was ever told why it was such a small place, only 6 families. In times of war, it is obvious that as many families as possible would live together for protection and also for farming purposes, but the Ibans, unlike the aristocratic Kenyahs and Kayans, lived under a very loose discipline and were more democratically inclined. They found it difficult to accept authority, so that a house could split up through family quarrels, or a progressive group being unable to accept the traditional ways, or latterly through religious differences. Such is the intimacy of life in a longhouse that it was not possible for new Christian converts to live under the same roof as the pagans. Always the minority group would leave and build their own house. It was not uncommon to come across in remote areas two longhouses quite near to each other, a sign that there had been some division.
I was very saddened to see the children in Rumah Pidek; they were scrawny. The headman looked aged but by our reckoning he would have been about 40. They had little to offer us for it was now November and the rice harvest was as far back as June. My colleague had some tins of Nestom, a kind of gruel, and some Milo. They shared their cream crackers with us. In those days there was no “Sell by date”.
As darkness fell, the families prepared for mass. Light was provided by tiny little lamps fuelled by some vegetable oil. The native peoples nearer to the coast had discovered earlier in the century a wonderful sticky black fluid which oozed out of the ground – good for lights and cooking. The Europeans heard about it. In one of those famous cloak and dagger exploits which are part of the history of the oil companies, Shell sent a scientist overland on the Trans-Siberian Railway, in great secrecy. From Hong Kong he sailed to Labuan and then on to Miri. He checked this sticky stuff. It was oil. Sarawak Shell was born.
Through all my years this scene never changed: the table set in the middle of the verandah, with the families sitting around. And underneath, the infants and the dogs played hide and seek. If ever the celebrant expressed irritation with them, one of the elders would rise and make a great to-do and scatter them but this was only a gesture for the Ibans would never chastise their children nor their hunting dogs, This sparing of the children has meant that the Iban children find schooling a great hardship.
When the mass was over, we all sat back for the next part of the programme, the welcome of the guests. There are no chairs, as a rule, in a longhouse. How I envied the Ibans as they tucked their little legs under them and sat that way for ages without shifting. Then all eyes turned to me as the headman addressed me. My colleague nudged me to remind me that I had a speech to deliver. I trotted out the words which I had memorised, roughly on the lines that I had come from London on the big fireship, then at Singapore I took another fireship, then in Kuching I took the flying ship to Miri, then in Miri I took the Chinese ship to come to see them at Rumah Pidek. But I sensed that something was not quite right. The headman held up his hand. I heard the words then that I would often hear in the years ahead, the words that signified a dramatic difference of opinion between the Ibans of Borneo and the rest of the world. “Kitai Iban” (we Ibans), he went on, “We Ibans pronounce that word LonDON; you said it wrong”. One does not argue with the headman in his own house. We had a good laugh afterwards. They had every right, I suppose, to call it any way they liked in their own house. That apart, my little speech was acceptable. In the midst of their poverty and lack of schooling, the Ibans retain the tribal memory that they are the best.
Since the Ibans were the great warriors of old and had never been bested, today they find it difficult to relate to the dominance of the Malays in government, the supremacy of the Islamic religion and language, all of which are institutionalised in the modern state of Malaysia. The majority of Ibans are Christian, mostly Roman Catholic, and are strong adherents of their faith. A tiny minority follow the old traditional religion of Animism, which holds that spirits inhabits trees, rocks and streams and that they have to be appeased. Apart from religion, there are few instances of their departing from their other traditional ways. They were the last of the tribes to accept schooling for their children. When it came time for the children to move to the big government secondaries they suffered what we would call today a culture shock. Life for them in the hostel was a great burden; sitting all day on hard benches and having to eat strange food-often denied the pleasure of pork to suit the Moslem pupils – this was too much for some of them. It was not uncommon to hear of whole classes of Iban children failing to return after the first term holiday. They missed the joys of playing, hunting in the jungle and being free as the wind.
Next time, our intrepid missionary discovers that surviving jungle journeys and python encounters is only half the adventure—wait until you see what happens when a Landrover packed with people, chickens, and the odd squawking surprise becomes the only way home! Will our hero ever get a comfortable seat, or will the wilds of Borneo claim another pair of sore feet? Don’t miss the next episode, where the road to Miri proves just as unpredictable as the river, and perhaps even bumpier.
