Excerpt: Travel log, Malaysia
Day 4: Iban Longhouse/Jungle Camp
In the morning we had a simple breakfast. It escapes my memory as to what exactly we had. After this apparently unmemorable breakfast we had a blow pipe demonstration which each of us attempted yet was not any good at. I think I hit the small make-shift cardboard target one out of three times at a distance of 10–15 yards. These men can hit a target with enough power to kill whatever it is at 150 yards. An extremely impressive feat.
After this we watched a demonstration of an ole’ fashioned cock fight. I got it on video. This is important to the Iban not only for gambling purposes but also each color rooster is known for different parts of the community. In short, the colors mean something to the inhabitants of each of the Iban longhouse communities. It was just a demonstration, and no animals were hurt in the filming of this etc, etc….
After this we packed up our gear and headed back to the jetty. We hopped back in the longboats and began the trip to the point where we would begin our jungle trek. We had a lunch of fried chicken and rice, probably one of the little birds running around the longhouse, which means one less rooster wake-up call at 4 AM or something similarly very, very AM. It was hot. So hot that I think my sweat was sweating. We started our trek. It was meant to take roughly three and a half hours. In reality it took us nearly six hours to complete the trek. Our slow progress was due to several factors: 1. We are mostly white westerners and have no clue how to travel effectively or efficiently in the jungle. 2. One of our kids got sick about 30 minutes into the trek. We had to nurse him for the next five and a half hours. I suspect it was a combination of heat exhaustion and dehydration. 3. We were a large group, in fact the largest group that has ever done this particular Borneo trek. The Iban headman, whom we called Chief-Chief, Lemon and Paul (another of our guides) moved through the jungle with ease. They had none of the technical hiking gear that we had and the Chief smoked clove cigarettes one after another the entire way. He wore Adidas slip sandals and dressed entirely in cotton and he kicked our ass up and down the trail. While smoking the entire time the Chief also carried the sick kids pack and all his gear. A man of action and of few words and even less fingers, he carried on for hours with this ridiculous feat.
Fewer fingers. He was missing most of his right index finger. Eventually, after translation through Lemon, I learned it was lost in some manner of chainsaw incident. He didn’t turn off the chainsaw before attempting to fix a stuck chain. Once we arrived at the camp it was underwhelming at first. That is, until one began to examine the camp with a more detailed eye. It was truly magnificent. The Iban had literally carved out a beautiful site in the jungle near a great swimming hole. They had lashed all our cots together in a row, all off the ground and each with its own mosquito netting. The bugs were not terrible, I’ve had worse experiences with mosquitoes in Panama City, Panama. We had only a few run-ins with the leaches and as long as we had bug dope on, we felt relatively protected. Of course we all had bites at some point in the jungle, some from mosquitoes some from unseen and unheard insects in the night. They had a kitchen set up as well and soon after we’d arrived, completely soaked to the bone with sweat, meat went on the grill. Grill, it was really a great little lean-to sort of smoker. After the meat and fish had smoked for a while it was covered with a green leaf of which I do not remember the name of the plant. We ate Iban BBQ, had some rice wine, and went to bed early. On a side note, earlier in the evening Chief, Lemon, Paul and Luweng from the next longhouse (the one we were supposed to trek to tomorrow) called the co-program leader and myself over to their camp. The Chief, of course, had a plastic water bottle filled with rice wine. He had cut the top off his bottle with his pareng and fashioned a makeshift shot glass out of it. I was obliged to partake in multiple glasses of this rice wine. He had also prepared for us some smoked fish. He handed me one and then took the head off and ate it. I ate the rest of the fish. The next one he picked up I took the head off it and ate it and he ate the body. We all had a full laugh and ate the rest of the smoked fish.
