Jobbing (continued…)

Oh, I forgot to tell you about my job trip.

Of course, I won’t write everything here otherwise I’d bore you to tears. So, I was in the ulu or ‘up country’ for the whole of last week, asking local inhabitants about why they walk their land of many giant broccoli without any footwear. They politely informed me that my question was indeed strange and stupid but out of sympathy for an urban simpleton like me, they would unveil the secrets of the feet.

In the olden days, I was told, we humans were part of nature, nothing more and nothing less. A life complete without hutang. Nowadays, we detach ourselves from nature very much to the anger of the rattan vines, dead leaves and all manners of plants and creatures of the forest floor. We even go to the extend of buying expensive footwear to trample on these tiny ecological creatures and feel no remorse for them. And yet, when they die under out footwear we do not eat them.

By walking the forest floor in the land of many giant broccoli without footwear, I was told, they are reconciling their relationship with nature, thus leaving human arrogance at the threshold of the land of many giant broccoli.

Or something to that effect lah…

My trip this time was a bit different. No, no, nothing about footwear lah. It was all about death. Not in the manner of what we – as in, urbanites – think about death but rather the intricacy of death and social status. Okay, okay…I promised not to bore you to tears by writing about this. I will conclude this with some (not many) photos.

The above photo is the modern day Kayan salong (burial hut on a pole or several carved poles) located at the Bakun resettlement scheme in Belaga. This is made for the Kenyah and Kayan maren or aristocrats when they pass away. The carvings are elaborate and nowadays, they carve hornbills on the roof.

But the other indigenous communities especially the Kajang groups – Lahanan, Kejaman, Sekapan, Punan Bah, Seping – are the ones more known to practice this elaborate death ritual. There is one such klirieng standing at the Sarawak Museum though this newspaper article on it may not give an accurate information on its origin. I sort of agree more with this interpretation where klirieng (and also salong) is done primarily by the Kajang groups and salong by the Kayan and Kenyah. Of course, I may be wrong.

The ones that fascinated me on this trip were the abandoned, rundown salong and a structure that looks like a klirieng (burial poles) belonging to the Seping of Koyan. I went to most of the places where they ‘bury’ their maren in the salong but almost all of it were in bad conditions. There were many broken salong that fell off the poles, shattered and buried somewhere in the area.

We found one salong that fell from the poles. There were two poles that held the salong about 20ft above the ground but a tree must have knocked it over.

On the forest floor, we found the knocked-down salong with a skeleton of a man in it. I was told it belonged to a Ba Mali chief who once, together with another Seping leader, led the Seping to settle in Tinjar before they returned to Koyan many years later.

Oh well, I’ve to stop here and unpack my clothes from my bag. Need to get them washed after one week of soaking it in sweat, dirt and cap apek stains….