The Peace Correspondent (28 page)

This is an early taste of wild Borneo, and the next day, I head north along the new Pan-Borneo highway, bound for the Hilton Batang Ai Longhouse Resort 270 kilometers north of Kuching, in a center of Iban culture. Along the way, I learn more about Iban customs -- notably headhunting -- from my driver/guide Mas.

Sarawak's original inhabitants include Land Dayaks (Bidayuh), Sea Dayaks (Ibans) and Upriver Dayaks (Orang Ulu). “In the old days, an Iban man had to take the head of an adult male from another tribe before he could get married,” Mas informs me. “No head, no honey,” he adds. “Today, it is no money, no honey.”

Iban men had their bodies, arms and legs tattooed, but could only tattoo their fingers if they killed a male older than 18 from another tribe. “Headhunting stopped about 50 years ago. It's not popular anymore,” Mas shrugs.

The highway through the rainforest follows a mountain range on our right, separating us from Kalimantan, Indonesia. On the way, we pass palm oil estates with tree branches like gargantuan feather dusters and pepper plantations with orderly rows of tall cylindrical pepper trees.

Mid-morning we reach the 90-square-kilometer artificial lake that the Batang Ai hydro-electric created with a dam it built 18 years ago. In just 15 minutes, a modern speedboat speeds us to our home for the next few days. Opened in 1995, the unique Hilton Batang Ai Resort, the most luxurious in Borneo, combines Iban longhouse architecture with modern amenities.

Traditional longhouses are villages of up to 200 people living under one roof -- long buildings with private “apartments” off a communal verandah, where public life goes on. The Hilton resort's 100 rooms are in 11 large, authentic-looking, but modern Iban-style longhouses made with smooth, dark local hardwood and mostly natural materials. Traditional Iban carvings, textiles and handicrafts decorate the wooden structures. Landscaped gardens with local flowering plants to attract wild birds surround the resort, and a nature walk winds through the nearby jungle.

Some 90 percent of the staff are locals, friendly Ibans with a natural charm. Headhunters make good head waiters, I find. My first stop is the Nanga Mepi restaurant to sample some Iban food. The chicken and coconut soup with slices of young coconut, and the baked red tilapia, a local freshwater fish served with garlic rice and wild jungle ferns is delicious, as is the bamboo chicken I try another night.

From this base, guests explore traditional Iban communal longhouses and the 240-square-kilometer Batang Ai National Park. My Borneo Adventure tour company day trip starts next morning at 9am when I board one of a dozen longboats at the resort dock. With James driving the long, narrow boat and jungle guide Jalan navigating from the front, we cross the lake, pass some freshwater fish farms, and leave the modern world behind. It is soothing this brilliant Borneo morning sitting low in the boat, savoring the blue sky, white clouds, green jungle and brown river, while lulled by the hypnotic hum of the 15-horsepower outboard and the water slapping at the bow.

At the end of the lake, Jalan, giving hand signals, guides
us through a maze of upright dead tree trunks, stumps, sticks, branches and floating driftwood. Entering a river, we pass a few dilapidated longhouses looking like long-abandoned summer homes up on the bank, then patches of cultivated land and orderly rows of pepper trees up on the hills.

Suddenly, the river narrows, and a powerful current rocks the narrow boat. With James driving and Jalan fending off rocks with a pole or paddle, we fight our way past the rapids. I search the trees above, looking for hornbills and proboscis monkeys, nature's little joke, with their weird, pendulous elongated noses. Ahead, I spot a vine -- or a thick, grey snake -- stretched across the river. But it is only a power cable bringing electricity to the ranger station.

An hour-and-a-half after leaving the resort, we reach the Batang Ai National Park ranger station. In the office perched up on the bank, I see by the guest book that I am the first visitor in three days, and the last person here was a forestry officer.

Back across the river, Jalan and I slather on insect repellent - especially on our ankles to ward off leeches, which are common here - and head up some wooden steps on a jungle trek. Along the way, he points out several ancient Iban graves with large clay pots on them to hold sacrifices (or funeral items), and one more modern one with a small tin trunk. Only warriors are buried up here, he explains.

Puffing and sweating in this jungle heat and humidity, I climb to a ridge and walk along, catching occasional glimpses of the valley on both sides. Jalan tells me about the different types of foliage: the pandanus used for thatching roofs and weaving baskets and mats; ferns for making bracelets and armlets; and the large hardwood trees used to build longhouses and longboats.

It is here we encounter the lounging lizard sunning itself at the side of the path. It is a startling sight, the size of a Great Dane, on Pekingese legs, with a long tail and a Jurassic Park monster's head.

When we get back to the river, James is cleaning five silvery
fish he caught while waiting for us. On a small pebble beach nearby, he salts them, impales them on sharpened sticks, and roasts them over a campfire. They make a tasty supplement to our packed lunch. Jalan promises me that “Next time I'll catch the monitor lizard, and we can eat that as well.” I think I will pass on that.

After lunch, we make a short visit to a functioning longhouse. Rough cement steps lead up to the communal home, but inside it is still basic. The only modern objects are some kerosene lamps, a few plastic containers, nylon fishnets hanging to dry and a John Player cigarettes poster. Hand-woven baskets, mats and fish traps hang on plain, unpainted wooden plank walls and a handful of pig-sticking spears leans against the corner next to a stack of firewood. Deer, not human, skulls decorate the support posts in this longhouse. The smell of wood smoke lingers in the air. Roosters crow, flies buzz, dogs snuffle around.

Jalan urges me to be careful walking over the springy bamboo floor so I don't plunge through. “You have a strong body,” he says - meaning heavy, and I do weigh far more than these small, wiry warriors who are built more like junior gymnasts than boxers or wrestlers.

Only a half-dozen members of the 22 resident families are around this afternoon, the men in shorts, the women in batik sarongs. In Iban fashion, they gather around to greet me. The oldest man's back, arms and legs are completely covered with dark tattoos. Among the traditional patterns, he proudly shows me one of a naked lady on his arm, done in Kuala Lumpur with a modern tattooing needle. I note that his fingers are not tattooed, so he is no headhunter. The old women also have dark blue tattoos around their arms.

Feeling like Santa, I hand over the large plastic bag of candy and chocolates that I'd been told to bring as a traditional present. With all this concentrated sugar, I feel like I'm contributing to future dentists of Sarawak, but the oldest woman gives me a thumbs up, so the gift is a hit.

“How big is your longhouse?” asks the older man, who I take to be the chief. I wonder how to explain Hong Kong apartment blocks, before simply replying, “Quite big.”

As I squat on the floor, I am introduced to the most amicable of Iban customs. Whenever welcoming visitors, these hospitable people break open a bottle (or more) of tuak, the local rice wine. It is surprisingly tasty, and the chief keeps refilling my glass. I'm too well-mannered to refuse.

Iban welcomes can go on for days, with extensive drinking, singing and dancing. But tuak apparently packs a powerful punch, and Jalan says our good-byes after we finish the first bottle. With a mixture of relief and reluctance, I board the boat and we head back to our own longhouse. In this wild and wonderful corner of the world, there are more adventures to come.

WHEN the doors of the Philippine Airlines' plane swing open a band of sooty-faced natives in pseudo-Zulu outfits bearing a sign “Black Beauty Boys” advance on us waving spears and bashing bass drums.

Screaming, “I gotta get this sound; we may not hear it again,” Matt, a CBC correspondent, shoves past me down the stairs.

Blunt fingers jabbing at the black piano-key controls of his Sony portable tape recorder, he marches towards the wild, shuffling band, his mike held forward like a bayonet. But the natives are friendly, here to greet junketing politicians from Manila, a jet hour to the northwest.

The occasion is the annual January Ati-Atihan Festival in Kalibo, Atlan district, the biggest and best in a land of festivals. But Matt need not fear missing the sound. For the next two days we can't escape it.

It drives him over the edge, until he buries his head under a pillow at night screaming, “The drums, the drums,” like a melodramatic colonial officer in a 1930s adventure movie.

We learned of the festival a few days earlier while lounging pool side at the Manila Hilton, sampling exotic fruit juices and baking ourselves to the toasty brown of the Filipinos. We were resting from an exhausting tour of the country, reporting on faith healers, dog eaters and cockfights, seeking out the perfect secluded beach and sampling local delicacies like balut (fertilized duck eggs eaten from the shell, tiny bodies with feathers already formed, reputedly a potent aphrodisiac).

My companion was a London-based radio reporter. His area, the world; his beat, the bizarre. And with his trained eye for the offbeat, he spotted the item in What's On in Manila.

“Here, look at his,” he said one afternoon, pushing aside the crumbs from an adobo sandwich (chicken and pork steamed in soy sauce, vinegar, garlic, peppercorn and spices). It was a photo story on a little festival on a secluded island, a quiet celebration in the boondocks, far from the blaring jeepneys, the brash, nonstop disco in Manila's notorious del Pilar bars.

“We can relax for a few days, get some peace and quiet, maybe even get a story,” Matt declared, slurping on his calamansi (lime) juice. “We'll go tomorrow. Carlos, can I see that menu again?”

By Sunday morning, last day of the festival, Kalibo looks like host city to a giant, noisy chimney sweeps convention. People from barrios (villages and districts) from miles around parade through the sun-blanched streets and open square with faces and bodies soot-blackened in imitation of the Atis, the original short, kinky-haired negrito inhabitants of the area. (Ati-Atihan literally means “make like the Atis.”)

They march alone, in family groups of 10 to 20, or in ragged “tribes” of hundreds from the barrios, with names like D'Black Maharlikan Guards, Tribu Amazona or Sound Tripping. Some wear homemade costumes of woven palm leaves, straw, seashells or coconuts, others dress in camouflage ponchos, T-shirts or hats, mechanics' overalls and Arab headdress, or military uniform with wooden guns.

A few parade more elaborate costumes: a prisoner with ball
and chain made from silver-painted basketball, a giant baby sucking on a quart of local rum with rubber nipple, a 120-pound, green-faced Incredible Hulk, a Jesus Christ with fake blood dripping down his face from a crown of thorns (expensive cowboy boots showing beneath his crimson gown). And each group carries a white-skinned, blue-eyed doll dressed in red cloak -- Santo Nino, the Christchild -- in a happy, if confusing blend of Christian and pagan celebrations.

Blackavised Atis shuffle to the pounding beat of military drums or bamboo tubes or beer bottles banged with sticks and stones. The incessant boomtataboomtataboom is broken only occasionally by a marching brass band, a tinkling xylophone or piercing tin whistle.

It is a smaller, less-organized version of the great, pre-Lenten Trinidad and Rio de Janeiro carnivals -- but also different. Trinidadian and Brazilian festival groups write their own music, songs that will be sung in bars and streets as the popular music for the rest of the year. Filipinos are the most musical people of Asia, providing nightclub and cabaret bands and singers to all of Asia and the Pacific. But I hear little singing at the festival, just the constant drumbeat and the slow shuffling dance.