An evening with the Ibans
Sim Kwang Yang
May 28, 05 2:10pm

The small band of mud-caked near-naked young boys were tearing through the lalang and the undergrowth from the direction of the river bank, shrieking and laughing as they stumbled over one another towards the foot of the staircase of this lone kampong house.

I was alarmed by their state of unusual excitement, and moved to the doorway to investigate. Gasping for breathe, they fought among themselves for the chance to report their discovery, "Uncle, a crocodile! At the river bank!" Arms were flung apart at various lengths to indicate the size of the feared reptile.

This was a matter of grave concern indeed for the Iban communities living along the placid Stutong Rive meandering around the outskirt of Kuching City. The dozen or so adults sitting in the room behind me immediately exploded into an animate discussion.

The scorching heat of the day had waned, and the stilted wooden hut with thatch roof was basked in the afterglow of the sun, as the evening dusk descended upon the surrounding rubber trees long abandoned to grow wild. Visitors had drifted into the hospitable shade of the little hut in small parties. They were on their way back from their gardens, where they worked the land as their ancestors had done for countless generations, even though they no longer needed to.

They were urban Ibans. All the villagers in Kampong Stutong were related to one another through marriage, and so forming a very big clan of pretty self-contained community, an enclave of traditional Ibanness at the edge of the modern bustling city of Kuching.

All of them could trace their roots to somewhere near Sibu town in the Rejang Basin, the heartland of these hardy, virile and fiercely independent Iban people. You could tell their origin from their speech; they spoke a version of Iban with a harsh cadence, replacing the "r" with the "h", so that "Ikan Merah" became "Ikan Miha". Some still referred to the dog as "udoh", rather than the more customary "ukoi"! I had always found their affected accent rather charming, despite the claim by those Ibans from Batang Ai that theirs was a more refined tongue.

I had learnt about their origin from another source.

Secret meeting

The whole area, some six miles from the city centre, had been going through rapid development. New modern housing estates had been mushrooming on what was once swampy rubber plantation land, forming the prestigious residential area of Stampin. Highways were being planned to gain quick access to UNIMAS and large development projects located over 20 miles away in the chief minister's constituency of Samarahan.

SESCO, the Sarawak equivalent of TNB in West Malaysia, was cutting a trail through the sprawling vegetation, to erect huge poles for their electric cables overhead. Their tractors accidentally dug up quite a few old graves in the local Iban graveyard. The spirits of ancient ancestors had been disturbed. They must be appeased in the usual customary manners, through compensation and the holding of the appropriate ceremony.

Since I was their elected member of Parliament at the time, some of the village elders met me for advice, in a secret meeting in the dead of night, because I was from an opposition party. The matter was eventually settled to their satisfaction, thanks to the intercession of some helpful parties who did not want to see the small matter becoming a big public issue.

During the course of my investigation, I had also discovered that most of the desecrated graves did belong to early Iban settlers from Sibu, who had, for some strange reason, migrated to Kuching over 100 years ago. Apart from the physical evidence, there was the oral record.

The Iban people do not have a written language, but they more than compensate for this lack by having an amazing oral tradition. Their myths, their tales of heroic exploits long past, and the history of their entire race are all well preserved in the telling of tales, lasting for hours on end, often in the evening hours or during festivals when they find reprieve from their farm chores. Reciting the genealogy of their family tree to five generations back in time is mere child's play for an informed village elder.

There they were, in the late afternoon when the crocodile was sighted, sitting on hand-woven ratan mats, some chewing their sireh with reddened teeth, some smoking their rokok apong of crimson Thai tobacco rolled in palm leaves, and some drinking the fiery langkau, a home brewed alcoholic beverage that could rot the guts of the uninitiated.

Women enjoy prominent position

They were just a cigarette's walk away from the new township offering all the amenities of upper-middle class living, including posh apartments, a shopping mall, and an exclusive club-house for the rich. Yet, they were shielded from the symbols of modernity by a stretch of abandoned rubber trees, shrubs and wild vegetation. Here, in the sea of urban living, was an island of Iban traditions, where the spirits of ancestors were alive and well, and their ways still practiced and revered.

The news of the crocodile brought much excitement, especially among the women. Unlike women in many native communities in Sarawak, Iban women are never shy to speak their mind in mixed company. The Ibans have always been an egalitarian people, especially when it comes to relation between the sexes. The women enjoy a prominent position in the household. In some, they are the dominant matriarch of the family clan.

This is not surprising. After all, women are the ones who do most of the farm work, planting and harvesting crops, and even helping to clear primary jungle. With that kind of economic contribution and the physique that comes from hard work, Iban women are not likely to submit to wife-beating, which is very rare.

I was foolish enough to suggest that we sought the aid of sharp-shooters from the Forestry Department. We should protect the children, I said, since the young ones bath and fish daily in the river. Why, if necessary, we should seek the help of a bomoh, who could work his white magic to lure the beast to the hunters!

This harmless and well-meaning proposal met with a storm of noisy protests. Why should you disturb the buaya, the matriarch boomed from the back of the room, when the buaya has not disturbed you?

Being well trained in public debate, I gave the rejoinder that, in the recent past, a huge crocodile had eaten a young boy in Lundu a hundred kilometers away. They had hunted down the monster with the help of a bomoh, and when they cut the giant reptile open, they found the mostly undigested body of the boy still in its stomach.

I then revealed the news that the legendary crocodile known to all Sarawakians as Bujang Senang (easy bachelor?) had been sighted again in Sri Aman. The report that this notorious man-eater had attacked again filled the front page of all the local newspapers. Perhaps the crocodile that the children had seen earlier at the bank of Stutong River was a cousin of Bujang Senang, I speculated.

One tale led to another 

I was immediately admonished for my ignorance by the matriarch without much ceremony. Did I not know, she asked, that Bujang Senang attacked the victim in question, because the victim's grandfather had killed a crocodile in his life time needlessly? She then launched into a long tale of the origin of Bujang Senang, a tale she had heard from her cousin, who had married into a family in Sri Aman, where the myth of Bujang Senang had originated.

As usual, one tale led to another, all about cosmic justice in the universe of the jungle and the rivers, and the fate of those who transgressed the rules of proper conduct while they travel through the wild. Never call anyone by name in the woods. Never answer such a call, if you hear your name uttered. Never pick up artifacts that appear out of nowhere in the middle of the wild forests. If you have to relieve yourself along the path, murmur a plea for forgiveness first. For women who happen to be menstruating, they should cover their waste in layers of soil after they have relieved themselves.

I looked at the faces of the children listening enraptured to the adults spinning their tales of supernatural wonders that inhabited their spiritual world. Darkness had gathered force. Suddenly, the shadowy shades of the trees and the shrubs outside the little house did look menacing.

In a few days' time, on June 1, all the Dayak people in Sarawak will be celebrating their Gawai Dayak. This story is dedicated to them.