Among the Bateks
Trip Start
Jul 15, 2007
1
142
195
Trip End
Jul 16, 2008
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Jerantut,
Malaysia
Monday, March 17, 2008
"Primitive" people are not incompetents who wander into the woods by mistake, like the strange kid in Jon Krakauer's fascinating book, Into the Wild. They are highly-functional experts with a different skill set. The Bateks are one of Malaysias many ethnic minorities. About 3,000 of them live in the park, with 30,000 living more modern lives elsewhere in the country.
After a ten-minute boat ride and a short climb, our guide Hasbi introduced us to the headman of the local Batek village. He squatted in front of us to demonstrate some of the tribe's survival skills.
First he took a dried length of local wood
Che in the jungle
. Grooves were carved in the bottom, and holes bored through the center of the grooves. He looked around, found a length of vine, then broke a small piece of wood in half and tied it to both ends of the vine to form two handles. He passed this around the wood and seated it in the groove. Standing on the wood, he began to rapidly pull the vine back and forth, rubbing it against the bottom of the groove.Within sixty seconds smoke was rising from the wood. He turned it over, and a tiny coal feel out into a waiting dry leaf full of finely-shredded shavings. He blew on it carefully. More smoke, then sudden flame.
From picking up the first piece of wood to a full flame took less than five minutes, and probably less than three. Could I have done the same thing in an hour? Almost certainly not. For that matter, probably not in a long day of practice.
Next came the blowgun demonstration. The Bateks hunt using poisoned darts. The chief had a bamboo case full of slender, needle-sharp darts. (These demo darts are poison-free.) He demonstrated their use on a nearby target, a stuffed bear suspended in front of a nylon tarp. He nailed the bear in the neck from thirty yards
Target practice
. Pooh would never have stood a chance. Next it was our turn. Jack shot short, I shot wide left, then Jack shot long. Another visitor, an Iranian exile who moved to Miami in 1979 after the fall of the Shah, nailed Teddy right in the privates first time. After our demo, we checked out the souvenir counter. We had a choice of two sizes of blowguns. I bought two full blowdart kits, one of each size, complete with real pointed darts. What would the Consumer Product Safety Commission or the National Toy Safety Board say? For that matter, what the heck was I thinking? What sane father with two aggressive, over-active boys buys real blowguns?
Actually, I know exactly what I was thinking. The blowguns are beautiful works of craft, and I could not resist buying one for less than $7, about the price of a pack of Pokemon cards at home. Each small perfect dart was crafted by the chief in only five minutes, using materials from three trees and one bush.
On the boat back to the resort, I spent some time speaking to the Iranians, who left the country in 1979 after the fall of the Shah, moving to Miami and then on to Denmark. They were beautifully dressed, spoke English well, and like the current regime about as much as I do.
As we prepared for bed, a trick of acoustics brought clearly from across the river the musical chant of the muezzin calling the faithful to prayer. Just as it was in Egypt, it was hauntingly beautiful, perhaps my favorite new sound of the trip to date. (No, scratch that. My favorite new sound is the sound of bamboo rustling and creaking in the wind.)
