A Jungle experience - 11

An Iban maiden.

It was almost midday, dense rainforests and the thick humid air of Borneo surrounded us. We had slept the previous night with descendants of headhunters in the traditional longhouse at the village of Nanga Kamalee and were now squatting on a sandbar jutting into the Rajang River.

     For almost four hours, we had roasted in the tropical sun in the hope of hitching a lift from a passing canoe or other small craft. We needed to return down river to the trading post of Kapit and thence to the coast of Sarawak for our onward journey to mainland Malaysia.

     To pass the time, Jean had washed our sweat-stained clothes in the sand-coloured river and dried them to a fine peach colour on a wash-line rigged between two sticks. 

Wash day on the Rajang River

     We had protected our head and shoulders from the scorching sun with our most useful item of clothing: a lungi (sarong). This thin compact cotton wrap of cloth is an Indian garment used throughout south-east Asia in place of trousers. It is so multi-purpose; we use it as a towel, a blanket, a turban, shade shelter, a beach changing tent, pyjamas, shopping bag, scarf, and anything else that comes to mind. It’s our second most essential piece of equipment after the mosquito net.

River hitch hiking

     The first boat to happen along was a powered launch going up river. It was heading the wrong way for us but we accepted their offer of a lift anyway. The uncertainties of life can often have its benefits.

Preparing logs to float down river

     We were taken upriver, and dropped off at a logging camp at the junction of the Baleh and Gaat rivers. The camp was a clearing yard used for rafting logs together prior to floating downriver and to load sinker-logs on to shallow-draft landing barges.

     We watched in amazement as an Iban worker deftly hand-cut four by two inch timber planks with a chainsaw – a Health and Safety officer would have had a field day here.

Cutting 4x2s by chainsaw - mind your toes

     A lone Yorkshire man called Ross ran the logging operation on behalf of the Malaysian company, Sime Darby Forest Management. His workforce of 350 Malay, Chinese and Iban workers were spread out at a number of nearby logging camps.

          As serendipity would have it, he and his partner made us welcome, and invited us to join them for a few days at their ‘company house’. It was perched atop a hill overlooking the two rivers and an endless horizon of jungle. 

Roy and Ross

    It was an eight-bedroom bungalow with a large central living space, which he had built on his arrival four years previously; tastefully furnished and decorated by his partner Suchin. It reminded us a little of the homesteads found on remote Australian cattle ranches, or perhaps the tea and sugar plantation houses found in Ceylon or Jamaica, or even the colonial homes found in the hill stations of India; it belonged to another era when punkah wallahs fanned memsahibs enjoying a Juniper fillip, in the afternoon shade of a wide sunporch.

A great place to write notes at the end of a day's of travel

     Here, however, in the remoteness of Borneo, it was an incongruous oasis, quite unexpected of a logging camp, but very much in keeping with one’s traditional vision of an Englishman abroad. 
     We pondered this as we sat at sundown on the wide veranda, a cold beer in hand, frogs croaking in the undergrowth, enjoying the view of dramatic storm clouds building up over the jungle, and the prospect of a curry supper about to be served. We didn’t like to mention it, but some aspects of the Empire seem to linger on in far-flung corners of the world.

Log Workers Camp

     During our sojourn, our host and his manager took us to view at first-hand every aspect of their logging operation. We went by rugged four-wheel-drive vehicle on a hair-raising expedition along muddy jungle tracks and cliff-hanging mountainous trails to visit logging camps.

debarking of logs

     Men worked in appallingly humid, dank, and dangerous conditions; surveyors hand cut their way through the jungle, bulldozers cut access tracks and men built wooden bridges, all in their quest to find and fell selected giant trees, debark and transport them to rivers, then finally raft them together to float downriver, where they were to be processed into thin veneers for export to the world.

loading logs for hauling to river

     It was a fascinating and enlightening experience, which involved a lot of heavy machinery to cut and forge safe jungle trails along which to haul the logs to the rivers. Giant trees were felled not by Rambo-type lumberjacks in checked shirts, but by small Iban men in torn khaki vests, tattered trousers and rubber flip-flops, confidently wielding hefty chainsaws with deadly 80cm long blades.

loading logs

     Despite the negative images portrayed on TV of wholesale plundering of rainforests and jungles, the logging process at this camp was one of a controlled renewable harvest programme. Trees were selectively cut and extracted, thus allowing the dense canopy of foliage to open up and make way for the next generation to grow in an eco-friendly manner.

Kapit - time to walk the plank to our waiting boat.

As with all things, there is a downside in that some of the land disturbance causes a certain amount of erosion to run off into the rivers. I guess even the best omelettes need eggs to be broken, or should we give up eating omelettes?

     What are your views on the matter?
     I am reminded that, ‘A wise traveller should see all, hear all, and eat all, but say nothing.’ 

Written by Roy Romsey

Did you know that Roy ran away to sea at aged 16? Click here to read the full story. 

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Headhunters of Borneo - 10

There is a sense of isolation and oriental intrigue about Sarawak; its dense jungle, swampy rain forests, humidity and prodigious amounts of rain dissuade tourists from visiting its ex-headhunting Iban and Dayak tribes. There are very few roads, therefore transportation of goods and people is by watercraft along a labyrinth of rivers that empty into the South China Sea.

An Iban tribesman dressed specially for me

     Our landing at the capital of Kuching was during a violent monsoonal storm. We needed a few days to acclimatise to the overbearing heat and heavy humidity, so we found lodgings at a local Anglican Mission 

    The purpose for being in Sarawak was to take Jean to the remote village of Nanga Kamalee, which I had visited as a 22-year-old traventurer, during Indonesia's undeclared war of ‘Confrontation’ with Malaysia.
Rajah Brooke

 Despite the country’s newfound wealth from oil and timber - much of which is remitted back to Malaya – it remains an unspoilt and fascinating country. It has a ruggedness and mystery that no doubt first attracted British adventurer James Brooke, who in 1838 helped the local Sultanate of Brunei put down an uprising. His reward was to have the area of Sarawak ceded to him.

The dock at Kapit Sarawak

     By allotting himself the role of Governor and self-appointed Rajah, he managed to pull the area together as a country, he banned the practice of headhunting and eventually stopped warfare between the local Iban and Dyak tribes. The Brooke family ruled Sarawak until the late 1940s, when it then gained independence and merged with Malaysia.

     From Kuching, we set off northward by fast patrol boat along the coast to Sarikei, then found another boat to Sibu where we made an overnight stop.  
We joined a long skinny ‘river bus’ for a two hour journey up the Rajang River to the final out-post of Kapit. We were hoping to obtain a Government Permit and a guide to transport us further inland to the Iban village of Nanga Kamalee.

Overloaded canoe on the Rejang River

Finding a guide

The tiny trading post of Kapit, was originally a garrison town set up in 1880 by the Brooke family to separate the warring Iban and Orang Ulu tribes. Despite its primitive isolation, inaccessibility by road and few streets, this small township has an inordinate number of BMWs and Mercedes; all of which are owned by successful Chinese traders whose wealth comes from acting as middlemen between the logging and palm-oil enterprises to be found further along the numerous branches of the Rejang River.

     We were fortunate to meet David Chuo, president of the local Jaycees, he and his fellow members made our few days sojourn all the more informative and enjoyable.

Jean feasting on Rambutan berries

      It was more by luck than judgement that we found a guide; we went for a drink in the bar of a local market and found him slowly getting well and truly sozzled. He was the indigenous headmaster of a primary school located close to the village we were aiming for. He and his assistant were in town on a buying trip for his school, they agreed to take us upriver provided we helped them load their boat.

      The ‘boat' was a narrow, seven-metre canoe with a long-tail outboard motor, to which we precariously had to `plank-walk' across several rolling logs to carry his assortment of purchases: a large second-hand fridge, a one metre glass aquarium with three live fish, two protesting ducks and boxes of foodstuff. A newly recruited teacher with his trunk of worldly goods also joined us.

Resting up on the Rejang River

     Once loaded we set off up the fast-running Rajang River in our quest to revisit some of Borneo’s ex headhunters. It was a painfully slow journey against the flow, which took many hours of squatting, bailing and gripping the edge of our unstable and overloaded canoe. We bounced and battled against currents and rapids, constantly dodging around hidden rocks and floating logs.

The Longhouse of Nanga Kamalee

     Occasional rest-stops were made on sand bars infested with mosquitos and sand flies. It was time for refreshments of rambutan fruit or a shared bottle of beer to be passed around.

By late afternoon we arrived at our host’s school. It was a collection of wooden huts with corrugated tin roofs perched high up in a clearing on the riverbank away from possible flooding. It catered for Iban tribal children who arrived by family canoes on a Monday morning and were collected to return to their villages each Friday night.

     It became dark very quickly, a storm opened up and crashed all around us, far too late to continue upriver. Our guide’s family prepared a rice-based meal for us whilst we unpacked our sleeping bags and mosquito net to set up camp on the floor of an outbuilding.
Nanga Kamalee Longhouse

     The following morning we were taken a short distance upriver by canoe to the village of Nanga Kamalee where we were left with neither a guide nor an interpreter.

An Iban cookhouse

 An Iban village is comprised of a single communal ‘Longhouse’ built on high stilts on the bank of the river; some are so large they can hold several hundred families. Nanga Kamalee, however was small and held about 40 families, each having its own spacious self-contained single room, outside of which, running the full length of the Longhouse, is a covered common veranda, about 7 metres wide, used for socialising and working on crafts or net repairs.

       Our unannounced visit was greeted with interest but with guarded curiosity by the tribe.
Any barriers were soon broken down when I produced photographs taken on a previous visit, of children from the village. These children were now grown up and parents in their own right.

       

Bathing the kids before bed

      We were made welcome and invited to stay overnight in the headman’s family unit; a large open-plan room used by his extended family for eating, sleeping, food preparation and relaxation. It was in many ways much the same as I had experienced years before, however, It was encouraging to see that conditions of hygiene, comfort and clothing had since improved greatly, I also noticed that there was less tattooing of the body and the custom of men engraving their top teeth with the four playing-card symbols; hearts, diamonds, clubs and spades was no longer evident.     

Going fishing

     Despite the lack of verbal communication, we spent a wonderful evening, hilariously entertaining the village with western party games, harmonica music and sing-a-longs.

       Our hosts were a little unsure of what to do with us the following morning, so they took us back to the river to wait on a sandbar for a passing boat.

Young girl gathering firewood

  Although we were a little disappointed not to have stayed longer at Nanga Kamalee, it was perhaps very fortuitous; because despite a four hour wait, the first boat to come along did not offer a lift down river, but headed upriver, even further away from civilisation. We jumped aboard and soon found ourselves in another unusual situation… to be continued next time.

 Written by Roy Romsey

Today's kids looking at photos of yesterday's kids

Read Roy's next Borneo short story -  click here

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Buccaneers on Bay of Biscay - 9

We were somewhere off the coast of Cherbourg, France, facing a bitingly cold January storm raging in from the Atlantic Ocean.

     My seventeenth birthday was two days ago and life could not have been more exciting; I was on a 60-foot ex-Cornish motor trawler, it had one main mast with a gaff rigged main sail, used more to steady the boat rather than propel it.

Similar boat to the m.v.Floranda

      I was in the company of three strangers; Alan the 28-year-old mate, Peter a 20-year-old adventurer from Australia, and a drunken, foul-tempered skipper who suffered intense migraines from a shrapnel wound to the head. He was a dubious character who became more dubious the more we came to know him. Our task was to deliver the boat to Spain, upon which Peter and I would be given our return fares as payment.

       From London we had fought our way along the south coast of England and had called briefly into the harbour of Newhaven, on the pretext of having our Decca navigation repaired, but in fact it was a ruse to collect a prearranged consignment of marine equipment, which the skipper later admitted had been stolen from a local naval yard.

      It was my first experience of leaving England and I found the voyage along the English Channel exhilarating; the wind howled relentlessly in our face from the southwest, the boat seemed very small as it pitched and yawed and tried to throw its four occupants endlessly from bulkhead to bulkhead. On one violent occasion Peter and I were thrown across the galley and landed amidst a clutter of books, pots, pans, legs and broken plates, Peter was left with a look of bewilderment and just the handle of the cup of coffee he had been drinking.

     Sleeping between watch duties was almost impossible due to constant bouts of levitating above the bunk and then being slammed down again by involuntary gravitational forces. However, in the naivety of youth I assumed all this to be a normal part of a seaman’s life.

The dreaded tin

Food for thought
     Between sharing watches with Alan and helping to pump the leaking bilges, I was also tasked with cooking meals for everyone - a simple chore in normal circumstances, but on the high seas in a storm was a challenge too far, I was thrown around the galley whilst balancing boiling pots so many times that I resorted to tying myself to the stove.

Yummy! Corned beef again.

      The menu for every meal was simple; it was whatever I could concoct from our meagre supply of food - a mountain of tinned corned-beef and a sack of potatoes; I served it cold, fried, sautéed, hashed, stewed, curried, in pancakes, on French toast and in cottage pies.  I have neither open nor eaten tinned corned-beef since.
The Cruel sea

Similar to the 'Floranda' conditions

   My most enjoyable and memorable experiences of the voyage was being on watch-duty whilst crossing the notorious Bay of Biscay; I was bundled up in every item of clothing available to keep warm and covered with thick oilskins in a vain effort to stay dry.

     When the steerage became too difficult for me to handle, Alan would lash the wheel in position, then lash me securely outside to the front of the wheelhouse to keep watch. There I had a grandstand view of the ferocity of nature; one moment I would be poised on a crest peering into a deep dark trough, before sliding down to the bottom into a huge eye-stinging spray of salt water, our motor would then gallantly struggle to pull us up to the next towering crest, only to repeat the process again and again. 

No time to be frightened

     It was a stimulating, life-enhancing experience. I enjoyed it far too much to worry about my chances of survival in a capsize – being tied to the wheelhouse in bundles of clothing gave me no chance.
Landfall

     We finally limped into the port of La Coruña in northern Spain, where it took two days for my sea legs to stabilize and the land to stop swaying.

Josefina Vigo

     At the first opportunity I went ashore to experience what it was to be a foreigner. I entered a local family café to order an omelet, but I had so much difficulty being understood that in desperation I walked through to the rather Dickensian kitchen with its wood burning stove and made it myself. My initiative was the cause of much amusement and endeared me with the family and their customers. I later met their 20 year old daughter, Josefina Vigo, with whom I later became pen pals.

     Within a few days we moved around to the small fishing port of El Ferrol and berthed next to the early morning quayside fish market run by noisy fishwives. During berthing, a rope became entangled in the propeller, Peter and I were tasked to strip to our underpants and took turns diving in to the murky water with a knife clenched between our teeth to cut the rope free, the bitterly cold water proved too much for my fatless body and it was left to Peter and his extra layer of lard to persevere and save the day.

Wow! fantastic!

We were in El Ferro to have extra bunks fitted by local carpenters. We named their supervisor Señor Screw-Nail because of the way his ‘craftsmen’ fitted everything together with screws that were hammered home rather than screwed in.

     The skipper, who was seldom sober and always bad- tempered, was of an average height, with a slight body in need of a decent meal, and a face that if the scowl could have been pried off, may have had an Errol-Flynn-like quality.

     He fancied himself as a ladies man and would swagger to the bars in town dressed in a pinstripe suit and swinging a rolled umbrella for protection and effect. Peter and I feared and disliked him intensely and whenever he was not around we would whistle or hum a refrain from the sea shanty ‘What shall we do with the drunken sailor?’ We thought of all manner of heinous things we would like to do to him.
What to do with the drunken sailor

     The skipper returned one evening in his usual inebriated state, only to find the boat was three meters below the dockside because of the low tide. The spring lines were very slack so he called out for someone to take up the slack, we were below decks and pretended not to hear.

     We watched through the porthole at his drunken attempt to board by climbing down a builder’s ladder, as he did so the boat slowly pushed away from the dock until the ladder reached horizontally and he fell into the harbour. It was beyond funny, and it was as much as we could do to decide whether to fish him out or push him under. Sometimes Life is just perfect. 

     Peter and I had been expecting at any time to be given our passports and return-fares, but then one evening we moored offshore and inexplicably sailed at dusk back into the open sea without navigation lights. We were told we were heading for Portugal and would be put ashore at Lisbon. This pleased us as it meant another foreign country to visit and more ocean sailing, but we were far from pleased when Alan revealed that we had left Spain without paying the carpenters' bill.

      The skipper kept us in Lisbon for 8-10 days on the pretext of cleaning and preparing the boat in readiness for an inspection by the charter agent.
The big Pay-off

     One morning, without warning, he told us to pack our bags, returned our passports, gave us a wad of bank notes, then left us on the wharf side as he and Alan motored away.

     We quickly discovered that the handsome pay-off had been made in almost worthless Italian Lira; barely enough for even one of us to get back the UK. We pooled our meagre personal funds and found we had just sufficient for two 3^rd class train fares to Paris.

 Vasco de Gama monument Lisbon

     At the Portuguese mountain border town of Vilar Formosa, we were hauled off the train by immigration officers for failing to have our arrival in Lisbon stamped into our passports. We spent a long cold night in the hut of the Portuguese custom’s guard who allowed us to huddle around his blanket covered mesa-camilla brassero which is very similar to a Japanese kotatsu/hibachi stove. Next morning he arranged a lift for us back to Lisbon. 

     With difficulty we had our passports duly stamped and obtained another lift back to Vilar Formosa. We continued our train journey to Paris, during which we met a Pakistani gentleman who read my palm and informed me I would marry a foreigner. Oddly enough Peter and I both married girls from other countries.

My Aussie ship mate Peter Anderson

     We arrived in Paris penniless, hungry, and politely informed by our respective embassies to effectively ‘go away’. Fortunately, a Danish engineer and his wife spotted our dilemma and loaned us sufficient funds to return to the UK.

      We had been away from England just over six weeks, during which I had matured from a youth into a man and a future life of travel was well and truly established.

     Some years later, I read in a national newspaper that the m.v. Floranda had been impounded in the Port of London with an admiralty writ nailed to the mast for non-payment of debts. I felt a sense of sorrow for the boat, but no sense of grief for the man.

     Peter and I remain friends and I thank him for helping me recall many of the details.

Written by Roy Romsey

Have you read how Roy fell off a mountain in Morocco? Click here for the full story

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