Using mangrove trees, mud banks, stumps and other natural features as markers, the boatman navigated the river with the same confidence that I would walk to the corner store. This was comforting because I could never find my way out of here to save my life.
I was only giving myself a week – from start to finish - to see an authentic longhouse. Most of the native Dayak peoples of Kalimantan, almost half the territory’s population, still live deep inland along the banks of rivers and tributaries.
I took a longbot (“longboat”) from Samarinda up the Mahakam River in East Kalimantan with more than just the usual baggage. I was also burdened with an excess number of preconceptions.
Mind you, there was no lack of preparation: I had begun my course of anti-malarial pills a week before. As there are no banks or moneychangers in the interior, I had collected bundles of rupiah in small denominations. A traveler had told me that the head of a longhouse appreciates gifts like sunglasses, Western t-shirts, coffee, cigarettes, sugar, salt, and flashlight batteries. Pencils, pens and notepads go over big with the kids.
All these, and more, I carried. Later I was to learn that the Dayak’s kindness and hospitality are overwhelming, and I had no use for these items. Even minor government officials in remote areas were unexpectedly helpful. Pak Udin, downriver at Muara Muntai, even introduced me to a family who put me up and fed me.
The longbot is specially designed for river travel, decorated with painted bloodshot eyes to guide the occupants safely through treacherous waters. During heavy rains, the river could double in size within hours. We tried negotiating several branches of the river in order to reach untouched longhouses, but turned back because of strong currents.
The skies were darkening, the boatman speeded up. Rounding a bend, approaching Tanjung Isuuy, my heart quickened as I saw my first working longhouse. We pulled ashore, our longbot squeezing in amongst others nestled like pick-up-sticks along the embankment. I scurried up the steep muddy path and the villagers led me to an old restored longhouse beside a courtyard of carved wooden posts and statues.
Although this was known as a “tourist longhouse,” it sure looked like the real thing to me. You have to hike inland to see a living, breathing longhouse. The one I found, several hours beyond Mancong, was in all a five hour trek through farmland and rainforest.
As a courtesy, I removed my shoes, climbed up the ladder and entered. Looking around me, it was obvious that the spirit of cooperation among relatives and between longhouse members was very strong. While their parents were away in the fields and gardens, old women looked after the children and did the domestic chores. Old men sat around gossiping, smoking, repairing fishing and farming implements. Children played on the building’s long veranda and down in the shallows of the river.
The most striking feature of Dayak society, longhouses (lamin) are ridge-roofed structures that can reach up to 150 meters long and 18 meters wide. Prior to World War II, several longhouses, each with 50 or more families and as many as 200 doors, could make up a Dayak village. Villagers, working cooperatively, could erect a new one in less than a week. Due to rapid tropical decomposition, lamin usually don’t last more than 15 years.
Most longhouses are raised one to three meters off the ground on wooden piles which are easier to replace than rotting floorboards. Kitchen scraps are pushed through the floorboards to feed pigs and chickens kept underneath. The current of air below the structure not only cools, but reduces vermin and prevents dry rot. Stilt construction also provides protection against snakes, floods, and - in former times - enemies. Longhouses evolved in a time of constant intertribal warfare.
Longhouse architecture and craftsmanship can be magnificent, with many parts of the structure - door frames, galleries, posts - decoratively carved. Teakwood railings are fashioned into dragons, snakes, demons or birds, with such fine detail visible as scales and feathers. Scenes may even depict carved lessons in sex education.
A covered veranda, the communal living area, runs the full length of the building, usually facing the river. This space is used for loafing, child care, visiting, repairing implements, and hanging fish traps, boat paddles, weapons, and other articles of daily use. Clothes are hung out to dry here.
One narrow longhouse door faces east, in honour of the sunrise and its association with life. Interior partitions separate family groups; distant relatives may live at the other end of the building. A loft upstairs is used for storing rice, baskets, stacks of woven mats, fishing nets, and firewood.
It was raining now. I staked a place on a mat in one corner of the veranda. The newcomers were brought sweet hot tea and biscuits. I could see high up in the rafters a few blackened old skulls – still revered totemic objects - bound tightly with rattan and leaves. The floor slats bounced and slapped as people moved around and worked.
At nightfall, dinner was served, the usual Indonesian fare of omelettes, nasi goreng, curry soup and banana fritters. Dutifully, silently, a long line of children, no older than six or seven, carried the pots, bowls and plates to a large woven mat. They cleared the after-dinner dishes away just as efficiently and just as wordlessly.
Near midnight, the talk subsided to barely audible whispers. I could hear the rough, flexible ladder being pulled up, keeping the building free of animals, insects and other intruders. The air was heavy with a fecund odor of a tropical rainforest and of mosquito coils smoking invisibly. The screaming and clatter of cicadas and other insects was deafening.
Throughout the huge structure, completely enveloped in darkness, the only interior sound was that of the soft breathing of slumbering bodies around me. I felt safe, as if sealed away in a cocoon. The whole building seemed to expand and contract, as if at one with the forest, indivisibly part of nature. This is a quality that a row of wooden shacks or timber block houses with corrugated iron roofs can not ever duplicate.
E-mail : pakbill2003@yahoo.com
Copyright@2004 PakBill
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