Our
journey through Borneo began seven years ago, when, on a whim, my
husband and I visited the Kelabit Highlands, situated in Sarawak, one of
two Malaysian states on the island. I’d been invited to a conference in
the capital city of Kuching; with some time on our hands, we headed to
this remote region, most easily accessible by turboprop plane, which
flew a few times each week from Miri, on the coast, to the small town of
Bario. (The alternatives were many hours, even days, on precarious
logging roads, or several weeks on foot through the forest.)
Thanks
to a reporting fellowship, we found ourselves back in the Highlands
last year. Things had changed somewhat — that flight now leaves twice
daily, and a newly graded dirt road eases travel in and out of Bario.
The town had grown slightly — more houses, a few concrete-slab roads —
but the tempo had not. Bario Asal, the town’s original longhouse,
remains, albeit a bit quieter than in years past. But local families
still gather by unvented fires in a common area filled with smoke and
chitchat. Tourists come to see this. “More tourists, every day,” a
Kelabit elder named Jenette Ulun said — one or two a day, sometimes a
dozen. “There are more tourists than us locals,” she joked.
For
centuries, the Kelabit people lived isolated lives, best known to the
outside world as champion headhunters. But that began to change under
the reign of the so-called White Rajahs, a British family by the name of Brooke,
who reigned in Sarawak from 1841 to 1946 and tried to rid the region of
headhunting.
Meanwhile, Christian missionaries converted the Kelabits
in the 1940s and clamped down on alcohol consumption. Ever since, the
Kelabits, who now number about 6,000, have gladly practiced evangelical
Christianity with ceremonies far less laborious than their old animist
rituals, they say. And the Kelabits have modernized in other ways: Gone
are skulls hanging from the rafters, replaced by fireside cellphones and
laptops.
Until
a few years ago, travelers came for the “Bario Loop,” and other
multiday treks organized by local Kelabit guides that hugged the
Indonesian border through jungles now logged. These days, most visitors
take shorter hikes and experience Kelabit culture in local homes.
On
our first trip to Bario, my husband and I lodged at De Plateau, a
homestay near the forest leading to Pa Lungan. I remember the cold-water
showers and the outdoor sink, which faced a panorama of blue-green
hills bathed in flowery air. Dinners consisted of fried wild boar,
fiddlehead ferns and sautéed, burgundy-red ginger flowers.
We
hired a guide who led us up and down a sodden trail, a foot-long blade
called a parang hanging from a scabbard at his hip. Five hours on, we
found Pa Lungan, set like a mountain oasis amid verdant, dewy grasses
and sparkling ponds. That’s where we met Walter Paran, our village host.
He took us to his wooden house set on stilts, where we met his wife,
Moriaty, and his then-toddler daughter, Mujan. Walter’s mother squatted
by a blackened hearth, tending a pot of simmering cucumber. “Very simple
food,” Walter said.
We
also met Walter’s brother, Pasen Mado Inan, who praised the forests
around him. “Most of the things we need for every day come from the
jungle,” he said. He feared it would disappear — the trucks were getting
closer. “We hate the logging.”
Walter
asked us to return so he could take us deeper into the forest, “before
logging disturbs that side.” As my husband and I flew out of Bario a few
days later, we saw early evidence of what he feared. Below, thick
jungle turned to naked hills laced with ruddy roads. “No one can stop
them,” our pilot said. “It’s disgusting.”
For
years, I wondered what became of Walter, his family and their forests. I
read of jungles all over Borneo, chopped and cleared, replanted with
palms. To raze a rain forest is to bulldoze one of the earth’s biggest
carbon stores. To erase this forest would also be to annihilate an
age-old way of life.
Seven
years later, we returned, again flying a turboprop into Bario. This
time, we stayed with Stephen Baya, a Kelabit artist, and his Danish
wife, Tine Hjetting, in their homestay-gallery called Jungle Blues Dream,
in a longhouse overlooking the wild yonder of rice paddies, homes and
wooded hills that disappeared each morning in a shroud of fog. Stephen, a
self-taught artist, fills his wooden walls with vivid trees of life, a
motif that symbolizes, for him, a “journey never-ending.” Stephen was
born in the Highlands but spent years working for Hilton, Holiday Inn
and a Printemps department store elsewhere in Malaysia. He prefers
Bario. Living the city life, he said, means “always having to think
about tomorrow, think about next week.”
When
I told Stephen of my search for Walter, he relayed the message. Spotty
cellphone coverage now permeates parts of the jungle. (We later learned
that if Walter wedges his phone into one particular window and stands
back, he can sometimes maintain a conversation.) Walter successfully
received Stephen’s message and said he awaited our arrival.
Stephen
drove us to the road’s end, and from there, we hoofed it, packs on
backs, sticks in hand. Along the way, elements of our first trip came
back: the tests of balance provided by bridges the width of two logs
that spanned streams and broad swaths of mud; an avenue of palms beneath
higher, old-growth trees. We stopped at the palms, sat on a log and ate
canned chicken curry. In the distance, we heard what sounded like
faint, high-pitched voices. There were no trails, no villages, no one
around. Perhaps it was wind, making the treetops squeak. Elders later
spoke of talking spirits that occasionally spook villagers on foot in
the forest.
Pa
Lungan was idyllic as ever. We found Walter’s home, but he was out
somewhere. Moriaty and Mujan, who was 9 by the time of our return visit,
offered us instant coffee, fried shrimp crackers and a seat at their
long wooden table. After a cold bucket shower and a short rest, we
joined a party next door: Village hunters had caught a boar that
morning, and its head crackled on the fire. They offered strips of hot,
juicy fat and grilled petai beans, known for their sulfuric stench but
delicious flavor.
The
sky that evening was a spectacle of tropical-fruit colors: tangerine,
passionfruit, papaya. Then darkness fell, and Walter’s generator rumbled
on. The power allowed for a few efficiency lights, and a TV — the
latter an addition since our previous visit. Mujan lay under a blanket,
watching Bruce Lee chop his way through “Fist of Fury.”
In
the morning, we were greeted by Walter, who remembered us and had many
things to share. He wanted to show us why tourists still come to Pa
Lungan. “They love the place because it’s still green,” he said.
Nearby
Pulong Tau National Park was expanded in 2008, creating a buffer between
his village and the logging threat, he told us. He said Pa Lungan
remains a “nice, quiet place” — for now.
Together,
we hiked a nearby mountain, across the soft earthen floor beneath palms
that Walter’s ancestors had planted generations ago. The forest was
dense. “This one you can call primary jungle,” he said. From there, we
scrambled a near-vertical climb to the hilltop, where a giant metal
cross, placed by someone from Pa Lungan (its exact origins are murky),
was dedicated to “God’s saving grace”; a sign commemorates the need to
avoid bringing “anything detestable” into the land. Below, Pa Lungan
seemed to float in an undulating sea of trees.
That’s
Indonesia, Walter said, pointing to the horizon. He added: “Other side
of the mountain, they already logged.” He eyed the area behind the
cross, toward another area that had already been logged. From this
vantage, we could also see Pulong Tau. Walter hoped the park would last,
that its boundaries would hold; not all government decisions do, he had
told us earlier.
Walter
knew he was living in an Eden at risk, but has always said he will
fight for it. “I’m the one who’s always fighting against this logging,”
he told me in 2006.
Today,
he has more hope for this view, still intact. We peered across thick
stands of trees where Walter had taken us foraging for edible palms and
rattans, and bamboos with liquid inside. He said he could live in that
forest on the food and drink it provided. It had, after all, sustained
centuries of people before him. “That’s why we need to keep our jungle,”
he said.
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