CHILDHOOD DAYS – Essential Skills (Part 8)

ِبِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ
In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful

"And eat of the things which Allâh has provided for you, lawful and good, and fear Allâh in Whom you believe". – Surah Al-Maeda Ayat 88

[Makanlah daripada apa yang Allah merezekikan kamu, yang halal dan baik; dan takutilah Allah, yang kepada-Nya kamu orang-orang mukmin.] – Surah Al-Maeda Ayat 88

In this series of my life story, I would like to share a few more must-have skills of Kadayan kids of my time.

Trapping birds and small animals

There were many types of birds and small animals in the nearby forest / secondary jungle of our village. We were taught by our elders which birds and small animals are edible and inedible according to our religion, Islam. The most common bird and small animal we used to catch were wild pigeon (buung punai) and mouse deer (palanduk). There were other edible birds such as “puagam” and wild chicken (hayam hutan) but they were too difficult to catch by small kids. Normally “puagam” and wild chickens were caught by elders and similarly larger animals like deer (payau) and antelope (kijang} were caught only by elders using sophisticated traps.

There were three methods commonly used by Kadayan people to catch wild pigeons (buung punai) namely jaat, malagau and pukat (fishing net). Before I go any further to describe each of the methods, I just would like to give a general overview of the bird called wild pigeon. Wild pigeon is native bird of Borneo Island and are found in Sabah, Sarawak, Brunei and Kalimantan. As kids we were told that there were two types of pigeons namely “punai tanah” (ground pigeon) and “punai dahan” (literally translated as branch pigeon). Unlike “punai tanah”, “punai dahan” does not go to the ground to look for seeds and fruits but remains on tree tops most of the time.

The unique characteristic of the “punai tanah” is that despite the abundance of other fruits and nuts in the jungle, their favourite picks are still the sadaman fruits / seeds and interestingly the birds do not pick the fruits from trees but they come down to the ground looking for fruits and seeds.

The Kadayan people must have observed such unique habits of the wild pigeons and eventually devised methods to catch them by using “jaat” and “malagau”. Both methods are ground-based whereas the other method using the fishing net is air-borne.

Sadaman tree is found almost every where in the forest and secondary jungle. The trees do not grow very tall where the average height is around 20 – 30 feet at the most and the fruiting season is one or twice a year. The wild pigeons were in abundance during the fruiting seasons of the sadaman trees. The sadaman fruits are small, yellowish green in colour, covered with sticky resin like substance. Beside durian tree, sadaman tree is considered as an iconic tree amongst the Kadayan community due to its contribution to the food supply chain i.e. the much needed protein source from the wild pigeons.. The song entitled “daun sadaman” by Ibrahim Hj Diman is a tribute to the iconic tree and the readers can listen to the song provided in this blog.






Wild pigeon (buung punai)






Jaat

Jaat is a simple, yet effective trap to catch wild pigeons. The “jaat’ is constructed by using a strong thread, a stick / stem of a young tree (the size of adult male middle finger) of hard wood type as “bingkasan” and tiny tree branches as a holder of the thread tied from the “bingkasan”. The stick / stem of the young tree is pinned to the earth perpendicular to the ground level. The thread is tied at the top end of the stick / stem in which the other end of the thread is the adjustable knot or technically known as Adjustable Grip Hitch adjusted to about 2 feet in circumference. A tiny straight stem / branch of about one and a half inches in length is tied before the simple knot that would be fixed to the trap mechanism where the pigeon is expected to step onto it. When the pigeon steps on the trap, the “bingkasan” would be released immediately at high speed and snap the pigeon’s leg via the adjustable knot. Eureka!!! I just caught a pigeon.

Before “jaat” is installed, the ground under the sadaman tree is cleared of dried leaves, rotten tree trunks and small tree branches. The sadaman fruits are collected to be spread onto the cleared ground later as baits for the pigeons. Of course it is not sufficient to install only one “jaat”. On average we installed about 50 – 60 jaat that would guarantee good catch. Usually we came back to visit the jaat twice a day to harvest the catch and to do maintenance jobs like putting back the jaat to its normal position, clearing leaves and small branches and collecting sadaman fruits as baits.


The pigeon caught by the jaat is carefully untied from the trap to avoid dismembering its feathers from the body. Pigeon’s feathers unlike chickens are very soft and can be easily dismembered from its body. The pigeons are then carefully put inside a porous gunny sack for safe keeping. The gunny sack needs to be porous to prevent the pigeons from suffocation. The darkness inside the gunny sack keeps the pigeons calm. During the peak season, the average caught per day is around 20 – 30 birds. These birds are kept inside a special cage or rather a bird’s house and are fed with maize and sometime rice to be fattened before they are being slaughtered for consumption. When I was a small kid, I used to keep about 200 – 300 birds in a single bird’s cage. Such amount would be able to supply my family with enough protein for at least 3 – 4 months.

The birds are slaughtered according to Islamic rite, prepared and cooked. The pigeon’s can be cooked in variety of ways for example cook in curry, soup, deep fried, grilled and any way you like to suit your taste. The pigeon meat is very sweet and tasty.

Malagau

Literally speaking “malagau” means calling. It is derived from the word “lagau” (verb) and when applied to wild pigeons it means calling the birds. “Lagau” in Kadayan dialect is normally directed to human beings and a few “tame / domesticated” animals such as cats and chickens but seldom used to call wild birds and animals. So there is a catch here, malagau is not just imitating the chirping and singing of the wild pigeons to make them come to the caller, but it involves spiritual element here. Under normal circumstances, no matter how hard you try to imitate the chirping and singing of the wild pigeons, the birds would never come to you. I have tried this myself, where at the end of the day, not single birds came close to my location, not even a sign of them around me. As I have mentioned in http://itsurday.blogspot.com/ the spiritual and supernatural power are manifested in almost every aspect of Kadayan livelihood.

When I was a small kid, there were not many people in our village having the skill of malagau, may be just three or four people but there were elderly persons and all of them had passed away already. I used to follow and watch an elderly Kadayan man performing malagau when I was 10 or 11 years old. This is how it was done. A small hut is built or not even a hut, just a shack made of tree branches and leaves as hiding place for the caller. In Kadayan dialect we call the shack as “baumbun”. The most important device in performing malagau is a device called “suling” (flute). “Suling” is a musical instrument made from bamboo and strictly speaking, the sound of “suling” does not really mimic the chirping and singing of the wild pigeon. The other device used in "malagau" is a long stick attached with a simple knot thread at its end to catch the pigeon on its neck. The bird’s “landing area” is called “galanggang”, a small space in front of the shack cleared of dried leaves, tree branches and other objects that would hamper the process of catching the birds.




Fresh wild pigeon meat




An initiation ritual is done by the caller before the calling process is done. The ritual involves chanting of magical spells coupled with other physical things that last for a few minutes. When that is done the caller sits back inside the shack and starts to play his “suling”. It is hard to believe that all of a sudden the wild pigeons start to arrive, first the birds are perching on the tree branches and later they come down to the “galanggang” surrendering their necks to the caller to be caught and later ended up in a cooking pot.

Not every time the caller is lucky, there were occasions as told by the village elders where the sound of the caller’s “suling” attracted supernatural beings instead of the wild pigeons. We were told that the supernatural beings came in an impressive style by creating vortex of whirlwind / small scale twister around the vicinity where small trees were being uprooted and tree branches fell down due to the power of the whirlwind. The Kadayan elders who were skilful in performing “malagau” expected such predicament and their counter-measures were so effective that the whirlwind would stop immediately and within seconds everything would come back to normalcy.

“Malagau” is considered by Kadayan people as the most effective way of catching wild pigeons in large quantity. On a lucky day, a caller may catch a couple of hundreds birds and when they reach the figure, they’ll call it a day.

Fishing net

Kadayan people are very innovative in devising methods to catch birds, fish and wild animals. Fishing net, as the name suggests is used to catch fish in the river or at sea, but the Kadayan people used them to catch wild pigeons as well. The principle is the same, where in rivers and sea the target are fish whereas on air the target are birds such as wild pigeons.

The modus operandi (MO) of catching wild pigeons using this method is simple. The requirements are two very long wooden or bamboo poles and a stretch of fishing net of the right net space size attached to the poles. The net space size can be half an inch, one inch, so on and so forth. If the net space size is larger than the bird’s size, then the birds would be able to pass through.

In the evening, as darkness approaches, so are the wild pigeons rushing for home to their favourite trees. It is not difficult to exactly pin point the flight path taken by the birds because being birds they always follow the same route everyday. When the flight paths are identified, what is left is to erect the fishing net across the path and just wait.

The fishing net is made of clear, colourless nylon called “tangsi”. As darkness approaches, the birds’ eyesight would be very poor where the fishing nets are virtually invisible to the birds. Upon the arrival at the fishing nets, that would be the end of their flying session. Next would be the cooking pots.





Buung Taipas in the wild






Mundul Taipas

“Taipas” is a beautiful, small, green tropical bird of parrot family with red and blue patch under its neck and on its head respectively. “Taipas” is inedible, but they are caught as pets due to its natural beauty. In the 50s and 60s, almost every Kadayan households kept the birds as pet. “Taipas” are easy to maintain where their favourite food are ripe banana, papaya, sugar cane and surprisingly you wouldn’t like to hear this, its rice “mouth-digested” soften with lots and lots of saliva. The “taipas” loves it. Never feed the ‘taipas” with anything that contains salt. The birds will die in a matter of hours if they are being fed with salty food.

“Mundul taipas” is synonym to the Kadayan community in Sabah, Sarawak and Brunei Darussalam. My definition of “Mundul Taipas” is to catch birds called “taipas” by using similar bird placed inside a cage as the calling bird to attract the wild “taipas”, coupled with sticky glue like substance spread over a long stick placed on tree branches where the oncoming wild “taipas” would likely to perch.

There are a few rules to be observed when performing “mundul taipas”. Firstly, the knowledge of climbing trees. The wild “taipas” would never come to the ground or any height near to it. We have to climb until the tree tops to place the cage of the calling “taipas” and of course a stick with the glue spread all over it. Secondly the calling bird must possess special ability to chirp and sing that would attract other wild “taipas”. If you don’t have the climbing skill, don’t even think about “mundul taipas’.





Buung Taipas in a Cage




The glue like substance is actually derived from resin / latex of a “timbaan” tree. Timbaan tree can easily be found in the forest / secondary jungle of the Borneo Island. The resin / latex are collected and exposed to open air to coagulate. No hydrochloric acid (HCL) is required for coagulation. The glue is stored inside a small can (sardine or condensed milk can) and taken out as and when its usage is required.

When wild “taipas” is caught in a sticky situation, they are unable to escape until they are being taken out from their misery by someone. As cruel as it sounds but the birds actually are very safe and quite comfortable after the feathers and legs are massaged with coconut oil. It only takes one or two hours before the birds could fly normally again after they are being caught. The birds are kept inside a special cage ready to be sold or given as gift.

To be continued…….

SELAMAT MENYAMBUT MA'AL HIJRAH 1429 H

Assalamu'alaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh,

Besempena dengan Maal Hijrah yang akan kita sambut esok, saya dan seluruh ahli keluarga ingin mengucapkan Selamat Menyambut Maal Hijrah 1429 H. Semoga di tahun baru ini kita akan dimurahkan rezeki dan sentiasa mendapat rahmat dan hidayah dari Allah SWT.

Jutaan terima kasih saya ucapkan kepada pengunjung-pengunjung yang budiman yang selama ini telah menyokong kemunculan blog ini.

Salam hormat. Terima kasih.

CHILDHOOD DAYS - Essential Skills (Part 7)

As agreed by most people, childhood days were the most memorable days of our life. I gained most of the survival skills when I was at the age of 6 – 12 years old and surprisingly those skills constitutes the bigger part of my circle of influence. As I’ve mentioned earlier, my life story is the most extreme case where our family living standard was just at the lowest level of Maslow Hierarchy of Needs. For those of us who are not quite familiar with Maslow Hierarchy of Needs, let me refresh you what it is all about.




Maslow Hierarchy of Needs (Click to enlarge)






Physiological Needs

These are biological needs. They consist of needs for oxygen, food, water, and a relatively constant body temperature. They are the strongest needs because if a person were deprived of all needs, the physiological ones would come first in the person's search for satisfaction.

Safety Needs

When all physiological needs are satisfied and are no longer controlling thoughts and behaviours, the needs for security can become active. Adults have little awareness of their security needs except in times of emergency or periods of disorganization in the social structure (such as widespread rioting). Children often display the signs of insecurity and the need to be safe.

Needs of Love, Affection and Belongingness

When the needs for safety and for physiological well-being are satisfied, the next class of needs for love, affection and belongingness can emerge. Maslow states that people seek to overcome feelings of loneliness and alienation. This involves both giving and receiving love, affection and the sense of belonging.

Needs for Esteem

When the first three classes of needs are satisfied, the needs for esteem can become dominant. These involve needs for both self-esteem and for the esteem a person gets from others. Humans have a need for a stable, firmly based, high level of self-respect, and respect from others. When these needs are satisfied, the person feels self-confident and valuable as a person in the world. When these needs are frustrated, the person feels inferior, weak, helpless and worthless.

Needs for Self-Actualization

When all of the foregoing needs are satisfied, then and only then are the needs for self-actualization activated. Maslow describes self-actualization as a person's need to be and do that which the person was "born to do." "A musician must make music, an artist must paint, and a poet must write." These needs make themselves felt in signs of restlessness. The person feels on edge, tense, lacking something, in short, restless. If a person is hungry, unsafe, not loved or accepted, or lacking self-esteem, it is very easy to know what the person is restless about. It is not always clear what a person wants when there is a need for self-actualization.

As you can see, when I mentioned that our living condition was at the lowest level of Maslow Hierarchy of Needs, that was it, just food, clothing, water and shelter. When you are in that condition, it is suffice to mention here that survival is the key factor. In order for the kids of my generation to survive, we were compelled to acquire skills to live in a harsh and challenging environment. The most important skill of all is to sustain the food supply chain i.e. planting hill paddy and cash crops. Any disruption to the food supply chain would result in famine and diseases caused by malnutrition and poor healthcare.

Malnutrition was notable amongst the kids of my generation including myself, where we did not have enough supply of protein, vitamins and minerals. Our staple food is rice, which is very rich in carbohydrate but our daily diet lacked in much needed protein for our healthy growth. We did not have the luxury of consuming meat (beef, venison, chicken) regularly, may be once or twice a year during wedding ceremonies or annual feast. Our main supply of protein came from the river and occasionally the sea. Fresh water fish, prawns and crabs were caught by fishing lines, traps, nets and fish poison (extract from "tuba" plant)which will be discussed in detail later. We never caught fresh water fish in large quantity due to the storage problem. The only way to preserve the fish was by salting and drying them, thus we have salted fish which can be stored for longer duration.




Pulihan fish in captivity





If we ever caught large quantity of fish such as through fish poisoning (tuba), the other method of preservation engaged by the village folks was by smoking, thus we have smoked “tuyan” or smoked “pulihan” NOT smoked salmon. We do not have salmon in tropical rivers. "Tuyan" and "pulihan" are much sought fresh water fish even to this days. The fish tastes good, very fatty with plenty of tiny bones which makes it difficult to consume. Kindly note that fish poisoning by using tuba plant extract is not practice anymore by Kadayan people in our village. It has been abandoned since the seventies due to the fact that the tuba plant extract is quite lethal where small fish were poisoned and killed which eventually reduces the fish population in the rivers. Fresh water fish now are caught by using fishing lines, nets and fish traps.

Kids of my generation were compelled to acquire various skills, not by our parents but by the environment we lived in. Some of the skills are as follows: -

Climbing trees

Climbing tress was a must have skill. Some girls of my generation were better climbers than boys. Our “boyhood” was challenged severely by the predicament, where those boys who did not know how to climb would be teased day in day out by other boys and the girls too. What a shame!


The skill of climbing is widely used to pluck fruits such as “rambutans, pulasan (maitam), mangoes, mangosteen, sour fruits (asam kandis and asam aur), betel nuts, coconuts and of course not to forget for trapping of birds known as “mundul taipas”. Taipas is a beautiful, small, green tropical bird of parrot family with red patch under its neck.

As I have mentioned in my earlier articles, the Kadayan village or settlements were mostly located near rivers. As usual, small rivers (may be streams) were covered by strong jutting tree branches which we used as a jumping platform into the river. Kids who were unable to climb would definitely miss all the funs and excitements of jumping from tree branches into the river. It was a great fun actually.



Small knowledge of herbs with medicinal value

Amongst the indigenous people of Borneo, Kadayan people are well known for their knowledge on medicinal herbs. The trade has been passed from generation to generation by their elders and kids of my generation were taught basic knowledge of medicinal herbs but on a smaller scale. As mentioned earlier in my other article you can ask any Kadayan / Kedayan kids then, “What’s the cure for diarrhoea (bagah)?” or “How do you stop blood flowing out from small cuts?” I can bet you; every kids of my time know the answer. The herb used to treat the former is guava leave (daun biabas) or “timbaan” shoots (pucuk timbaan). The later is effectively treated by “kuduk-kuduk” leaves.

Besides knowing various medicinal herbs we were also taught basic spells to use together with the medicinal herbs.


Self-defence (silat)

Martial arts were taught by elders as early as the age of 7, where we learned basic steps of self-defence. It is typical to see martial arts courts in Kadayan villages in the 50s and 60s. The main purpose of self-defence was to train ourselves in observing strict self-discipline and creating sense of alertness for any unsuspected trouble coming to our village.





Bailey Bridge or Jambatan Basi as called by the Kadayan people





The worst security threat to the Kadayan community particularly in the forties and fifties was the HEAD HUNTERS (Panggait). The stories of head hunters were told by Kadayan elders from generation to generation but kids of my time only heard the rumours that head hunters were terrorising our village. As far as I can remember, rumours about head hunters were rife when new bridges (Bailey bridge) were to be built by the British. We were told that two decapitated human heads (kalambigi commonly known in Kadayan dialect) were required to be buried at both ends of the bridge to strengthen and resist the raging force of nature i.e. flood. This belief was so strong amongst the Kadayan community and whenever such rumours persisted the village would be put under full alert (code RED). All the children, women and elderly people were either confined at home or if there were necessities to move around they must be in group accompanied by elders.

Such security threat compelled the Kadayan community to defend themselves by several methods where one of them was to equip the community with martial arts as self-defence. The other method commonly practiced by the Kadayan people was to use some form of spiritual powers known as “guis” to prevent strangers from entering the village. Guis is the invincible fence to deter intruders from tress-passing. It is the first line of defence under the direct Command, Control, Communication and Intelligence (C3I)of the village head. Usually the village head would communicate with the "spiritual master" to prepare the necessery arrangements after obtaining sufficient intelligence information from the village folks or from other sources with regards to the security threats affecting the village. The security protection in a Kadayan village is a smaller scale of C3I or C4I in the military and law enforcement agencies.

In the Olden Days Kadayan environment the first line of defence should be formidable. If there was any breach of security in which intruders managed to penetrate the defence system, the "spritual master" would be replaced or asked to sharpen his power by going for isolation / seclusion for a period of 40 days in a "wasai" to undergo a process known as "bataak" in Kadayan dialect. This process is necessery to maintain and safeguarding the dignity of the affected village. When the news reached other Kadayan villages about the flaws in the village defence system, the village head and folks would suffer tremndous pressure particularly when they were being offered assistance from other villages. Accepting help meant conceding defeat, which was a taboo in Olden Days Kadayan culture.

Such security protection was of vital importance in a life or death environment. The Kadayan people would gave their lives to protect their families & their community and should the intruders successfully penetrated the defence system, they will fight with all their might until to the last drop of their blood. The readers would be able to read more on this subject matter at Reaping the Benefits (http://itsurday.blogspot.com/) entitled Olden Days Kadayan.

I was able to witness the effectiveness of "guis" power where two strangers / intruders were caught red handed, unable to move (temporarily paralysed / disabled) in the vicinity of our village. I did not know for sure if the strangers / intruders were the head hunters but rumours were spreading like wild fire that they were head hunters looking for two victims to be used in bridge building. The two persons caught were from a well known indigenous people of Borneo famous for their head hunting practices. This incident happened in the late fifties.

To be continued…….