{"id":779,"date":"2021-01-11T15:02:00","date_gmt":"2021-01-11T15:02:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/akanisi.me\/en\/?p=779"},"modified":"2024-11-22T17:07:41","modified_gmt":"2024-11-22T17:07:41","slug":"orang-asli","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/akanisi.me\/en\/orang-asli\/","title":{"rendered":"Orang Asli: a visit to the jungle people"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

At the entrance to the Taman Negara Reserve, I met my local guide\u2014a short, thin, and very polite young man named Danny. He was a great admirer of the traditions and way of life of the indigenous people. He sometimes went hunting with them in the jungle, with nothing but a spear and a bow, sleeping in the trees at night just like them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Orang Asli means native people in the Malay language. These were hunter-gatherer tribes from the rainforests of continental Malaysia. Some of them lived deep in the wilderness and had no contact with civilization, while others were organized into semi-nomadic communities that moved from place to place every few months in search of food. It was such a community that Danny had found for me, consisting of several families for whom he acted as interpreter and intermediary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To reach our destination, we had to walk through the jungle for an hour or so, and then continue by boat. The first part of the trip proved debilitating, mainly because of the dense vegetation and excessive humidity that made the stagnant hot air almost unbearable. When we finally got to the river, I felt as if I had just come out of a sauna. Taking the boat became a true blessing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A thatched roof in a clearing and a few children playing in the water signaled that I was approaching the village. I disembarked and followed my guide up a steep path to a shelter made of banana leaves, where I was invited to sit down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I looked around me. The village comprised no more than five huts in total. Danny explained that it took about a day to build one, and the whole community participated. No wonder they could move the entire village every few months! The dwellings, elevated on wooden stilts, were walled with tree branches and woven straw. I was surprised to notice that some of them had plastic sheets over the roof. Evidently, those people had relied for generations on materials they could find in their environment\u2014now, plastic was one of them, having made its way right into the heart of the jungle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Malaysia was a heterogeneous blend of Asian influences. Along with the dominant Malay population, the Chinese had prospered there since ancient times thanks to the trade routes in the region, and many Indians had settled in the country during British rule. Unlike any of those, my hosts had dark skin and curly hair. They descended from the first inhabitants of the peninsula, who had come from Africa by sea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I was greeted by a young couple with two little boys and a daughter of about nine. As soon as they saw me, they rushed to put on some clothes that Danny had brought them. By all appearances, they had been well instructed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The man showed me how his people made fire with dry grass and how they shot poisoned arrows through a two-meter blowpipe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBut what is it for? What do they hunt?\u201d I asked the guide.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I thus learned that the main purpose was to hunt monkeys.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat? They eat monkey meat?\u201d I exclaimed, startled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOh, yes!\u201d Danny replied, and the look on his face suggested that he tried it too and liked it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When a member of the tribe managed to kill a monkey, they would all eat it together, I was told. Otherwise, they would stick to what they could find in the woods: fruits, mushrooms, or roots. If they stayed longer in one place, they would sometimes grow bananas or vegetables.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While we were talking, Danny pointed to a tribesman who had just come out of his hut. He soon vanished into the forest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSee? He was hungry and went looking for something to eat.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Given those people\u2019s living conditions, as well as the oppressively hot temperatures throughout the year, it was impractical to store food. Every meal had to be obtained straight from the jungle, whenever a starving stomach demanded it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Every now and then, the Orang Asli made contact with civilization, and some even worked in cities. Danny told me a funny story about an acquaintance of his who had hired such hunter-gatherers for a temporary job. The first day, they showed up, did what they were told, and got paid. They were supposed to come back the next day, but instead they disappeared without a word. They returned after two weeks, innocent as ever, acting as if nothing had happened. When they were scolded for their absence, they couldn\u2019t understand the reason. Apparently, they didn\u2019t even understand that their time off had been \u201ctoo long\u201d relative to what was expected of them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I imagined that from their perspective, getting a job in the city was the same as foraging in the jungle: you only take what you need, when you need it. By this logic, working several days in a row to accumulate resources for the future made as little sense as continuing the hunt after catching the game. Since the food could not be preserved, any effort to store it, let alone anticipate potential needs, was useless. Those people seemed to live only in the present.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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This was something worthy of Danny\u2019s admiration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe, modern people,\u201d he stated confidently, \u201chave no idea what life is about. We always worry about tomorrow, wasting our precious moments with all sorts of calculations. We make plans and scenarios, and life passes us by. The Orang Asli are wiser. After all, only the present is real; the rest is just in our heads.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If the hunter-gatherers of prehistoric times were not much different from the Orang Asli\u2014I speculated to myself\u2014then perhaps their mode of living subsequently changed, among other things, because of how their perception of time evolved. After all, the more the representation of time broadens, extending into both the past and future, the more complex individual\u2019s expectations, projections, and approaches to reality become. As time grows in people\u2019s minds, people also live more in their minds, more isolated from their peers and from the environment, and thus, not surprisingly, more unhappy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aside from looking for food, the Orang Asli had little to do. The adults just lazed around or slept, waiting for the heat to subside, while the children bathed in the river all day long. Few events seemed capable of disturbing the peace of their lives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I asked about it, my hosts rushed to inform me:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOh, let us tell you about Alice!\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Alice was an Englishwoman, blonde and pale like me, Danny explained. She stayed in the village for no less than a year and even wrote a book about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cShe lived here with us, ate our food, slept in our huts,\u201d one of the young Orang Asli confirmed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For a moment, I tried to imagine what it would be like to eat raw mushrooms and monkey meat for a year, sleep on rough mats together with an entire family, and be washed only by the muddy river water or by the rain\u2026 I would have loved to understand the Orang Asli better, but I wouldn\u2019t have gone so far as to attempt to become one of them. I wasn\u2019t convinced that the mere transgression to a supposedly idyllic moment in the evolution of our species could make life better for modern humans\u2014no more than going back in time and modifying the past could be relied upon to improve the present.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There was also another, much more practical reason why I wouldn\u2019t have stayed in one of those families\u2019 huts, unlike the brave Alice. Ever since I arrived, I had noticed on the skin of my hosts some unusual white spots and pustules. The guide told me it was a skin condition\u2014a genetic one, he claimed\u2014but he just couldn\u2019t remember what it was called in English. He assured me it wasn\u2019t contagious, but my instincts kept me from touching anything in the village. I still don\u2019t know exactly what it was. Later, as I looked for more information, I learned that many indigenous tribes in Malaysia were ravaged by diseases long eradicated in the rest of the world\u2014including leprosy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There was no doubt that life in the jungle was anything but safe or comfortable. I was aware that I had to be careful, but at the same time, I stubbornly refused to be intimidated.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At the entrance to the Taman Negara Reserve, I met my local guide—a short, thin, and very polite young man named Danny. He was a great admirer of the traditions and way of life of the indigenous people. He sometimes went hunting with them in the jungle, with nothing but a spear and a bow, sleeping in the trees at…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1277,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[8],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/akanisi.me\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/779"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/akanisi.me\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/akanisi.me\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/akanisi.me\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/akanisi.me\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=779"}],"version-history":[{"count":60,"href":"https:\/\/akanisi.me\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/779\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1395,"href":"https:\/\/akanisi.me\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/779\/revisions\/1395"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/akanisi.me\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1277"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/akanisi.me\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/akanisi.me\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/akanisi.me\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}