The Ragged Edge of the World by Eugene Linden Read Free Book Online

common ailments like diarrhea, and named three— getimang, nyekup and buhow —whose bark could be chewed or boiled as a treatment for stomach disorders. Turning the conversation again to the blockade, they pointedly said that these trees were getting harder to find, and that if the trees disappeared, the knowledge of their medicinal benefits would vanish with them.
    After further discussion of traditional medicine, the Penans addressed the role of ritual and taboo in their lifestyle and traditions. Yahya Sipai from Long Kidah said that an evangelical mission had been established in his area ten years earlier and had had a profound impact on their lives. In the old belief, women were not supposed to eat monkey, leopard, bear and python, but now that they had converted to Christianity, all dietary restrictions had been lifted. Korau Kusin from Long Kidah added that while they maintained some medicines that “attest to the natural,” they had done away with those that attested to the old belief. I interpreted this to mean that they had kept those medicines that cure because of natural properties but had done away with those that involve spells and magic of the old beliefs.
    For instance, the wood bark and roots from a five-foot-tall plant called kenyatong used to be employed as a balm to cure internal pain, but because it carried with it a taboo (it had to be handled according to a strict procedure—if put in a fire the wrong way, it would be harmful), it was now considered unchristian, and Korau Kusin would no longer use it, even though it provided effective treatment. He added that he and other elders would still tell children about the wood, but they would also warn them that it was now prohibited.
    When I asked whether you could be a Christian and still be a Penan, one chief shrugged and remarked that the old way of life was still the same, irrespective of beliefs. He didn’t mind giving up the use of potions to kill people. Others in the group, however, argued that switching beliefs came with a price. One Penan said that in the past, if you had good dreams you would have a good hunt; if you dreamed that you would catch a wild boar, for example, the next day it would come true. That didn’t happen anymore, he said—while you might have the dream, the boar wouldn’t appear.
    This precipitated an animated discussion about the pros and cons of Christianity. I got the sense that Christianity was winning not because the Penans had embraced Jesus Christ as their savior, but because life was on the whole simpler under one god. As one chief put it, “Before we had all these taboos. If we had to walk from here to there, we had to think, What was my dream last night, what route should I take? Now we just go there.”
    Between the government, missionaries, loggers, competing hunters, liquor, Western movies and the lure of the towns, these chiefs and their still loyal longhouse members were being assailed from all sides. I had come to Borneo thinking how sad it was that out of the hundreds of millions of people who lived in the archipelago that extends from the Philippines through Malaysia and Indonesia, perhaps only a few thousand maintain the arduously acquired knowledge of the flora and the fauna. Listening to the accounts of these chiefs and hunters, however, I came away thinking it somewhat miraculous that anyone had been able to hang on to it at all.
    At least, for that moment, that knowledge was still alive. The Penan group grew most animated when the conversation turned to hunting techniques and the various auguries they used to track boar. One bird, which they called matui and which looked a little like a hornbill, signaled the presence of certain kinds of fruit and correlated with the migration of the boar. So did a black, chickenlike ground bird with red and white feathers on its head. Another, whose Penan name was be’ui and which was described as a blue ground bird, signaled