We examined the mounds of dirt and leaves, nests abandoned by ground-dwelling megapode birds in which dragons lay their three-dozen eggs. The decomposing compost provides the heat to incubate the dragon eggs, but the female has to keep guard to ward off other predatory and cannibalistic dragons.
This was fascinating, but the reality was that we were in a cul de sac and had no choice but to retreat past the female dragon in order to resume our trek. While she seemed more intent on her nap than breakfast, I was reminded of the perhaps apocryphal Swiss baron who strayed behind his group in Komodo and was eaten by a dragon. He made the ultimate contribution to nature conservation – he fed himself to an endangered species.
Chapter 15
IN SEARCH OF THE LOST WHITE TRIBE OF HALMAHERA
Where have all the giant Caucasian cannibals gone?
TOTODAKU, Halmahera, Indonesia
I suspected a search for a lost tribe of giant white cannibals in eastern Indonesia was going to be a touch problematic.
In 1993 my eyes widened as my friend Albertus Paspalangi, a fisherman who lives on the tiny island of Bobale, off the New Jersey-sized island of Halmahera, told me about a tribe of very tall, very naked and very xenophobic cannibals who kill unwanted visitors by hurling stones with their feet and eating their victims raw.
Pak Paspalangi, who has spent his entire life on the coast, said the Orang Togutil live in the isolated hills on the far side of this K-shaped island in eastern Indonesia.
I decided to look for these curious people, although my experience told me that the odds of actually finding such ethnic oddities are only slightly better than locating Brigadoon.
In west Sumatra, Indonesia, thousands of kilometers to the west of Halmahera, I had searched for tiger magicians. The sophisticated, educated city dwellers who control Indonesian society had heard vague stories about these strange people who communicate with animals. Of course no neatly-coiffed lowlander would ever venture into the humid, dangerous forest, so reliable information was scarce. So, spurred by a hunch and too much free time, and unburdened by cumbersome facts, I headed into the hills and found people who were, well, pretty normal. Those friendly hill tribes wasted no time in informing me “we’re civilized.” They suggested that if I was silly enough to want to find tiger magicians I would have to go over the next hill, follow the distant rainbow and take my chances – “those deep forest people are dangerous – powerful magic.” And so it went. Seems people define themselves as much by what they aren’t as what they are: “We’re clever, well-dressed, speak the national language, grow irrigated lowland rice, use cash, have a religion. We’re different from our poor, naked, illiterate, animistic, sago-eating cousins who haven’t had a chance to enjoy the fruits of modern Indonesia.”
I finally found a couple of pawang harimau, as tiger magicians are called, not too far from a large town, where they worked on retainer for the Indonesian department of nature conservation, helping to capture man-eating tigers. They admitted that their job description might be a touch esoteric, but as far as their being dangerous forest dwellers – no way. They were just normal guys, admittedly with a special gift, trying to get by.
For ten years I had wanted to visit the Orang Togutil (literally “Togutil People”) in Halmahera, some three times zones and thousands of kilometers from Indonesia’s capital Jakarta, but info was scanty.
With the help of friends who work for BirdLife International, which is hoping to establish North Halmahera’s first national park in the deep forests occupied by the 3,000 or so Togutil, my friend Bill and I ventured into the far end of this rarely-visited island.
It wasn’t all that hard actually. Starting from the volcano-dominated island of Ternate (historically famous as the origin of cloves and base-camp of Alfred Russel Wallace, who developed the theory of natural selection while in Ternate), we took a few journeys in open boats to reach the depressing dusty frontier town of Subayim on Halmahera. We then climbed on back of motorcycles for a dusty hour, then walked for another 45 minutes.
We came to a small village of 25 families, and the Togutil were sitting around, as if waiting for us. Right away it was clear that this wasn’t the wild lost white tribe.
Albertus Paspalangi, my fisherman friend, is a “lowlander”. Although he certainly isn’t rich, he has a nice house, he follows a monotheistic religion, he speaks the national language, he sends his kids to school, he has electricity and a TV and he knows the names of Indonesian politicians and pop stars. He’s never been to the interior forests of Halmahera, and has no interest in doing so. To him, the interior is a place of jungle and potential danger. Given the chance for a holiday, there’s no question he’d head for a city like Ternate and not to inner-Halmahera.
He’s not at all an evil man, but he perpetuates a “we” vs. “them” attitude that has been at the root of “brown-brown” discrimination that has existed since city/states were created. The same dynamic is at work in regards to destruction of nature – my American ancestors “conquered” the West by decimating Indians and wildlife; today’s American leaders propose to drill for oil and “conquer” the Arctic Wildlife Refuge in Alaska for the benefit of people in the cities. And throughout the tropics, governments and entrepreneurs feel little remorse in “conquering” the wilderness – whether that wilderness consists of forest-dwelling people or tropical forests.
Perhaps this arrogance towards wilderness partly stems from man’s need-fear relationship with nature.
On the one hand, we need nature. We come from nature, we are part of nature. This connection is very deep, very ancient, very Jungian in its impact on our collective unconscious. Our very earliest ancestors, well before the development of agriculture and writing, before the wheel and fire, groveled with other animals, fought them for carrion, found shelter in the forests, opportunity in the plains. They understood, at least unconsciously, the cycles of rain and drought. Our ancestors came from nature, nature was part of them. This may explain why today the presence of green scenery slows our blood pressure and relieves stress. It might explain why people working in bleak, anonymous offices nurture houseplants to brighten things up, and why people recover faster from when their window has a view of a park (curiously, even having a photograph of nature speeds healing compared to a barren wall).
But what about the fear? We define ourselves partly by what we are not. We are no longer “savages” who co-exist with animals; we are civilized, we have left the darkness. Our ancestors learned to use plants for medicine, build complex shelters, and after much trial and error, to dominate nature by mastering fire, making metal tools, growing crops and domesticating other animals. We became the masters of the universe. We have civilization, language, Michelangelo and Michael Jackson and Michael Jordan. We have plows and guns. Many of us have been imprinted by one of the three strict, paternalistic, monotheistic desert religions that put a lot more emphasis on us having “dominion” over nature than on, say, the Buddhist approach of living in ‘harmony’ with nature. That’s why we’re uncomfortable when “undisciplined” nature approaches too close. We tend our gardens and kill crab grass to “manage” nature. That’s why the Balinese file the teeth of their pre-adolescent children – so that the child does not have pointy, animal-like cuspids. That’s why most first and second-generation urban people, like those you’ll find in Jakarta, will look at you askance when you explain that you’re going into the deep forests. You’re likely to get a response like: “Ugh, full of snakes!” or “No electricity” or “Go shopping in Singapore instead”. It’s all a way of saying “the forest is alien, it’s dangerous, it’s filled with people having strange animistic beliefs who worship spirits that reside in the trees and streams and volcanoes.” There are creatures in the deep wilderness (think yeti) that will tear off your head. We’re afraid of looking too deeply into the mirror and seeing our wild side.
This is near the core of our schizophrenic relationship with nature. We need nature but we fear it. We’re part of na
ture but we want to dissociate ourselves from anything too wild. On one side we have what could be termed a female/yin approach to nature – we are part of the global scheme of things, the interwoven tapestry of life – mysterious, complex, sharing, questioning, supportive, fertile. On the other hand we are very male/yang: logical, goal-driven, suspicious of outsiders, confident, potent. Conquerors.
Physically the Togutil looked similar to other Indonesian hill tribes, although considerably poorer and less sophisticated. They certainly had a simple life – few people in their tiny community spoke Indonesian, they didn’t grow rice, they hunted for deer and wild pigs with simple bows and arrows. A couple of the older men wore loincloths but most wore shorts and T-shirts. But the Togutil weren’t totally out of the mainstream – Christian missionaries had built a small chapel in the village.
More dramatically, the Togutil were neither white nor tall nor nasty. They seemed quite happy for us to spend a few days with them.
I went for a walk with one of the older Togutil, Pak Pisondodo, curious to see how he hunted with just a handmade bow and arrow.
Pak Pisondoldo was born in 1957 but looked ancient – short and skinny, with a wispy beard, wearing a loose loincloth made of faded and torn batik held in place by a strip of rattan, his wide calloused feet never encumbered by shoes.
We heard the distinctive whoosh of a pair of Blyth’s hornbills in flight, one of the many protected birds in these forests. They were safe from Pak Pisondodo’s simple bamboo arrows, which are accurate only at short range because they have no fletching to guide them in flight.
We tried to tread softly, but of course no deer or wild pig in its right mind would hang around when it heard clumsy Europeans stumbling through the forest. Realizing there was little need to keep quiet, I asked Pak Pisondodo about the legends that his people were tall, white and fierce.
“Oh, that’s not us,” he said. “You want the Orang Lingon. But be careful. Those guys are mean. Very galak. Fierce. Eyes like sharks. Powerful magic. They eat people raw.”
My informant on Bobale had clearly sent me to the wrong isolated tribe.
Pak Pisondodo explained that the Lingon made themselves hard to find, and lived in the deep forest without fixed settlements.
Would he be willing to take us to look for them?
Pak Pisondodo shook his head no. “Those Lingon are really savage.”
Chapter 16
WORLD’S SMALLEST PHOTO LAB “USES ONLY MAN ABILITY”
Burmese photographer has achieved success by thinking miniscule
BAGAN, Burma
U Sein Win claims that his packing crate, about the size of a kitchen stove, is the “world’s smallest photo lab.”
The elfin U Sein Win, 64, is not shy about advertising. Handmade signs and photocopied magazine articles in Dutch, Greek, French, Hebrew, Slovenian and English promise visitors to Shwezigon pagoda in Burma’s astounding ancient city of Bagan, that U Sein Win’s miniscule darkroom “prints fast, in 3 minuts [sic] really”. Not only is it “famous over the world” but it “uses only man ability.”
Some 35 years ago, with a degree in geology and chemistry from Mandalay University, U Sein Win got tired of teaching chemistry, physics and math in high school and established one of the country’s first photo finishing shops. Some businesses grow into empires; U Sein Win’s has shrunken to Lilliputian dimensions.
We pose for U Sein Win. With his heavy black eyeglasses tipped at a rakish angle, he crouches in front of us, clicking his decades-old Olympus Pen EE-2, a famously reliable camera that has two huge advantages for the Burmese photographer – it takes half frame photos, meaning he can get 72 pictures from a single roll, and most important, he can easily open the back and cut out the exposed film for processing and re-insert the unexposed film to get ready for the next customer. As he takes a few happy snaps his green-checked longyi falls open and three young boys make fun of the old man who is so engaged in his art that he embarrasses foreigners by his lack of modesty.
I peer into his studio. It’s only as high as his waist, and as deep as his arm, but somehow U Sein Win squeezes inside, creating a new profession of contortionist-photographer. It’s tiny, but there is still room in the box for a poster of a sexy girl promoting Tiger Beer, an empty tube of Mr Potato chips, a red light and a few trays of tired chemicals that have given birth to prints of the occassional tourist’s awkward smile.
It’s not easy being a small businessman in today’s Burma. Tourists are scarce – many foreigners are unsure whether a visit to Burma would support the military government or send a refreshing signal of solidarity to the common folk.
Visitors find much to appreciate in this vast country, longer north to south than the distance from Chiang Mai to Singapore, with ecosystems ranging from coral reefs to Himalayan snow-covered peaks. In a Texas-sized land area almost three times the size of the UK, Burma has more than twice as many people as Malaysia, and those 50 million people comprise more than 100 distinct ethnic groups.
We wander through Shwezigon, one of the more dramatic of Bagan’s 3,000 pagodas that lie scattered over an area two-thirds the size of Manhattan. When we return 20 minutes later U Sein Win hands us five washed out prints – almost monochromatic, as if they have been sitting in the sun for too long. With a marking pen he has written, “lovely couples at Bagan”.
The photos cost US 30 cents each. We ask him to sign his autograph and buy them all.
Chapter 17
INTO THE FRYING PAN
Vietnam’s street kids learn the restaurant business
HANOI, Vietnam
“Postcards, mister?”
I explained to the teenaged boy outside a luxury hotel in Hanoi that I didn’t need any more postcards.
“Please mister.”
So I bought a few more postcards, hoping my dollar would buy the young man a meal or two.
Officially there are some 19,000 street children in Hanoi, but social workers estimate the number of destitute youngsters at twice that number. Most of these children and teenagers have no support system and scrape out a hard-scrabble living flogging trinkets. Some turn to drugs, crime or prostitution.
A lucky few get accepted to Koto, an imaginative program that trains street kids in restaurant-related skills.
I did my bit for eco-empowerment by eating a tasty lunch of prawn tofu crepe, fresh mango juice and banana-coconut-rum cake (about US$6.50 for the lot) at the 80-seat Koto Café, adjacent to Hanoi’s famous Temple of Literature.
Koto, which stands for Know One Teach One, was created by Jimmy Pham, a Vietnamese-born, naturalized Australian who decided to do something for street kids that would be longer-lasting than buying them a few bowls of noodles and some clothes. He established Koto in 1996 to train young men and women as chefs and restaurant managers, skills that are much in demand in booming Vietnam.
I spoke with Koto-graduate Do Van Kiem, a bright-eyed man with neatly-parted hair who now works as a bartender at the elegant Sofitel Metropole in Hanoi.
Kiem, now 22, explained that four years ago he had shined Jimmy Pham’s shoes. Pham asked Kiem about his life, and heard a story that was touching, but perhaps not all that unusual. Kiem had arrived in Hanoi from Ha Nam province when he was 13. His family were farmers (“it was a boring existence” he recalls) and he sought a better life. But things weren’t easy once he got to Hanoi – in the capital he slept rough, was arrested for being a street peddler, and sometimes went ten days without earning a single dong.
Jimmy Pham listened to Kiem’s tale with a sense of recognition and empathy. Pham’s family had fled the war zone of Vietnam in 1974. They escaped initially to Singapore, then were shunted to Saudi Arabia and eventually settled in Australia. After completing high school, Pham worked at a variety of odd jobs – from making sangas at an all-night sandwich shop in Kings Cross to selling vacuum cleaners door to door. It was a tough upbringing for Jimmy and his four siblings as Jimmy’s mother, on her own at that time, struggled to bring up
her family in a new country. But it wasn’t as tough a life as the situation for kids like Kiem.
Pham enrolled in a travel and tourism course, and returned to Vietnam in the early 1990s as a tour guide. He spoke enough Vietnamese to be able to understand the harrowing stories of the street kids in Saigon.
He fed them, bought them clothes and paid for them to attend school. But perhaps most important, he listened as the kids explained that if they were ever going to get off the streets they needed to learn a trade.
Kiem graduated from Koto in 2002. He remembers the date, March 18. Like all the Koto graduates, he was immediately offered a job, he explains as we sit at a table in the luxurious garden of the Sofitel. “I’m lucky to be working here.”
Nadine Ziegeldorf, chief executive officer of the project, took me to the Koto training center and described the 18-month training program, developed by Melbourne’s Boxhill Institute. There is practical training to be sure, but perhaps equally important is the students – some 100 of them to date – are provided with a sense of family and responsibility. They earn salaries, are given loans to buy bicycles, and look after one another.
After lunch I stopped by the kitchen. Some twelve young women and men were busy slicing, frying, steaming and hustling to prepare lunch for a restaurant full of curious and hungry folks – a combination of tourists and expatriates working in Hanoi. Half of the kitchen staff wore the white uniforms of trainees, half wore the blue uniforms of Koto graduates who were employed full time by the restaurant.
The Sultan and the Mermaid Queen Page 12
