Chapter 21
“I am as free as Nature first made man,
Ere the base laws of servitude began,
When wild in woods, the noble savage ran.”
John Dryden, The Conquest of Granada, 1672
Engaging the “Noble Savage”
Ernest enjoyed the opportunity to spend valuable time with Thambi’s family and all he learned about their culture and semi-nomadic way of life. Their every move was a revelation to his Western way of thinking about the world, including everything from the mundane to the spiritual. Despite all of this, he still yearned to go deeper into the untamed forest to find Penan, who he heard were still completely nomadic, the last remaining few of their kind.
“Come, Ernest,” Mother said, " I have prepared sago worms. Fresh.”
Ernest tried not to stare too long at the bowl wriggling gently beside the fire. “I’m honoured,” he said, settling onto a low rattan stool.
Melur smiled with her eyes; the Penan tended not to use unnecessary words. Her movements were calm, unhurried, and deliberate as she continued to roast the worms on a flat stone. She observed the concern in Ernest’s eyes when Thambi had announced dinner, or in the Penan language, kuman dau Tahup, literally translated as “eat day evening.” Playfully, she elaborated, Sago worms are the larvae of the sago palm weevil. They are nutritious and can be served raw, fried, grilled or smoked. They are best with rice. These grilled,” pointing to her central hearth.
Rentap sat cross-legged nearby, carving a blowpipe dart from a sliver of nibong palm, the shavings falling like curling feathers. “Today,” Rentap began, Thambi says you asked him why we have no word for ‘thank you’. His voice held no rebuke, only curiosity.
Ernest hesitated. “Yes. I didn’t mean to sound rude.”
It is good to ask these questions,” Melur looked up from her grilling. “Molong, Ernest. Take only what you need. No more.”
“The way of the forest,” Rentap explained. “Everything is shared: meat, tools, stories, hardship. If the land gives, it is not for one person only. We take little, we give freely. So why would we say thank you for something that belongs to all?”
Melur handed Ernest a warm roasted worm. He stared it down, then ate it politely, finding it not nearly as frightening as it looked. His first impulse was to say it tastes like chicken, but instead he said, “It has a creamy, nutty taste, maybe like an oyster.” She laughed softly, without a word, approving his description and his courage.
Beyond the firelight, children moved like shadows, playing among the buttress roots. Melur said to Ernest, “Those children you see playing can, at their young age, identify, harvest and apply most of the medicinal plants that grow here. Look now where they play, that vine, growing around the trunk of the tree. It’s called Bengoo Pelanok. The Penan use it to treat snake bites. Other plants within a short walk of where we now sit, like Pokok Sakit Mata, have beautiful flowers that, when crushed, are used to treat the eyes. We use plants to treat most lung, eye, skin ailments, stomach issues and just about any sickness you can think of. The forest is our medicine store. The children know which ones heal fever, which stop bleeding, which feed us when the hunt fails. By the time they are ten, they know more than many doctors in the city. Probably out there somewhere, in this jungle, is a plant that cures the worst diseases. That find will never happen when these jungles are gone.” Melur said with a long, final sigh.
“Sobering, disturbing thoughts,” agreed Ernest while eating another roasted sago worm, an acquired taste he was beginning to enjoy.
“Melur, you are so right about what you say about the plants. I was once a medical student in another life. Your idea about the lost potential of medicinal discoveries with the destruction of the rainforest is a sobering thought and a careless and wasteful loss to all of us.”
Thambi jumped in to rescue his mother from Ernest’s jargon. “What Ernest is trying to say is that the cure for cancer may be out there, and we will never find it in our greed and stupidity.”
“Yes,” agreed Ernest, “thank you, that’s what I meant to say.”
At that moment, Rentap held up the dart he had been labouring on. “Tools too. A child learns to shape what keeps the family alive. Food. Medicine. Shelter.” He placed the blow dart into Ernest’s hands. “We learn by watching. By doing.”
The forest darkened as they spoke, but the conversation grew brighter. The children were called in from play. “Rentap, Ernest said, holding the dart, “I’ve noticed you don’t lead your village the way people do in cities. But they listen to you.”
Rentap shrugged. “Leadership is a river. It flows to whoever the moment needs. Today I lead the hunt. Tomorrow, Melur leads the healing with her plants. Next week, another elder tells us where to travel for sago. No one stands above. We stand together.”
Melur added, “And women and men, same height.” She touched her palm to her husband’s. “Equal. Different strengths, same spirit.”
Ernest turned his eyes upward. The sky deepened to indigo, thick with stars visible through the village clearing. “I’ve always wondered,” he said softly, “What do the Penan believe happens after death?”
Rentap poked the fire thoughtfully. “When the body returns to earth, the spirit walks the forest trails. Past the great River. Past the trees that never fall. We join our ancestors. They guide the living through dreams,hrough silence and through through wind, t nature. The afterlife is in a rainforest above the sky. There we live on without illness, hardship or pain. We continue activities like hunting, fishing and harvesting sago. All of nature has a soul, and the jungle is filled with powerful spirits which connect us to the natural world. Unlike what your Christian missionaries taught, our belief in animism is not a judgmental one.”
Melur’s voice was nearly a whisper. “Everything has spirit: the birds, the river, the moss on the stone, the mighty orangutan. If we harm the land. We harm ourselves.”
A breeze brushed the clearing, carrying the scent of wild ginger and damp earth. Ernest felt the weight of the words settle in on him, not heavy but grounding.
Thambi leaned back on his elbows. “You see, Ernest, life here is simple. Not easy. But simple. We take what we need. We speak what we must. We share because the forest shares with us.”
Ernest smiled, warmed by more than the fire. “I think,” he said slowly, “I understand a little better now.” He was about to give thanks again, but stopped himself.
Melur and Rentap nodded their approval.
No one said thank you.
No one needed to.
Chapter 22
“Slow down, will you?” Ernest called breathlessly as he wiped a bead of moisture from his glasses and trudged after his friend, who moved more quickly along the narrow path, bare feet padding over roots and fallen leaves.
Thambi stopped and turned, smiling. “I am slow, Ernest. You walk like you’re chasing something. You have much to learn.”
Ernest admired how his friend could so easily drop his western veneer and return so quickly to his Penan upbringing.
“Ernest laughed, “Maybe here I am slow. Back home, we are always in a rush. Deadlines, schedules, clocks, calendars…Here, I don’t even know what day it is.”
Thambi shrugged lightly. “In the forest, the day doesn’t matter. Only the light matters. And of course the rain. In the old days, we were more nomadic. We stayed where the forest feeds us. When it grows tired of us, we move.” He tilted his head in thought. “Your people stay in one place even when the land is dying beneath them, and they are the ones who killed the land. That is strange to us.”
“You talk so much of your democracy and your economic ways of doing things. I think the Penan are ahead of you. We do not have chiefs or headmen in the same way. People listen to those who speak with honesty, from knowledge, and from the heart. Women also have a voice.”
“Your society, it’s so equal. No bosses. No Money.”
Thambi raised his eyebrow. “Why should anyone own another person’s time?”
Ernest hesitated. “Well, in the West, people trade time for money. Jobs, markets, profit. It’s how things run. I’m sure you’ve seen all of this with your work as a ranger. I’m amazed at how well you balance Western and traditional ways. I have to admit, though, our ways, my ways, seem more calculated; everything is measured. Productivity. Efficiency. It’s all about constant change and growth. Anything but traditional.”
Thambi knelt beside Ernest, and with a stick, he drew some small circles in the forest floor. “The forest world is not measured. It is felt. It is experienced. We live it. You listen to the wind, and it tells you when rain will come. You listen to silence, and it tells you that the boar have moved on. You listen to other people, and you know how to live with them in harmony with all else.”
He drew another circle, overlapping the first. “Your world is numbers. Ours is relationships. The present Penan generation lives where these two circles overlap. We too have change. We keep our ways as we can, our songs and stories. Nature is not a resource to us. It is not something to buy and sell like the lumber companies do.
It is family. When a tree falls, we mourn it as we would a person. Do your people do that?”
Ernest swallowed hard. “No. We do not.”
“That is why you find our ways strange. And why do we find you lonely?”
Thambi placed a hand on his shoulder.
“Stay long enough, Ernest, and the forest will teach you, but first you have to stop measuring it.”
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