Children of the Borneo Jungle

Northland Age, Volume 1, Issue 3, 23 October 1931, Page 9

Children of the Borneo Jungle

Nikko and Posa, his little sister, lived in central Borneo in a very wild, beautiful, warm jungle near the equator. All about them were wonderful flowers, trees, vines, birds and rivers full of interesting things. They were very happy for they belonged to a native tribe called Dyaks, and both the men and women loved children dearly and tried in every way to make them happy. This little boy and girl had dark eyes, straight black hair, and a skin of a soft brown colour. They wore very little clothing for they did not need it, and no shoes at all. Nobody wore shoes, young or old ; like the wild creatures around them, they went barefooted and rarely hurt their feet.

Each, however, wore a loin cloth which had been made by their mother from strips of soft bark cut from a tree, and beaten with mallets until it was a fine and smooth as a piece of cloth. This was five feet long, six or eight inches wide, and was wound around the waist several times, the ends hanging down like the ends of a scarf. They had a great deal of jewellery—earrings, necklaces, bracelets and bands around their ankles.

They had a number of playthings which were made of fine strips of bark, such as are used for weaving baskets. These were shaped like birds, fishes and animals. They had kites, toy shields, squirt guns and tops of beautiful polished wood. Nikko was very proud of a queer drum his father had made for him. It did not look at all like a drum. It was: a section of a big bamboo stem with closed ends. This was hollow, and he had learned how to strike it in different places with two wooden clappers so as to produce different sounds. He hoped some day to be able to send and receive messages on the village drum. Posa had a doll! It was a Dyak doll in colour, features, and dress. It was made from tree bark and dressed just like the little girl herself. It had a loin cloth wound around its waist, a necklace, bracelets, bands on its ankles, and great heavy rings in its ears. She loved it, nursed it and took great care of it.

Tha house in which the children lived was a very funny one indeed. It was called the long house or ‘lamin’ and was really an apartment house where the whole clan lived. It was a

great long, straight building with a pitched roof thatched with palm leaves, and was set upon pillars of wood which raised it several feet above the ground. It looked as if it were on stilts and ready to walk off, taking everybody with it. There were no windows of any kind in this house, but it had a door at each end with a big hall which ran the entire length of the building.

Along the sides of this hall were forty doors fastened with wooden

latches, each opening into a single room, and each room belonging to a single family. When the little boy and girl spoke of the big house in which they lived, they called it a “forty-door house” instead of a house with forty rooms. In one of these rooms Nikko and Posa lived with their father, mother and baby brother. It was a lot of rooms in one—kitchen, dining room, living room and bed room. On one side was a fire place made of flat stones where the mother cooked all the meals, using dry cocoanut husks and small pieces of wood which the children helped to gather and split. When the food was ready to serve, Mother placed it on big leaves which had been gathered from certain trees, and set them upon a woven floor mat. Then the family sat down on this mat and ate the sago, rice, fish, vegetables and fruit which made up the meal. Posa did not wash the dishes l ; she threw them away. When the children went to bed, they lay down on a sleeping-mat with small logs of wood under their heads for pillows. Everybody slept in this manner.