Today we left for the field again. This trip was a bit rushed and definitely unexpected, as we returned from the field only a week ago. The plan was to recover and enter data for a week, then meet up with a couple of national geographic photographers who want to do a story about the region. However, the photographers were delayed until mid-august so we decided to go to the field again and finish mapping another village in the interim.
The survey village is called Manjau, and is the first ethnically Dayak villager that we’ve worked in thus far. In Ketapang, there are two broad classes of native people. Melayu are river people, and are almost all Muslim. They don’t eat pig or drink alcohol, and most do not keep dogs. Dayak are forest people, and are generally Christian although they used to be animists before conversion by missionaries. Dayaks drink arak (fermented rice beverage), eat pig, and keep dogs. The physical difference in appearance between Dayak and Melayu people is not obvious to me, but the dogs and the pigs tend to distinguish Dayak from Melayu houses. In Manjau, all the Muslims live in one part of the village, the protestants live in another area, and the Catholics in yet another. Apparently this minimizes conflicts among cultures.
Manjau is very near to
Our hosts in Ketapang are a woman named Mama and her husband, the head of the local masjid (mosque). Mama is a character, and talks to me quickly in Indonesian as if I’ll eventually understand what she is saying if she talks enough. She definitely fills the Mom role, telling everyone to “makanyo” and “minumya” (eat and drink) constantly. A daughter-in-law and her 1 year old son also stay in the house, as does a brother-in-law and a random old man. I honestly have no idea while the old man is there, as he has not yet spoken a word and does not eat with the family.
Tomorrow we will meet with the Kepala Dusun and start our mapping activities, but now it is time for bed!
No comments:
Post a Comment