There are occasions when one who has lived among a people like the Dyaks, and has learnt to know and to love them, looks forward into the coming years and tries to picture what is in store for them. Those who have read the preceding pages will be able to form some idea of the Dyaks as they are, and know their manner of life, and to a certain extent, I hope, their modes of thought. In this chapter I shall say something of the probable future of the Sea Dyak in Sarawak. Let me first recall some features of the home life of the average Dyak at the present day.
He marries at an early age, and lives in a long Dyak village house with his wife and children. His wife since her marriage has grown into a tired-looking, untidy woman, very different from the bright merry girl of ten years ago. How can she help it? She has four children to look after, and the youngest is still an infant, who needs a great deal of her attention. She has to fetch the water required, and do the cooking for the family. She has to attend to the drying and pounding of the paddy, and convert it into the rice for their daily food. In addition to all this, there is the worry and commotion connected with having to move the household for some months each year to the little hut put up in their paddy-farm some little distance away.
The Sea Dyak has year after year to grow as much paddy as possible. He rises on work-days early in the morning, partakes of his frugal meal of rice and salt, or rice and salt fish, varied, if he be very lucky, by a piece of wild pig’s flesh or venison, which he has received as a gift or bought from some hunting friend. His wife bundles up for him his midday meal in the spathe of the Penang palm, and he goes off to his work, returning home late in the evening.
There are days when he does not go to work on his paddy-farm, but spends his time in getting firewood or mending things in his room, or in sitting about in the common veranda chatting with his friends.
When the paddy has grown a little, and the time for weeding draws near, the family remove to the little hut put up in the paddy-field. In the weeding the Sea Dyak is helped by his wife, the younger children being left in charge of the elder for the greater part of the day, while their parents are at work. When the weeding has been done, the family return to the long Dyak house for a month or so; then they go back to their hut to watch the ripening paddy and guard it against attacks of birds and beasts.
Paddy-planting is the chief occupation of every Sea Dyak, but he has plenty of time for other things, and his life is not quite so monotonous as may be supposed. The actual work of paddy-planting, and things connected with it, such as the building of farm-huts and the getting ready of farming implements, takes up seven or perhaps eight months of the year. The Sea Dyak has, therefore, a certain amount of time during which he can visit his friends, make boats, or hunt for jungle produce.
On certain occasions the Sea Dyaks muster in great force. At a feast a large number of them appear dressed in such finery as they possess, and they eat more than is good for them, and drink enough bad Dyak tuak (spirit) to make them very sick and to give them a bad headache for the next few days. At a large tuba-fishing crowds of them congregate with their hand-nets and fish-spears, and a pleasant sort of picnic is spent, attended, if they are fortunate, with the procuring of much fish.
The Sea Dyak has his bad times. When he has had a bad crop, he has to think of some means of raising money—not for luxuries in dress and food, but for the plain necessaries of rice and salt upon which many Dyaks have to live for several months in the year. On these occasions he will work for some Chinaman at the nearest bazaar for a low wage, or sell firewood to them for whatever they will give. If he possess such things, he sells some old brass gun or gong to buy food for his family. If he be reduced to borrowing paddy from his neighbours, he will have to pay back the following year double the amount he has received.
A Dyak in Gala Costume