The girls like to help their mothers in the work of the house, and become useful at an early age. The boys also begin to work early, and are often seen accompanying their fathers when they work on their farms. A boy is very proud when he has succeeded in making his first dug-out canoe, which he sometimes does at fifteen. He can at this age join a party working in the jungle and collecting gutta-percha, canes, and other jungle produce, and he receives an equal share with the adult members of the party. The boys generally bring back what money they earn in this way, and give it to their parents.
Dyak children have not many toys. Little girls are sometimes seen with rudely carved wooden dolls, and little boys play with models of boats. The boys are fond of spinning-tops, which they make for themselves.
Though the Dyaks marry young, they do not have large families. It is not often that one meets a family of over three or four children, and I have only known of one case where a woman had seven children. The conditions are favourable, one would think, to a rapid increase of population. They have plenty of good plain food, and the climate is healthy. There are none of the principal checks to population mentioned by Malthus among savage nations—starvation, disease, war, infanticide, or immorality. What, then, is the cause of the small number of births? Climate and race may have something to do with it, but I think the main cause of it is the infertility of the women. This is no doubt brought about by the hard work they do, and the heavy loads they often carry. A Dyak woman sometimes spends the whole day in the field, and carries home at night a heavy load, often walking for several miles over hilly paths. In addition to this, she has to pound the rice, a work which strains every muscle of the body. I have often been told by Dyak women that the hardest work they have to do is this rice-pounding. This kind of hard labour begins at an early age, and never ceases until the woman is too old or too weak to work. Need we wonder, then, at the limited number of her children?
CHAPTER VIII
MY SCHOOL IN THE JUNGLE
Up-country mission schools—Education—The Saribas Dyaks eager to learn—School programme—What the boys were taught—Some schoolboy reminiscences—A youthful Dyak manang—The story of Buda—The opening of the Krian Mission and the Saribas Mission.
In this chapter I want to say something about the little school of Dyak boys I had in the up-country mission station in my charge. My school was a very small one. The largest number of boarders I ever had was sixteen. It would seem hardly necessary to devote a whole chapter to it, but the up-country school is an important factor for good, and deserves encouragement. I should like to see more of these schools in different parts of the country. I feel sure that it does a Dyak boy a great deal of good to be a few years in one of these small schools under the personal supervision of the missionary in charge. Here he would do much manual work, just as he would do in his own home, and he would at the same time be taught moral truths as well as general knowledge. When he returns to his Dyak home, he is sure to influence his people for good. The object of education is to build up character. The way to improve the Dyaks is not to educate a certain number of them to earn their living elsewhere, but to take some young people from the Dyak village, improve them by implanting in their minds right ideas, and then send them back to live with their own people the ordinary work-a-day life of the Dyak. I agree with those who say that to place Dyak boys in one of the larger schools in Kuching for any length of time will make a return to their old surroundings distasteful to them, and unfit them for the ordinary life and occupations of their people. And therefore I think that only those who show a special aptitude to become teachers should be sent on to the school at the capital to be taught to read and write English. A certain number of clerks are needed, but that number is very limited, and to produce a large number of Dyak clerks for whom there is not sufficient work is surely a mistake. There are some who advocate technical education for the Dyak. No doubt he would with training make an excellent carpenter or smith, but again he would find difficulty in getting work. He would never be able to compete with the Chinese artisan into whose hands all the skilled labour has fallen.
The main object of my school in the jungle was to teach Dyak boys for a few years, and then send them back to their own people. Unfortunately, I had not the means to carry this out to any great extent.