They move like graceful animals, each muscle rippling under its sheathing of dark bronze with a freedom and smoothness that makes us envy them their unrestrained ease. Here are no bloated abdomens, no pinched-in waists. They have never seen corsets. Their bodies and limbs are clean-lined and well rounded and they walk haughtily erect.
In response to our inquiries as to their shelters they extend us a laughing invitation to visit them and lead us to the low thatched shelves that run around the enclosure, which forms their back wall. Supported upon low legs of bamboo is a long platform which completely encircles the kampong. There are no partitions of any kind to screen from view the various intimacies of family life. One may sit upon the platform and see whatever transpires in the homes of the entire kampong. In fact, these people live entirely on a community basis, and there are no secrets.
Johnny woos Milly, or whatever their names may be, with little regard for the others and may live with her for some time without censure before he finally decides that marriage is the proper thing. If he finds her to his liking he may inform the rest that he will keep her, and that is all there is to it. There is no scandal, for all know everything. Gossip there is in plenty, but that is when some member plays hookey and visits another kampong with too much regularity. Conduct of this sort is frowned upon, but not punished except by the hookee’s—what shall I call her?—sparring partner, who if she learns of the situation may take the offender to task. But such is life even in our own land of Wednesday evenings and cabarets.
Our hosts bring cocoanuts, which they open for us to drink from, and offer us food. We drink, but, strange to say, are not hungry. Our cigarettes are received with marked approval,—so marked, in fact, that they are snatched from us by the package the moment we pass out the first one. They take it for granted that we want them to have them and do not wish to put us to the trouble of distributing them. They do this themselves, after the fashion of ten dogs after one bone, but with surprising good nature. They love tobacco, which they get from the ubiquitous Chinese or Malay traders. Having no paper with which to make cigarettes, they generally eat the tobacco, but some roll the coarse shag in pandanus leaves, making cigars which would put to sleep even confirmed smokers like us.
The hours pass swiftly and we hear a pattering on the dry palm-leaves above us. The sky is overcast and we have four miles of humid going ahead of us. After an afternoon spent in lolling around with our new friends we hear the call of the bath-house, and we bid them adieu,—for the present without reluctance.
If these are the good Kia Kias,—in contact with whites more or less, for they live beneath the shadow of the assistant’s authority,—we wonder what the tribes in the interior are like. “Well,” we tell ourselves, “we shall see them soon now. Next week at this time we shall be among them, alone and far from the arm of the white man’s law.”
A long platform which entirely encircles the kampong
During the day the men occupy the sleeping-benches, while the women sit upon the sandy floor of the shacks