THE KAMPONG
To-day the assistant is resting. The steamer is gone. We shall go
hunting adventure on our own. Four miles inland there is a kampong where
live about fifty Kia Kias. As the day is warm we will put on the
lightest clothing we have and go there. We cannot miss the way, for the
only road of which the country boasts passes the place. It leads to a
deceased missionary’s little plantation about three miles farther on.
[Illustration: Each of the men has perforated the septum of his nose to
permit inserting a pair of boar-tusks]
[Illustration: A pair of alligator-teeth make a wonderful nose-ornament]
The last building we pass on our way through the outer fringes of the
little town is a rambling whitewashed structure. It is the government
hospital. We must see this place, for in it they are striving to save
the Vanishing Men. We are met at the little office door by a nurse in
modest white. She is the only one on duty now, for nurses are hard to
obtain in this out-of-the-way corner of our old footstool. She is half
white and half Chinese. She speaks five languages fluently, we find, for
as we converse with her she lapses into French now and then, with
sprinklings of Malay and Dutch. It is a habit linguists have, for they
find finer shades of meaning in varied tongues. Her English is perfect
and we take for granted the purity of her Pekinese, for she tells us she
was born in the Celestial Empire.
In the wards she shows us the patients in her care. Here we find the
curse of civilization stalking like a grim specter. Statistics, she
informs us, give the Kia Kias fourteen years more to live. Once the race
numbered a hundred thousand, but now with the coming of the strangers
the venereal scourge is upon them and their ill-nurtured bodies cannot
withstand the heroic treatment necessary for successfully combating the
disease. The mere confinement in the hospital kills some of them.
Before the coming of the strangers they were a healthy race that thrived
and prospered. True, they ate one another, but their diet seemed to
agree with them. It was the greatest pleasure they got out of life.
These dinner-parties are taboo now and the poor devils within reach of
the punishing whites have nothing for which to live. They are a race
without ambition, lacking zest of life, and seek excitement in excesses
that take toll of hundreds where the roasting-pit claimed but a
comparative few. In early days there was tribal organization, which was
necessary for survival. Now they live in less dread and great sloth,
their idleness breeding indulgence in the only thing left to them,
unrestricted sensuality. True, the tribes that live in the remote
fastnesses of the jungle still maintain the old customs and they are
contaminated only slightly with the scourge; still, it has found them.
With mixed emotions we leave the hospital. The advice of the engineer
comes to us with new significance. Every ship or schooner that plies the
islands has been freighted with the scourge, gathered from the four
winds and brought here. Then come the missionaries further to darken the
sky, for do they not lift hands, eyes raised askance, at the naked
savage and force him to don clothes? The childlike and untutored natives
do not know that in rain-soaked clothing there lurks a menace. Their
naked skins shed the water and they never become chilled, but those whom
the missionaries have clothed are one and all subject to pulmonary
troubles that are making further inroads on the race.
The road winds into the jungle where the silence is absolute. A mile
from town it has dwindled to a mere foot-path. As we brush the
close-growing shrubs that border it, we dislodge clouds of midges and
mosquitos which, with the moist heat and the perspiration that soaks us,
become intolerable. However, we have set out for the kampong, and shall
go there.
After an interminable hour, we come to a clearing where we find a
palm-thatched shack. Three naked children are sprawling on the ground,
chattering baby talk. They do not notice our approach until we are close
to them, but as we say “hello” they bounce to their feet and disappear
in the bush with wild cries of alarm. They are just like any of the wild
things that live in the jungle. We laugh at their sudden fear and call
to them to return, while their mother inside the shack peeps furtively
at us through a crevice in the wall. Evidently she is not much
frightened, for she comes to the door and greets us with, “_Tabe,
Tuans_,” the stock greeting of the Malay-speaking native. She is clad in
her birthday clothing, as naked as on her natal day save for a heavy
necklace of shells wound twice around her neck. She approaches us with
easy grace, wholly unconscious of her nudity. Though she wears no
covering whatever, she is clothed, for the dignity with which she moves
and her utter lack of self-consciousness form a garment that drapes her
pleasingly.
[Illustration: Enormous nose-tubes of bamboo which entirely close the
nostrils, making breathing possible only through the mouth]
[Illustration: The women wear in many cases a tiny breech-clout, but no
other covering]
Going to a pile of cocoanuts beside the shack, she selects two which she
opens with a deft stroke of a heavy broad-bladed knife. These she gives
us, with a smile and a sinuous, almost coquettish lifting of the hip as
she stretches her arm to hand them to us. Bidding us wait, she
disappears inside the shack, emerging in a moment with two Chinese
enameled cups which she offers us. We thank her, but prefer to drink the
cool water of the nuts from the shell.
The brown-skinned urchins, upon seeing their mother in friendly
conversation with the strangers, return to the clearing and eye us with
wonder and some distrust. They are on their little toes, so to speak,
watching for the slightest suspicious movement, ready to fly to the
protective jungle. Their big sloe eyes grow wistful as we offer them
some pennies and their mother reassures them, finally overcoming their
fears and bringing them to the place where we are crouched upon our
haunches with hands outstretched. They reach out, snatch the pennies,
and are gone, whereupon the mother shrieks with merriment. While we are
laughing over the little comedy a boy of possibly eighteen years, naked
as his mother, comes from the thicket with some more cocoanuts, which he
tosses on the pile by the shack. He looks inquiringly at us and his
mother directs him to guide us to the kampong, which is set back off the
path a few rods.
The sound of laughter and some one singing in full-voiced baritone
greets us as we near the kampong. A man is singing a Kia Kia melody that
sounds as though he were ill. He finishes the song as we enter the
narrow opening in the kampong wall and all the natives in sight gaze at
us for a fraction of a second, paralyzed with surprise and fright.
The spell is broken the moment we step inside and they leap en masse for
the exit in the rear of the kampong and wedge there in a ludicrous
struggle of arms and legs. Somehow they force their way through the
opening and the enclosure is deserted except for a few old women too old
to get away.
Our presence in the kampong is resented by the canine population, which
gathers before us in a semicircle and howls in great anguish of spirit.
Soon a dusky form slithers in through the exit, to be followed by
several more, and all stand grouped at a respectful distance, eyeing us
closely. They are women, startlingly nude. As they come to no harm at
our hands, the men take heart and return singly till all the inmates of
the kampong are again at home. After a silent study of us the men
evidently realize that we are harmless, for they break into loud
laughter, which is taken up by the women, and come toward us to make us
welcome. The women gather around and, though laughing uproariously, seem
friendly enough.
We are in a real cannibal village, and, as it is our first, we are
somewhat curious about it. We start in by examining the natives and note
the curious decorations with which they adorn themselves. Each of the
men has perforated the septum of his nose to permit of inserting a pair
of boar tusks or pig knuckles. This of course interferes with his
breathing, so he has cut two vertical openings through the sides of the
nose through which the air whistles at each inhalation. The faces of all
the men are besmeared with paint, which they make from colored earths
they gather and grind into a fine powder.
The ears of both men and women are perforated in the lower part of the
lobes, which, by reason of the many heavy brass rings with which they
are weighted, hang down well upon the neck, some of them even touching
the shoulders. All wear necklaces of shell, with sometimes a variation
in the shape of varicolored seeds sewn upon pieces of trade cloth. The
men wear no loin-cloth, but those of family wear a grotesquely
inadequate substitute comprised of a shell and a string of bark fiber.
The women in many cases wear a tiny breech-clout of twisted fiber
scarcely bigger than the palm of one hand, a triangular patch that
because of its color and texture does not seem to exist. Many of them
seem to be sufficiently happy without even this pretense at clothing and
in no way conscious of their nakedness. Among those under the age of
twenty of both sexes there is no attempt at covering.
We are as much objects of curiosity to them as they to us and while we
have been studying them they have been picking us to pieces. The women
pluck at our silk shirts and try to peep inside, doing it gently,
however, for fear of arousing our anger. They are like a throng of
curious, happy children and now and then one of the younger women will
burst into shrieks of laughter at some sally of her mates and run a few
steps away, where she leaps up and down in exuberance of spirits.
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.”
[Illustration: A long platform which entirely encircles the kampong]
[Illustration: During the day the men occupy the sleeping-benches, while
the women sit upon the sandy floor of the shacks]