Long trek to school pays off (Published in The Star - Malaysia 23/Sep/07)
By SUHAINI AZNAM
Forty years ago, the Lun Bawang were “the poorest natives of Sarawak”. Education was the only way out of their hand-to-mouth existence, but going to school entailed a long trek over hills and rivers. They persisted, and today some are pillars in their chosen professions.
We walked three days to school – and three days back, said Freddie Acho Bian, 47, a senior bank officer and liaison chief of the Dayak Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
“Three days? Three hours, you mean,” I said.
Freddie looked at me steadily. “No, three days. Term holidays then were only two weeks long, and we would get to spend only half of them at home.”
Thus began the tale of their journey – the Lun Bawang walkabout – when children as young as seven would walk for hours, even days, to get to school.
“We would leave school at Friday lunchtime, and run kaki ayam (barefoot) to reach home for dinner,” recalled Freddie, whose education began in a primary school in Long Luping, which was about five hours' trek from home. Fortunately, the school had boarding facilities for children from distant villages, and Freddie was one of those boarders.
The primary school in Long Luping still stands, serving a cluster of surrounding villages linked by a pebbled road.
“Our school had one hostel, half for the girls, half for boys. We had blankets but no mattresses, no pillows, no kerosene light.
“We had no books, just small black boards, which we wiped off. And we collected stones for counting in arithmetic class.”
The youngest children carried one milk tin of rice each as his weekly contribution to the communal larder. His eldest sibling carried six. This was Lun Bawang democracy – each according to his ability, rather than his need.
“We were so hungry,” recalled Freddie laughing. “Sometimes, some of us managed to smuggle beras (uncooked rice grains) which we hid from the cook and ate raw.”
“And what did you eat the (cooked) rice with,” I naively asked
An embarrassed pause: “Nothing... just rice, with salt,” said Freddie softly.
“Sometimes there was enough money left over and they would buy us canned sardines. That was such a treat!”
Unbeknown to them, the strapping cook in charge of feeding them, Miriam Ukul, now 60, was also afraid of them. “The children back then were so big,” she laughed.
“Food was scarce,” she conceded. For the 10am break, biscuits did little to hush rumbling tummies.
“It was a school rule that we must not eat the rice raw, even if it's your own,” said Freddie's elder brother, lawyer cum politician Baru, 49, soberly. “I was caned once for that.”
”Sometimes we caught ikan telapia (fish) from people's sawah (padi fields) and cooked it in any tin we could find,” said Baru, an environmentalist who today champions customary native land rights.
Far from their parents, the children quickly learnt responsibility. Miriam would send the girls to look for ferns and the boys to chop firewood for the school and teachers.
“Can you imagine entrusting a parang to little boys in Primary Three?” said Freddie.
This dexterity with the parang proved fortuitous. Years later, having been warned about the ragging at the then Mara Institute of Technology, Freddie, Baru and a few other Sarawak “freshies” took the precaution of smuggling a parang each onto the plane.
Seniors from the peninsula had second thoughts as legend spread about “our wild head hunters' instinct,” laughed Freddie.
Continuing the account of their early school days, Baru said: “We woke up very early. At 6am, in the fog and mist, we were forced to do physical exercise.
“At 6.30am we were made to go to the Batang (River) Penipil and jump in. It was so cold, you could see the steam rising. Some of us cheated by just dabbing water on our T-shirts.”
“If you had two pairs of blue (school) shorts, you were lucky,” said Freddie. We would wash and dry them on the rocks while we bathed in the stream.
“We were just little boys and the shorts would smell of urine. We didn't even have bar soap.
“The cows liked the smell of urine and ate our shorts. So the boy with only one pair had to borrow from a friend or run back naked.
“At Standard Six, all the students would sit for a common entrance exam. One fifth would make it.”
The villagers would hold a big party for those who graduated. They were then told that they would be going to a faraway land.
That distant land was Lawas, the district capital 98km away from Long Semadoh, from where Freddie’s three-day walk began.
Lower secondary introduced many alien things to the children – their first taste of bread, noodles, fluorescent tube lighting “which flickered before it came on”, first flush toilet and toilet brush, which the children naively used to scrub their backs.
Struggle against poverty.
Schooling was free but there were still uniforms, books, stationary and shoes to buy.
For Jameson Tai, 45, the children's youngest maternal uncle who grew up with the Bian brothers, “it was a personal struggle against poverty, to make a change – not just for you but for your family”.
“I didn't have money for ice cream but it was okay. I had RM5 in my pocket to start school with.”
For entertainment, those boys with a little spare cash would catch the latest movies in town. Bruce Lee was a favourite. Tickets were only 50 cents for the cheapest front row seats. Notwithstanding the crick in their necks, they returned to their dormitories as heroes, reliving the entire movie, animated with flying kicks, for their buddies.
Apart from the hardships, there was homesickness.
“At first, Mina and Baru cried having to go to Lawas,” recalled their mother, Takong Taie, 69.
“They were not accustomed to being so far away, they had never been separated from me. I cried too.”
But with each new year, another child would enter school. Older siblings became their comfort points and their guides on the long trek home.
“We walked from 6am to 6pm, stopping only for lunch. These were packets of rice, wrapped in leaves, packed by kind villagers at whose longhouses we had stayed the previous night,” described Baru.
“It was funny, the thought of going home,” he laughed. “It always took us longer to go back to school than going home!”
The last subject before school let out at noon on Fridays was singing, recalled Freddie. “We were so happy, singing evergreens (such as Red River Valley and John Denver's Back Home Again) at the top of our voices.
“Then the bell rang and we would pick up our few belongings and just dash out!”
Until today, Freddie, an avid guitarist, and his buddies still get together for jam sessions where they would sing in parts. Malaysia Airlines (MAS) managing director and CEO Datuk Idris Jala, a Kelabit from Bario, plays regularly with the band.
But the walkabout has left a psychological scar. In end 2005, Freddie took his own two sons jungle trekking. “It brought back bitter memories. I have had enough. I don't want my sons to suffer like me.”
Freddie remembers his first pair of shoes. “I loved them so much, I slept beside them. I didn't want them to go away.”
To save their only pair of shoes for school, the children walked home barefoot, wrapping their feet in vines to protect the soles.
“Some children could afford slippers but even these would snap. Barefoot was better,” said Jameson. “Rain or mud, we didn't stop.
They walked without a compass, relying on memory and the curve of the river to guide them home.
“Some of the hills were steep and we just grabbed whatever we could, vines or bamboo, to haul ourselves up,” he recalled.
“And we sang to make the journey shorter. The advance party would rest and wait for the others to catch up. We had a rule among ourselves that we would never split up the group. Sometimes the bigger boys ahead would catch a squirrel or a monkey and roast it. It was so delicious. It taught us to share what little we had.”
Baru pays the highest tribute to the villagers who fed and sheltered them along the way.
“Can you imagine, three days, two nights walk from Lawas into Long Kerbangan (where their father, the late Pastor Bian Labo, retired). Over 100 kids walking, and they had to feed us.
“Once we reached the Irang Riak (Coughing Hill), we knew we were almost home,” said Jameson.
“But the steep slopes were terrible. The muddy heels of the kid in front of you were in your face.”
Three days and three nights and the Long Semadoh kids reached home. Every end of term, the Bario children flew home – they had no choice.
The Ba'kelalan boys had it the hardest, recalled Jameson. “At one point, they would have to cross the Sungai Beluyu 28 times as it cut its way up the mountainside.”
“It's a mark of the Lun Bawang, I guess.
“Our girls have pretty faces but when you look at their legs, they are thick and sturdy,” said Jameson.
For all their deprivations, those children are today pillars in their chosen professions.
Many came from poor but respected families of note. The Bians, the Tagals, the Langub Pengirans and Buaya Tadems were all barefoot children of the misty highlands. Today they have emerged to do their families proud.
