Merciful Spirits of the Jah Hut

2018-07-07T22:20:56+02:00

The village of Berdut lies at the very end of the road that ends abruptly when it reaches a dense jungle. This 300-strong community is the home of the Jah Hut, a tribe that belongs to the Orang Asli people of Malaysian Penang peninsula. The houses are wooden, raised on stilts, spacious, empty, dark, scattered along the forest road. The Jah Hut hunt, grow rice, cassava and bananas, and the little money they make comes from collecting kauchuk, and seasonal work on oil palm plantations.

My friend Aleksandar had spent a year in this village, helping them out. That is where he learned their language, so this time he acted as my translator. He took me there to meet his hosts, neighbors and friends. When we arrived to the village, they were happy to see him; me not that much. They were slightly suspicious but mostly just timid. Some of them turned their backs to me in order not to look into my eyes. But with a copious amount of smiles, one by one they accepted me too.

Our hosts were Pok and Iem, an elderly childless couple who spent most of their life helping their neighbors raise their kids. They were one of the few families that had electricity (which had reached the village less than two years ago), and they even had an old TV set where the community gathers in the evening to watch cartoons and series. Iem had just returned from a fishing trip, with a net full of wriggling catfish.

Do you like fish? – he asked and immediately took one out and impaled it on a stick to fry it.

Along with the catfish, the dinner also included rice with cooked bananas and purple potatoes. We ate all together on the floor, me being the only one using a spoon.

- Come on, a baby is sick. For two days already. We’re all going to menisoy – our host said after we finished dinner.

***

We walked in pitch darkness. From the depths of the jungle I could hear rhythmical, dull rumble, reminiscent of drums.

Tup - tup - tup… Tup - tup - tup…

The flashlight lit our path. The rumble grew louder and the contours of a house appeared in the moonlight. Yellow candlelight was visible through a window. The rumble quickly became extremely loud. We arrived to a wooden terrace on which ten to fifteen people sat in the dark. In their hands they had bamboo sticks with which they were hitting the floor in unison.

Tup - tup - tup…

There were another thirty people inside the house. The children slept on the floorboards while the adults sat on the floor lit by candles. They were talking, drinking coffee and chewing penang – everything, more or less, like on any other day.

In the farthest, smallest room a mother was breastfeeding a baby, while the father squatted next to them. They told us that the child had been coughing and breathing heavily for days, so the neighbors gathered and brought the shaman from the neighboring village, who would try to cure the baby. His name was Bolok and he had just entered the small room. He looked just like anyone else: dark-skinned, barefoot, with frayed blue jeans and a t-shirt. He squatted down next to the baby and started whispering into its ear. Meanwhile, the wooden walls shook from the banging of the bamboo sticks outside.

When Bolok stood up, we asked him how he had become a shaman.

- It was my own decision, but I had to convince the old village shaman to teach me everything. To prove to him that I was worthy – he said.
- How did you convince him?
- I had to spend three days and three nights all alone in the jungle. Without anything. That is how you meet all the spirits there. You stare death in the eye. You overcome all your fears. Some apprentices never return. Some return, but possessed of evil forces. They never recover.
- And that is all?
- No. I had to learn many things. In the end, the old shaman spat into my mouth. That is how the power was passed on to me, and everyone started to respect me – he replied and went outside to the terrace.

***

Menisoy lasts for two nights. Both nights the shaman chants mantras in the Jah Hut language, which some of the household members repeat after him. This goes on from dusk till dawn. On the second night a doll is prepared, usually a carved wooden figurine that represents the ailing person. The goal is to transfer the disease to that object.

We walked out to the terrace too. There were almost twenty people there, holding bamboo sticks. The shaman stood in front of the figurine and chanted, the others repeating his words, all the while beating on the floor. The sound must by no means stop until the morning, we were told. This is how the evil spirits are summoned and asked for help, to transfer the little girl’s disease to the wooden doll. In the morning, the doll is sent down the river.

The people with the bamboos occasionally switched, the exhausted ones going inside for refreshment, then coming back, but the rhythm never stopped. The two of us sat down too, lifted the two remaining sticks and started, awkwardly, to follow the beat.

Tup - tup… Tup.

- Why don’t you take the child to the hospital? – we asked the parents.
- No. The shaman is here. The spirits will help.
- What if they don’t come?
- They will come...

* Pinang or betel nut is a bitter nut wrapped into a betel leaf. It makes the teeth and tongue turn red, and upon chewing causes dizziness and light hallucinations. It is often used in this part of Asia.

Walls in the Desert

2016-12-22T00:27:10+01:00

– I’ve heard there is a wall there – I said.
– What wall? – Husam replied. – It's all just propaganda. There is no wall.

I asked him about Western Sahara. Was it a part of Morocco, like the map shows, or a sovereign country occupied by Morocco? I got a fairly long answer that started with the sentence:

– You know, historically speaking, Western Sahara has always been our, Moroccan land...

Our land... Coming from the Balkans, I've developed a habit to stop listening after those words. They are usually followed by a lengthy, tedious tirade copy-pasted from official history books.

We were sitting on the balcony of his house in Marrakesh, where he occasionally hosts Couchsurfers because he feels lonely. Husam is a software developer, he speaks good English and he is thirtyish. Over the next few days, as we hitchhiked all across Morocco, we learned that no one had ever heard about any desert wall.

When we decided to go to the west of Africa, we weren't sure where exactly Morocco ends. It begins just below Spain, but where does it end? To the south of Morocco lies a large strip of land called Western Sahara.

The transition from Morocco to Western Sahara is barely noticeable. A few (Moroccan) flags and then frequent police checkpoints. Before entering any town, after leaving any town, in the middle of the desert:

– Name? Passport? Student? Are you sure? Where from? Karadzic? Djokovic? Are you sure?

The desert is a fascinating place. I felt antsy about the possibility of being surrounded by the monotonous sight of plain nothingness for days; but there were days when the scenery kept changing rapidly – from hour to hour. Golden dunes in the distance and then white sand, red in contrast with the aquamarine of the Atlantic, rocks, dry bushes, camels, rubbish.

On the fifth day, we reached the final point of Western Sahara. From there, we took a night ride to the border which doesn’t open until about 8 a.m. The Arabs that gave us a lift kicked us out at the end of a long queue, because there wasn’t enough space in their car for all of us to sleep. We were encountered by dark and eerie silence. There was no one outside. We were speaking in whispers, though we weren’t sure why. Where are we going to sleep? It was one o’clock in the morning. We could see silhouettes of cars and trucks, and a little bit to the front, we saw a light, possibly coming from a candle. There was some tea boiling on a campfire, and next to it, two skinny men were lying on their sides. Only their dark faces were brightly illuminated.

When we realized that we were going to spend the night at the border in the desert, Katarina insisted that we joined someone, so I asked if we could join the two of them. First they told us to go away, but when we politely insisted, they invited us for tea. For the first 15 minutes we sat in silence, just staring at each other. Both of them were unkempt and tired, as if they had been on the road for a long time. Mohamed, a skinny guy with a moustache, was wearing a blue dress with golden weaving, a traditional Sahrawi robe of Western Sahara's indigenous population. The other one, Anouar, offered us some tea. He poured the thick green tea with mint and a lot of sugar from one cup to another at least two dozen times, in order to create as much foam as possible. Tea without any foam, he explained, is like a girl without a dress. I didn't understand if that was a good thing or a bad one, but I didn't ask. Instead, I asked where they were heading.

– Why do you want to know? Who are you? – they asked in panic.
– We're just students. From Serbia.
– Students? Are you sure? Show us your passports!
– Alright.

Mohamed ran his fingertips down his moustache, looking at my passport, and then got up and went to the car. Are we in trouble? He came back, spread a map next to the little propane tank they were using for making tea, and started pointing:

– We started from here, from Spain. We are heading to Tindouf, in Algeria. We are going all the way down to Mauritania, and then up, over here – he said, pulling his fingertip along the map. – That's where our families are. The Moroccans banished them after we lost the war. They are living in a big, improvised city in the desert. While all that was going on, I was studying abroad...
– But the road you are taking... it's a huge detour. Why not go this way? – I pointed at the map, suggesting a more logical route.
– In fact – he said – it is one and a half thousand extra miles. Unfortunately, this area is off limits. That's where the wall is.
– What wall?

Anouar came closer and started whispering:

– The wall. All the way down across Western Sahara there is a huge wall surrounded with landmines. Almost three thousand kilometers. It splits the country lengthwise in two unequal parts: the one occupied by Morocco, and the free territory. All the Sahrawis who fought against the Moroccan government were ousted deep into the desert, on the other side of the wall. Families were separated. Some of us live here, others live here, and in between there is a wall that officially doesn’t exist.

We asked about the new, empty villages we saw along the road. There are two theories, he said. According to one, the villages were built for remaining Sahrawis, but they refused to move there. The other theory is that they were designated for future colonization by the Moroccans.

– How will all that end? – I asked.
– How do you think it will end? – Anouar replied. – It will be ours again, of course.

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Merciful Spirits of the Jah Hut

Walls in the Desert