HEADHUNTING WITH UNCLE MALINA                                              index

"Would you like to meet Uncle Malina? He's a headhunter." Such invitations don't come every day, so how could I say no? Be rash, lose your head for once, I thought. Uh-oh!

We were on a longhouse verandah in upriver Sarawak, East Malaysia, guests of the Iban tribal people. Children frolicked in the long communal space, men carved tourist souvenirs, women wove baskets, everyone chatted, one big interlinked family - happy seemingly - in a house fifty yards long and raised up four or five feet on stilts with pigs grunting and chickens clucking below.

The guide rapped on one of the many wooden doors and a dapper-looking man in his early sixties opened it, black hair slicked back, handsome in the manner of a Latin romantic lead from the 1950s. He didn't seem too savage, in fact he was rather charming, probably a ladies' man. (Too true, it later transpired).

Attired only in shorts, he welcomed us into his Iban home, clearly relishing the attention, and then in the bright light of the bare bulb swinging from the ceiling, I saw that he was a human blotting pad, a riot of indigo tattooing, a man who had undergone much severe physical pain to adorn his torso and limbs with inky tribal motifs.

But there was no time to admire the needlework, for suddenly he whipped a long sword off the wall and began to brandish it menacingly. Had I committed some tribal faux pas, was my rashness to be rewarded in customary fashion? Ana, my part-Chinese, part-Iban guide, stepped into the breach with a translation.

"He says this is what his father did to the Japanese."  The ones who have been buying up all Sarawak's timber and devastating the forests, hopefully? "They used to stalk them in the Second World War, sometimes shoot them with rifles, sometimes with blowpipes, then cut their heads off, like that". Catching the gist, Uncle Malina gave another vicious slash: "Like this!"

It's a reasonable reaction now that dozens of tourists ply their way upriver every week to the longhouses of the Skrang and Lemanak Rivers. Who wouldn't camp it up once in a while when they couldn't do the real thing anymore, didn't want to do the real thing anymore, but could have a bit of fun terrorising foreigners with it? And make some money at the same time.

These days more and more Iban communities are accepting tour groups for overnight stays, the fees for which are given by the agency to the headman who distributes the money equally among all the families, typically twenty in number. The cash is welcomed to make up for the loss of traditional income from fishing, farming and hunting - all of which have been damaged by excessive logging - and to enable the purchase of consumer goodies.

There are TVs, electric fans and stereos in longhouse homes, one or the other or maybe all three and a fridge too. But the homes are none too lavish. Uncle Malina's was presumably typical: once inside, apart from the sabre-rattling, you were in a standard Third World shack - lino floor, cheap furniture, magazine cuttings pasted on the walls, religious paraphernalia, battered stereo playing, kitchen out back, children crawling underfoot.

It was party night - it always is when visitors arrive. Modern day Ibans are rapidly replacing their fearsome noddle-chopping reputation with one as champion party-throwers of the rainforest. Nanga Kesit longhouse is Christian now anyway and the proud old skull trophies no longer hang in the verandah rafters as in days of yore - and as they still ghoulishly do in some neighbouring longhouses. This night's guests, soon to be friends, comprised a bunch of young Singaporeans and a retired Scottish couple - soon to be friends because the Ibans love visitors and love to party, a pairing which quickly breaks down cultural barriers and personal inhibitions.

The rice wine - tuak - and rice whisky - arak - help too. Costumed dancing girls offer both at the evening welcome ceremony held on the ruai, the long communal verandah fronting the individual homes, called bilek, or doors. The democratic Iban don't have houses, they have doors. Once the tourists are settled on the matting with the sweet milky brew in their hands, the gongs strike up and the dancing girls step forth, reluctantly. They are shy and giggly - show dancing is traditionally a male activity - but they compose themselves and perform graceful, angular, circling movements with much hand gesturing.

They receive applause charmingly, by giving a two-handed handshake to each visitor in turn, and then fill our glasses again. Next come the men, real old troupers these, one in his thirties, the other his fifties, circling half-crouched, shield in left hand, spear in right, looking sharply to left and right, suddenly changing direction in a rapid jerk - a ritual imitation of the hunt.

End of normal programme. But not, hope the Iban, the end of the party. This dialogue ensues:

Would you like some more dancing? - Well, of course!
Would you like to play games? - Well.....
Have another drink! - OK, thanks. (Gulp).
Would you like to play games? - Sure!
Your place or ours? - What do you mean?
Well, our ruai has a low ceiling so we can't jump about
much, but your rest-house verandah has a great high one
so we can all do what we want! - Say no more: our place!

We all trooped off through the night, staggering into pig-wallows, stumbling over chickens - men, women and children, and the band too. Back at our place, on our spacious pandanus mat-covered verandah, pairs of dancers took to the floor executing the same angular, rotating movements - beginning with three-year-olds. They didn't have much finesse but already the tots had the rudiments.

When a couple of seven-year-old girls took the floor, real artistry emanated from their frail sinuous frames. Just about all the children and all the teenagers performed, but amongst the adults only certain men, a sign of this traditional male prerogative. All the youngsters, we were told, are now encouraged to perform in order to train for the tourist shows, the kids being rewarded with extra sweets out of those brought by the tour groups as gifts to their hosts.

And each pair came round for the ritual double handshake. We were getting to know everybody fast, especially since the tuak was circulating almost as rapidly as the dancers. Young Ricky, the headman's handsome and friendly adopted son, was keen for us to drink, even if, or most likely because, it meant he had to drink as much. "Our custom", he explained, "is that each time you offer a person a drink, you have one too". Ricky enjoyed serving drinks.

He was the leading host and he had a willing victim-guest in myself. This tuak just slips down your throat in a thick warm tasty aromatic stream, more like eating your booze than drinking it. When the games began, I was game. And so, naturally, was Uncle Malina.

Sixty-five he may have been but a wrestler still he was, standing or sitting, take your pick. Standing, you have to get your opponent on the ground; sitting, you have to roll him over. The sitting seemed much less bruising so I went for that. What you do is sit facing each other like rowers with all your limbs knotted together in a tortuous manner. Round One! Almost in an instant Uncle Malina had triumphantly rolled me over on my face.

Roars of laughter went up from the assembled Ibans, Singaporeans and Scots, indeed the Ibans of Nanga Kesit had a right royal time the whole evening, as if New Year's Eve twice a week was just the ticket. There were bottle-rolling games, and stick-jumping contests, and one-legged skipping games, you name it, but - shame! - nothing risque because the young Singaporean ladies might have been offended. Said Ana, "One of their favourite games involves a man crawling over a woman and the other way round, but I told them that Singaporeans are prudish so they'd better not do it tonight". Shame on Singapore!

Next morning, with the other tourists gone, Gaptooth the tracker (short of a few incisors) took me on a jungle nature trek, an ordeal fit for a warrior, since nature in the form of a fierce hangover was taking its revenge. But the trek did clear my head in time for the star act: Hunting With Uncle Malina!

Four guys, a longboat and lunch was how it began. We settled on a shingle island amid a fast-flowing but shallow stream - Ricky, Malina, Gaptooth and I. Gaptooth took charge of the cooking, slicing a fresh bamboo pole into sections, stuffing them with rice and chicken, laying them against a woodfire.

When we'd eaten, someone nudged Uncle Malina to get ready for the hunt. Out of his basket, Malina fished a multi-coloured loincloth, a tall feathered head-dress, a beaded necklace, a sheathed dagger and a bamboo-tube dart quiver. Off with the shorts! On with the motley!

It was absurd, but it was nevertheless impressive. Attired in traditional hunting finery, like a ghost from a not-so-distant past, Uncle Malina stepped silently and deftly forth through the forest undergrowth, up a slippery incline, long blowpipe in hand, as I scraped and scrambled after him.

Halting at a spot so cliched it could have come out of a Tarzan movie - a rocky outcrop overlooking a pool into which poured a waterfall - the old trouper raised his blowpipe, took aim, blew with a terse spitting sound, and a tiny dart shot straight into a tree twenty metres off.

A blowpipe is a work of great craftsmanship, two metres long, whittled from fine hardwood and hollowed out with a hot metal rod in a long and precise process. The barrel must be absolutely dead straight to make a good and accurate weapon, one which will send the little wooden dart fast and straight to its often distant target.

Now it was my turn. What, handle that great long heavy thing? And lift it so high? And shoot from it too? I had noted that, from out of the loose flesh of the old hunter's slender arms, impressive biceps bulged when he raised the pipe. But in the event it was quite easy to lift and, amazingly, a cinch to blow the dart accurately six or seven metres. The difficulty, it transpired, was accuracy with velocity over a distance - the kind you need for a small deer way off or a gibbon high up in the canopy, something only a real hunter can achieve.

Back down at the shingle island, we tried fishing by slinging a net. Nothing. Boating home, we tried again. Still nothing. Looking glum, Uncle Malina reminisced. "In my young days, even twenty years ago, this river was full of fish. Now it's all murky and there's hardly a tiddler in it." A little later, looking up in the trees, wistfully, he added, " Up there you used to get lots of monkeys, chattering and swinging about. Now you hear nothing. And there's a lot fewer birds, too."

The Iban are reluctant to say it, out of fear of the authorities, but if pressed they will blame the rampant logging occurring upstream which has devastated wildlife habitats and brought silting and pollution of the rivers. It has also affected the climate, bringing drought and harming their crops, such as hill rice. Ricky, a good English speaker, was equivocal about it but you knew full well what he thought. "I don't want to say for sure that it's because of that, but some people say so". You can be jailed in Sarawak for opposing the powerful loggers and their political masters.

We got back to the longhouse and I recounted my blowpiping prowess to Ana, and tales of Uncle Malina. "He's a naughty man", Ana told me. "What do you mean?" I asked, my mind running the gamut from practical jokes to crookery to fornication. "He's had seven wives", she vouchsafed with a giggle, "but he's not having any more now", she opined. Well, there's a limit to everything (someone tell Elizabeth Taylor and Zsa Zsa Gabor).

Hopefully, the old reprobate won't reach his partying and blowpiping limit too soon. There should be a few more years left for this old hunter to keep wowing his multinational visitors.

See it while you can: The Last Of The Headhunters, starring Aya Malina, now showing at Nanga Kesit, Sarawak Second Division, East Malaysia!