On paths less traversed, deep in Orang Asli country

 

We left the old trunk road and drove up to Cameron Highlands, and after a cool night’s camping in a delightful farm (amid daffodils and hydrangeas!) in Kampung Raja, we came down the eastern side of the highlands to Sungai Koyan in Pahang.

Our off-roader group was playing at being delivery trucks for a big charity foundation donating foodstuff to Orang Asli kampungs in the area. With the monsoon in full swing, and floods and landslides everywhere, many needed whatever help they could get. We 4×4 kakis love to get down and dirty in the mud, so were happy to oblige.

Not all Orang Asli kampungs lie deep in the jungle. Those in truly remote areas have managed on their own for hundreds of years and are probably better able to take care of themselves during tough times. Those who most need help are to be found on the periphery of towns and villages.

Many Orang Asli communities may not appear to need help. They have houses that look much like any other kampung house, and many have electricity and paved roads. Some villages have schools, and most families would have some forms of transport.

Questions arise. Do they really need help? Why can’t they take care of themselves? They look like they have everything they need to carry on with their lives – so why not just let them get on with it?

The reason they find life hard is that most aren’t equipped to earn a regular income as many of us do. Not many in their traditional villages can find regular employment, unless they migrate to towns and get salaried jobs.

Why can’t they be farmers? They have plenty of land and water and fresh air. But farming is not in their blood. They used to be hunter-gatherers, and didn’t come from a culture where people grow plants or rear livestock for commerce: when they did, it was for their subsistence.

‘Help’ from the well-meaning

It’s easy for those of us who live on the outside to say that the Orang Asli could have sorted their lives out if only they wanted to. But that overlooks the issue of culture, in the sense of how you see your world and your place in it and how you act or react to life’s challenges. That is determined by many factors, and whatever they are, changing them overnight is not easy.

There are lots of well-meaning efforts to help them – from an actual government body (the Jabatan Kemajuan Orang Asli, or Jakoa) to the many NGOs and religious organisations. But Jakoa suffers from the usual bureaucratic failings, and the other NGOs have their own agendas that often put what’s best for the Orang Asli down low because, well, “we know best”.

Orang Asli used to be animists, and many still are, living closely with nature. Over the years, many have converted, or rather been converted, to religions such as Islam and the various forms of Christianity, through the rigorous efforts of missionaries, be they NGOs or their opposites, the GOs.

It’s not uncommon to see Orang Asli villages divided along religious lines, whereas earlier they were just one community. You could see some of the fault lines where different faiths have had to co-exist so close together.

With the monsoon in full swing, and floods and landslides everywhere, many needed whatever help they could get. We 4×4 kakis were happy to oblige.

Overrun by the invaders

The Orang Asli communities, once stewards of all the jungles and mountains, are now the poorest of the poor, marginalised by those who wield power, political or commercial and often both.

What happened to the Orang Asli is what later happened to us, centuries ago: a literal invasion by superior powers who brought in many new concepts we had no defence against, one of which was that ownership of land could be determined by a piece of paper.

Property ownership, which we adopted from our own colonisers, is not a concept practised by the Orang Asli. Many were nomadic, and considered the entire forest to be their home. But then we “outsiders” went in, and with our papers and backed by our tools and equipment (and weapons), claimed whichever bit we liked for ourselves.

It’s such that now you can travel deep into the interior and see nothing but plantations of palm oil or rubber or, increasingly, durians, in what used to be virgin forests. Apart from dispossessing the original inhabitants, land clearing also damaged the environment, creating the increasingly worse floods we experience every monsoon.

This is a massive conundrum for which I don’t pretend to have the answer. Do we keep the Orang Asli in the jungle, living their traditional life and increasingly becoming like living museum pieces, or do we bring them out into the “modern” world where we hold all the advantages, and force them to compete as equals?

Too few to matter

Orang Asli, forming less than 1% of Malaysia’s population, and spread so thinly across the peninsula, have very little political voice, as opposed to their other Orang Asal cousins in Sabah and Sarawak; they have become prime targets for exploitation, with control over some of our most precious resources: land and water.

Some of us would rather not dwell too much on such thoughts, and would prefer to focus on what’s practical. Life in Orang Asli kampungs is hard, and can be deadly, no matter how idyllic it may appear to be.

One of the kampungs we visited was facing regular attacks by wild elephants – yet another species being forced out of their traditional habitats and forced to coexist with others. In fact, in that very area a woman was attacked and killed recently.

There are many kind souls out there willing to do whatever they can to help alleviate the hardship of the Orang Asli, whether the more immediate problems of food during the monsoon floods, or the larger issues of land ownership and rights as citizens of our country.

Some of us are happy to be mules, to help bring some much-needed supplies and help, with hope that we can do some good, while leaving the bigger and thornier issues for others to solve. - FMT

The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of MMKtT.