Tag Archives: Sungai Rungan

Rungan Hulu

I last wrote about the very interesting betang (longhouse) at Tumbang Malahoi. But actually the whole area of the Upper Rungan River (Rungan Hulu) was interesting, so I thought I’d share some pictures from our travels up there with Dodi and Yon.

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By Day 10 of our trip, the sometimes-abysmal roads of Gunung Mas were taking a toll, even on the rugged red Land Cruiser. We were pleased that it had been equipped with new tyres before we started out. But since then, apart from collecting a fair amount of mud inside and out, we’d lost a wheel bay cover and two solid rubber blocks from the suspension. However Dodi was able to engineer some temporary fixes and we carried on.

So here’s our Toyota, parked on the boulevard in Rabamrang village, where we had gone in the hope of meeting up with a local rotan (rattan) craftsman.

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Unfortunately he was ill, but we did get to see some of his handmade backpack baskets (and we ended up purchasing the one that Karen is holding in the photo above right.)

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Just outside the village of Jangkit, we met a group of teenagers who were trawling for fish and edible crustaceans in a small muddy stream. They immersed their basket fish-traps (saok) repeatedly and were actually catching reasonable quantities of small fish and little molluscs, which they would then transfer to a bucket to carry back home. It was all done with much hilarity and joking, especially when the bules  (white people) showed up.

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Pak Yuner (though everyone calls him ‘Bapa Honda’) is 76 years old, and was born in Tumbang Malahoi. He makes long cylindrical fish-traps like the one under construction in the photo above (known as a buwu) out of rotan (rattan). He also makes mandau (the ubiquitous Dayak sword/machete), a couple of handles of which are also visible.

Dodi bought one of his buwu, which was then strapped on top of the roofrack of our old red Land Cruiser. The long cylinder made the 4WD look a a bit like a mobile rocket launcher!

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The roads in Kalimantan are tough on bikes, but some bikes are kept in service for longer than you’d believe possible, often through improvised repairs and ‘bush mechanic’ skills. This ageing Yamaha could have been older than the house it was parked next to.

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This is a not a photo of our Land Cruiser at the end of our 10 days’ travelling in Gunung Mas, but a ‘retired’ model that we came upon along the way (near Tumbang Jutuh). Dodi and Yon examined it with interest, concluding that it could be made serviceable again.

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Here’s Yon, warmed by the late afternoon light on the bridge at Tumbang Malahoi.

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Karen on the bridge at Tumbang Malahoi, with electrical poles, pantar panjang and coconut palm trunks behind her.

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Pak Nirwan took us on a walk into the forest near Malahoi which he knows well, and where there are very many useful plants – for those who know what to look for!

We also visited Pak Nirwan’s pondok (hut) at the edge of the forest, so he could feed the large pig that he keeps there. He’s very proud of that pig.

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To many Dayak people, the forest is the ultimate sustainable resource, providing them with food and drink, medicine, tools, building materials and more. (When we were trekking in the forest in Kelabit, our guide Petrus referred to it as the “jungle supermarket”!)

In the forest with Pak Nirwan and Dodi (above), Karen was most interested in seeing nyamu trees (pohon nyamu). The bark of this tree species (Artocarpus elasticus) was removed, soaked, pounded and cut, and used to make range of traditional Dayak clothing.

Baju kulit kayu (bark clothing) is now only worn during certain Kaharingan ceremonies, and as clothing for performances in traditional costume.

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A small digression, by way of example. The photo above is not from Tumbang Malahoi, but from the Isen Mulang Festival in Palangkaraya last year. The dancing Dayak warrior (who incidentally was standing on the roof of a fast-moving boat) is wearing a vest made from kulit pohon nyamu (bark of the nyamu tree).

He is also sporting the beak, casque and feathers of a Rhinoceros Hornbill (Buceros rhinoceros) atop his head, and tail-feathers of the Great Argus (Argusianus argus) protruding from his neck and shoulders.

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Tumbang Kuayan village is a little further up the Rungan River from Malahoi. Currently the road from from Malahoi ends on the opposite side of the river, because the bridge is too damaged for cars to cross over, so the village is quiet.

Villagers in Tumbang Kuayan still grow their own rice using slash-and-burn techniques on the ladang (swidden) areas in the forest. The harvested rice is carried back to village in sturdy basket backpacks (as above right), and threshed by hand to separate the grain ready for cooking.

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There are LOTS of children in Tumbang Kuayan, and 20 or more of them followed us as we walked around the village. At first they looked variously stunned or terrified by our presence, but they relaxed once they realised that we were just weird, not scary, and some resumed their games.

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These boys were playing a game of battling wooden spinning tops that we have now seen being played in a number of places, including inside a longhouse over in West Kalimantan. Along the Kahayan River they call it bayang. There’s a sort-of similar game called balugu, which, instead of spinning wooden tops, is played with tempurung kelapa (coconut shells).

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There were some really nice sapundu in Tumbang Kuayan, including this spectacular group. As is common, they were all facing towards the river, perhaps awaiting the arrival of a canoe?

Each sapundu is made from a single trunk of kayu ulin. If there is a fork or large branch in the tree, the craftsman will often take advantage of it to incorporate an extension of some sort. The outstretched arm and the tiger in the photo above are examples of this.

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There’s not a lot of forest left in the 4,172 sq km of Gunung Mas (except in the mountainous parts in the far north – and even up there there is a network of logging roads. An ever-growing expanse of the district has been clear-felled and given over to plantations of kelapa sawit – oil palms (Elaeis guineensis).

Commercially grown oil palms grow up to 20 metres in height, and can be productive for 20 to 30 years. So it’s therefore surprising to see that such a large proportion of the plantations consist of young palms like the ones in the photo above. This is an industry that’s rapidly expanding…

…and eating up just about everything as it grows.

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Tumbang Malahoi

After Tumbang Anoi and Tumbang Korik, the final destination on our ‘Tur Tiga Betang’ (our ‘Three Longhouse Tour’) was the Betang Toyoi in the village of Tumbang Malahoi.

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Malahoi is located in the upper reaches of the Rungan River, which we consider to be ‘our’ river, as it runs by here where we are living, downstream at Sei Gohong. It’s about 122km to the north of the provincial capital of Palangkaraya.

It’s a very interesting Dayak Ngaju village, home to large numbers of Kaharingan sandung (ossuaries), sapundu (carved ceremonial poles) and tall pantar panjang (like the hornbill-topped pantar above left).

It’s also home to many traditional craftspeople, such as the 90-year-old man (above right), who has only recently retired from making rattan baskets and other crafts. (“My fingers have become sick” he said – it looked like arthritis.)

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Despite its name, the village of Tumbang Malahoi is not on the Malahoi River (as you were no doubt thinking…), but in fact is at the junction of the Baringei and Rungan Rivers. The reason for this discrepancy is apparently that the founders of the village (the Toyoi family, who also built the longhouse) originally came from West Kalimantan near the headwaters of the Melawi / Malahoi river. They wanted to retain their connection to the ancestral homelands, and even brought some soil and water from there to help maintain the link.

Whatever the name, it’s an attractive river, and full of water when we were there in the middle of the wet season.

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Tumbang Malahoi is best known for its lovely and well-preserved old longhouse (called a betang in the Dayak Ngaju language). Construction of the Betang Toyoi was completed in 1869, after a year of work by the community (gotong royong). Since then it has housed many generations of the Toyoi family.

Its floor stands around two metres above the ground, supported by 26 heavy wooden posts. It’s 37 metres long. The walls, like those of the longhouse at Tumbang Korik, are made from kulit kayu pendu (bark of the pendu tree – Polyalthia glauca?)

The betang was built by Bungai Toyoi. He was a friend and supporter of the Banjar Sultan Muhammad Seman (1862 -1905), who fought (and lost) against the Dutch colonial forces in the Barito War. (Such an alliance between a Dayak Kaharingan chief and a Banjar Muslim Sultan was not uncommon at the time. Perhaps nothing unites people better than having a common enemy!)

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And later, during the struggle for independence from Dutch rule in the 1940s, the betang at Tumbang Malahoi was for a time the regional headquarters of the Gerakan Revolusi Rakyat Indonesia (the ‘Indonesian People’s Revolutionary Movement’)

It’s hard to imagine now… but this place has HISTORY. Nowadays it’s a peaceful place, maintained by a warm and gentle family – themselves descendants of Bungai Toyoi. Head of the household is 59-year-old Ibu Aniema Nanyan Toyoi (but known as Mina Indu Boni). She lives there with her elder sister (Mina Indu Gandi) and mother-in-law Tambi Indu Erie, along with her 34-year-old son Boni and Tri Septiani, his wife of three years.

They were friendly, generous and entertaining hosts over the three nights we stayed there.

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Just inside the entrance of the betang are six illustrated panels, carved and painted into the ceiling. Just outside the door are another four panels, on the underside of the eave.

These ten panels (yes, I know there’s only nine in the photo above) relate to stories of the family’s past intertwined with symbols from Ngaju mythology and encounters with the spirit world. The tree in the panel at top left in the above photo, for example, is the Sawang Ngandang – the ‘Tree of Promises’. It is so called because of its use in wedding ceremonies, where the bride and groom exchange their promises before God, family and nature.

The panels are considered to be significant enough that reproduction drawings have been made and are on display at the Museum Balanga in Palangkaraya.

Mina Indu Boni has carefully written, in 62 pages of neat longhand, a valuable and detailed account of the history of the longhouse, the Toyoi family tree, and descriptions and explanations of the panels and various sculptures at the betang. It’s mostly in Bahasa Indonesia, but with chunks of Dayak Ngaju language also. She kindly allowed Karen to make a copy, and we are now keen to get assistance in translating the large sections that we don’t fully understand!

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There is usually only a single entrance to a betang, via a log with steps cut into it (known as a hejan). The hejan at Tumbang Malahoi features two stunning patung (statues), one on either side, about 2 metres high. Each one depicts a tiger (harimau) with a Dayak warrior sitting astride it, and a crocodile (buaya) crawling up.

The patung harimau at Tumbang Malahoi are old, but in fact they are only reproductions of the original statues, which have been removed and are safely stored within the longhouse. Which is just as well. Just six days before we arrived at Malahoi, and during a loud thunderstorm, thieves came in the night and took the companion statue to the one above, by sawing it off at the base.

Sadly, such thefts of Dayak sapundu and patung are not uncommon (we were shown another sapundu that had been sawn off when we in Bangkal village). They are likely to be ‘commissioned’ thefts, with the objects stolen to order for some wealthy collector. The rewards for the thief must be great, because in Indonesia, getting caught while committing a property crime often results in swift, summary and brutal punishment.

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A dozen sapundu pillars, each one carved from a log of kayu ulin (Bornean ironwood), stand in a row in front of the betang.

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I took a series of ‘portraits’ of them – partly as a record in case any of them get stolen like the harimau statue.

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As the evening descended, the row of pantar across the road from the betang were nicely silhouetted against the darkening sky. The pantar (made from kayu ulin, of course) have been described to us as ‘highways to heaven’, symbolised by the flying hornbill bird which sits on top of most of them. We understand them to be erected to honour the life (and death) of some particularly notable member of the community.

As I was taking this photo, a motorbike came down the road from the left side, then turned to cross the bridge. With a 20 second tripod exposure, it laid down a light trail of its headlight transforming into a red taillight as it passed.

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It was getting dark, and stars started to appear – and the mosquitoes too!. So we went back inside for dinner, leaving all of the sandung, sapundu, patung harimau and the pantar panjang to watch over the Betang Toyoi longhouse at Tumbang Malahoi.

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‘Our River’ – the Sungai Rungan

The southern half of the huge island of Borneo is dissected by a series of parallel rivers running from the mountains in the middle of the island to the Java Sea at the south. Almost all of the settlements (cities, towns and villages) sit alongside one or another of these rivers or their tributaries.

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The Barito, Kapuas, Kahayan, Katingan, Sampit are the biggest ones, and they ARE big rivers, especially at this time during the wet season.

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There is now a growing network of roads, including some with bitumen, but in the past the rivers were the only way of getting around in Kalimantan. And villages such as Kanarakan (below), an hour upriver from us, are still only accessible by boat, and the roads to others become impassable during the wet.

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The rivers were (until recently) the arteries through which everything and everyone (traders, visitors, warriors, diseases, religions and politicians) flowed, and so the cultural and language divisions of Kalimantan are all based around the river catchments. Two Dayak villages might be only 20km apart, but if they are on different river systems then they will speak different languages, and have quite different rituals, ceremonies and dances etc.

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Our ‘little’ river is the Rungan, a tributary of the much larger Kahayan River, which it joins near the provincial capital of Palangkaraya, 36km to the south of our home near Tangkiling.

Tangkiling (above) is the largest of the cluster of seven villages here in the Bukit Batu sub-district. But when I say ‘largest’, I mean that it has a Post office, a health centre (but no doctor) and, on Saturday nights and early Sunday mornings, a little fruit and vegetable market where we buy our week’s supplies.

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Out on the river, it’s mostly forest and solitude, with only occasional settlements or encounters with other river travellers. But such interesting encounters!

The Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation (BOS) is based about 10km downstream from us at Nyaru Menteng. It is currently home to over 500 orang-utans,  mostly rescued from captivity or orphaned (usually when their parents are killed by hunters). BOS aims to teach the young ones how to live back in the wild, in preparation for their release into remote forests in the north of Central Kalimantan. The last stage before their release involves them living on Kaju Island in the Rungan River (just about 2km from our home). There are about 50 there at present, with a big security presence protecting them the threats posed by predators, hunters, ranga-nappers – and photographers!

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The most common transport is still the narrow canoe, known locally as a klotok. Nowadays they are usually motor powered, but there are still some older ones being rowed around, often carved from a single log.

The guys in the picture above are out to capture parrots and songbirds for sale. They put that little metal frame out in the forest somewhere, with some live birds tethered onto the crossbar, or else with stuffed birds and recorded bird sounds. When other birds come in response to the sound of distressed birds, they land on some sticky material that captures them, or they get a net thrown over them. It’s probably illegal…

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Speaking of illegal: the floating contraption on the left of the photo above is a gold dredge, one of several hundred on this river, which is only one of a dozen or more rivers with alluvial gold dredges. And every one of them is illegal. They pump sand, sludge and water up from the river bed, and run it down the ramps so that the heavier sediment containing some gold ore gets trapped in the carpeted floor of the ramps. At the end of the day the sediment is rinsed out from the carpet, wrapped up in silk, squeezed and treated with mercury to extract the gold.

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This thriving industry has a big environmental downside. The sand dredging creates big sandbanks in the channels of the river, and destroys the integrity of the river edges. And the huge amounts of mercury that end up contaminating the river have made river fish, especially the larger predatory species, quite unsafe to eat.

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Did someone say ‘illegal’? Most of the big forests around here have been cleared of big trees, but there is still plenty of logging going on in the forests up north in the ‘Heart of Borneo’. Not all of it is illegal, though there are frequent reports of corruption and questionable practices in the granting of logging concessions. The logs are sent downriver in the form of huge rafts, the logs tied together with rope or rattan, and steered through the river bends by klotoks. The raft in the photo above is one of the smaller ones.

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There are not many of the traditional larger vessels (rangkang) on the river. They are still handmade in a couple of villages on the Katingan RIver (and maybe elsewhere), but they used to be the standard for transporting bulk freight and passengers on the rivers. This one above is the Rahai’i Pangun, which has been converted for use as a cruise vessel for Kalimantan Tour Destinations, co-owned and operated by our friend and neighbour Gaye.

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Away from the main course of the river, there is a whole big network of channels, ox-bow lakes, swamps and flooded forests, especially now in the middle of the wet season, with the river running several metres above its dry season level. Much of the countryside is inundated, the watercourses have no clear boundaries, and dry land is the exception. The flooded forest is a beautiful landscape, tranquil and teeming with life (and, downstream of villages, more than a few plastic bags and bottles!)

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Back in Tangkiling village, the riverfront is just as important as the road. It’s where you go to launch your klotok, fish, bathe, wash clothes, use the toilet – and play.

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