Education and Mobility

Education provides freedom of economic mobility. The more educated informants, those with tertiary education, readily found employment in the cities, such as Kuching, Miri or Kuala Lumpur, with the government or with multinational companies in

90 industries ranging from automotive to energy to dentistry to diplomatic missions. The few who are working in Belaga, within easy access of the resettlement scheme, are those employed at the Bakun Hydroelectric plant or those who have joined the teaching service and are working at the four main schools between the BRS and the HEP, SK Batu Keling, SK Long Gang, SK Sambop and SMK Bakun. Throughout the fieldwork period, this group of people were seen and interacted with only during the Christmas or Gawai holidays. Many of the tertiary educated individuals are in their late twenties to forties and have started families with people from outside of Belaga. While they had experienced the trauma of the move from the upper Balui to the BRS, and while many still harbour bitterness from the forced displacement, many accept that moving to the cities was an inevitable part of ‘development’, and stated that they were happy with the comforts and convenience of the cities. They still have emotional attachments to their longhouse, as an important part of their identity, as well as their kinship bonds. When asked if they would readily return to work in the BRS area, many were hesitant, because apart from the education sector or forestry, they could not really see where their skills could be used in rural environments, and there was almost unanimous agreement that they would not be interested in farming. There is a clear urbanisation in economic thinking among these informants. This group also tends to associate the BRS with positive emotions. One Kayan lady from Uma Belor who works in Peninsular Malaysia said, “I love coming back because it is always during the holidays, everyone is back, having fun, seeing our grandparents. It’s a nice feeling!”

Kayan longhouses such as Uma Juman and Uma Belor (Kunding, 2007) have been given special mentions in state media for their educational achievements. The push for education in both longhouses was the result of efforts by two strong headmen – the late Temenggong Talek at Uma Juman and Pengulu Saging Bit at Uma Belor. Anecdotally, Penghulu Saging is known for once disciplining his own son for escaping from his school’s hostel; and sending the homesick boy right back. Uma Belor has set a long-term target for every one of its 101 doors to be home to at least one graduate, and a shorter-term target of 80 graduates by 2020. The longhouse has displayed a high level of cohesion and by and large cooperates with the weekday evening entertainment curfew of 7 pm to 9 pm, where television and radios are not turned on to allow school children to complete their school assignments. By 2015, Uma Belor (out of 800 registered residents)

91 has produced 142 tertiary educated members, with slightly under half holding university qualifications (including eight postgraduate qualifications), and the rest holding diplomas. Every child leaving the longhouse elsewhere for education gets a big send-off party, starting with a long prayer session and ending with a large dinner party for the whole longhouse. At the first such session I attended to send off Penghulu Saging’s daughter to university in Penang, my host (who would become my longhouse father) pointed to his temple and said, “It is like how we send off warriors. But now warriors not use knife. Now we use ‘up here’.” Later, I asked the Penghulu about his thoughts of sending the best and brightest young people away from the longhouse and if he is worried that they would not want to return. He replied:

“Of course, if they can find a good job and have a good life there, we understand if they would like to remain there. It is up to them, and their choice to come back. We cannot force them! We should not expect them to come back where there is no job suitable for their qualifications. We hope they remember where they come from and come back to visit, that’s all.”

Figure 5.2: Newspaper clippings celebrating the academic successes of Uma Juman.

The rapid rise in education standards, accompanied by the resulting employment opportunities, has also seen income growth among the community. 65% of the families in Uma Belor take home more than RM3,000 monthly, placing them at or above the RM3,123 median household incomes for rural families for the state, perpetuating an increasing lead over other longhouses since the last study of longhouse incomes (Chapter 3, case study 1). On the flip side, as the Penghulu mentioned, many such people are overqualified for the few employment opportunities at the BRS. There is sometimes a feeling that the city folk ‘living better lives’ should do more the longhouse, as they are perceived to have greater amounts of disposable income and might have new ideas they

92 could bring to the longhouse. This dissatisfaction is often directed especially at the offspring of political leaders who seldom return to the longhouse or aspiring political leaders who only return to the longhouse at election periods. Uma Belor tries to address this by having the city diaspora run and organise the annual family day, with the longhouse members of Kuching, Bintulu, Miri and Peninsular Malaysia taking turns each year. The high levels migration of Kayan households was also noted in the second case study covered in Chapter 3.

For the above group, they are less likely to be affected by the compensation amounts and issues with the allocated three-acre plots as they are either financially independent through their education and occupation or they were still at school-going age during Operation Exodus and so were not involved in any property claims. For the others, which generally comprise people who are in the 50s or older and less likely to have received education beyond high school, their means of livelihood greatly depends on their access to cultivable land. It is also this group that built and owned the longhouses, farmlands and fishponds on the upper Balui before the construction of the dam, and who have seen the arrival of the logging companies. This was the group that was at the crossroads of farming and hunting for food or working for money to purchase food. With the move to the BRS, various factors have pushed the scale towards the latter. The inequality of education also affects longhouses through their headmen. As mentioned earlier, some longhouses were already doing better even more relocation, and these tended to the longhouses that emphasised academic achievement. When relocation came, these longhouses, and their savvier leaders were the ones that made the financial decisions that were most sustainable in the long run. Therefore, it may that to improve the long- term prospects of longhouses, especially in longhouses that appoint headmen from the maren level rather than elect, it would be prudent to at least teach financial education to possible candidates.

Land for farming and the access to these plots are among the main contentions of the compensation package. According to informants, they were first promised 15 acres for each door, which became reduced over time to three acres. For the old folk, this also posed a cultural problem. Traditionally, their lands would be passed on and divided among their descendants. Clearly, three acres meant that in many families the amount of land each descendant inherits would not amount to much. Further complications

93 arose when many of the resettlers realised that a lot their land is not cultivable, or even accessible. As it soon became evident that the agricultural component of their traditional lifestyle is unsustainable, based on their three-acre plots. For Uma Belor the problem was solved relatively quickly and easily. Due to the large number of urban professionals, they simply passed their allocation to their parents and grandparents to till. In a 2008 joint report, the Sarawak Ministry of Land Development and the Sarawak Aluminium Company (SALCO) noted the decline of the planting of hill rice by the people at BRS due to space constraints, which did not allow for the traditional swidden fallow cycle. By 2015, only a dozen households with elderly residents harvested rice at Uma Belor, sharply down from the 48% in the SALCO report. My host recalled that, while on the Balui, harvest season meant that the entire longhouse structure would vibrate, with every door pounding their harvested rice.

94 Figure 5.3: Lady from Uma Belor pounding rice.

Without the space to plant rice, the locals have proceeded to plant vegetables, fruits, tobacco and cash crops. In Uma Belor, the chief cash crop is pepper. Nearly every farmer in the longhouse has about a hundred pepper vines. In particular, Penghulu Saging seems to be rather successful at it, and often visitors asking to buy pepper from the longhouse would be directed to him. He has also taken to investing in a grinding machine

95 to process the pepper seeds into powder. The pepper powder is hand-bottled and sold at Belaga Bazaar. Vegetable crops are planted and harvested throughout the year for sale at the markets. In previous studies at the BRS, the market at local centre 1 was noted for its haphazard operation, with producers finding it difficult to sell their produce (Jehom, 2008). However, when I arrived in 2013, there was a system setup, where every producer who wanted to sell their produce are given a particular recurring day, as well as a fixed location. For example, my longhouse grandmother is at the market every Sunday selling her produce (Figure 5.3). On other days, other women are there in her ‘spot’ until the next Sunday. Produce is not limited to just to vegetables. Various other items such as betel nuts and leaves and seasonal fruits are sold at the market by these farmers as well. With increasing numbers of non-local visitors such as domestic and international tourists, migrant workers and public servants posted into the BRS from elsewhere, some women have begun selling handicrafts in a corner at the rear of the market. Plant produce is sold by women, while there are two stations right outside the market where meat is sold by men. Although the longhouse folk rear some chickens and pigs, these are never for sale in the market. Chickens are often reared for (illegal) cock- fighting, and self-consumption while pigs are reared for adat Bungan rituals. Increasingly, the market lots are being tended by older women, a sign that vegetable farming yields little in terms of cash. Two factors work against them. Firstly, many of the families that remain at the BRS are self-sufficient in terms of vegetable requirements as the majority of them are vegetable farmers themselves. This means that there is an oversupply for the local market. Secondly, their small three acre plots mean that they cannot reliably supply large volumes of vegetables for consumption in the nearby cities. They cannot produce enough to meet urban demand. Therefore, vegetable farming in its current state is usually not particularly viable. The elderly in the longhouse communities, however, continue to plant and sell vegetables at the market as the economics do not matter to them and the times spent at the market are much-anticipated socialisation times with friends and relatives from the other longhouses. The planting cycle at Uma Beloh differs slightly from the one at Uma Badeng. At Uma Belor, each full year consists of two half-yearly cycles.

96 Figure 5.4: The neatly arranged stalls at the market in the Bakun Resettlement Scheme. Everyone who wants to sell their plant produce is allocated a fixed day every week to do so.

97 Table 5.1: Table of seasonal crops, and a comparison between Uma Belor and Uma Badeng

MONTH UMA BELOR UMA BADENG (JEHOM, 2008)

JANUARY Long beans

Cucumber Chillies Long beans Chives Bittergourd Indian nightshade FEBRUARY Indian nightshade

Chillies

Long beans Chives Bittergourd

MARCH Long beans

Pumpkin - APRIL Bittergourd Spinach - MAY Pumpkin Chillies - JUNE - -

JULY Long Beans

Cucumber Chillies

-

AUGUST Indian nightshade

Chillies

Spinach

SEPTEMBER Long beans

Pumpkin Cucumber Leaves Corn Chillies OCTOBER Bittergourd Spinach Cucumber Cucumber leaves Chillies NOVEMBER Pumpkin Chillies Pumpkin Winter melon Cucumber Chillies

DECEMBER - Long beans

Chives Bittergourd Indian Nightshade

98 While the elderly mostly content themselves with vegetable farming, the younger, more energetic and more ambitious members of most longhouses have begun to plant oil palm on their land. If the trees were planted according to standards set by the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO), there would be a planted density of about 170 trees for 3 acres of land (FAO, 1977). Most farmers, however, admit to increasing the density of the cultivation due to their small lots to try to maximise their short-term income when the trees reach maturity at 18 months. Most longhouses have gone into oil palm cultivation in a big way. The access road to Uma Lahanan is lined with oil palms, so too is the main road of the Koyan side of the settlement, from Uma Lesong to Uma Ukit, the final longhouse on the road to the waterworks and the settlement’s water intake from the Koyan River. Uma Belor is a curiosity among the longhouses as they are least interested in oil palm. There is a small attempt at cultivation near the recreational fish ponds, but the longhouse has not dived into it like the other longhouses have. One of the members of Uma Juman is a manager at Sarawak Oil Palm Berhad, a joint venture between the Sarawak Government and a UK Government development finance institution (Figure 5.5) Commonwealth Development Corporation, or CDC) that is now publicly listed on the Malaysian stock exchange. The CDC’s share has since been bought by Shin Yang Plantations Sdn Bhd according to the company website. With his experience in large-scale, commercial plantations, he formed a co-operative for smallholder oil palm plantations in Belaga.

Oil palm plantation in the Sungai Asap area has persisted remarkably well as a cash crop compared to the other plants in the cash cropping history of the upper Balui longhouse communities, despite the returns actually being quite low. When I arrived at the longhouse to begin my fieldwork in 2014, fresh fruit bunches were worth around 560 ringgit per tonne for the lowest grade C quality up to over 630 ringgit per tonne for the highest grade A bunches. By the time fieldwork ended in July 2015, prices had fallen to 428 ringgit per tonne for grade A and 390 ringgit per tonne for grade C. According to statistics from the Malaysian Palm Oil Board (MPOB), Sarawakian plantations averaged about 16 tonnes per hectare per year. A rough extrapolation to the plantations in Asap suggests that on average, the three hectares might yield about 19 tonnes of fresh fruit bunches a year, or an average of about 1.5 tonnes a month. As smallholders, with little technological help from the bigger plantations, their produce is often grade C, which

99 leaves them with a revenue that had ranged between 840 ringgit and 585 ringgit from the high to the low market rates. As fresh fruit bunches are clearly heavy, the farmers require transport to send their produce to the Koyan palm oil mill. Some choose to buy a four-wheel drive pickup. According to informants, instalments range from 700 to 950 monthly, depending on the model specifics of the vehicle. Clearly, instead of the vehicle helping them make money, they have had to spend a month’s revenue from the plantation just to pay off the vehicle.

Figure 5.5: Oil palm manager from Uma Juman teaching his assistant to use a weed controller (Source: Ricky Pudang).

Hunting and fishing are the next main economic activity for the men. Many of the men have 12 gauge shotguns, for which ammunition can be bought in Belaga town. These weapons are very old and some are even held together by plastic cords. Hunting can take place within the BRS or up at Bakun and involve the hunter, his gun, and his hunting dogs in a basic sense, this has not changed from what has been recorded in the literature (Chapter 3). In the BRS, the hunting dogs are loaded on the back of a pickup or a single dog in a basket attached to a motorcycle. The chosen vehicle is then driven slowly either along the Koyan access road or through the oil palm plantations or along the Bakun highway. When a dog picks up the scent of game, it leaps off the truck and starts tracking and flushing. The cornered prey is then killed with the shotgun. Hunters may work around the BRS because to hunt or fish up at the Balui is usually a complete expedition. They have to drive an hour to the jetty, bring their boat engines, petrol, and outboard engine accessories, repair kits and lubricants, hunting dogs, insulator boxes, ice and food

100 and water. Fishing trips often involve the same except that the dogs are left behind, although if the fisherman owns a gun it will invariably be brought along. As former expatriate District Officer Alastair Morrison noted, the gun is an important article of ornamentation for the Dayak man (Morrison, 1993). Hunting around the BRS, however, yields little success normally. Also, hunted pigs from oil palm plantations are also not popular, as it is believed that their flesh has an unpleasant smell from eating the oil palm fruits. If hunters want to hunt for economic reasons they would usually head to the Balui. Fishing involves the use of gill nets and baited hook lines. Occasionally, they cast nets to catch smaller bait fish but these are more often done to obtain bait and for self- consumption.

Within the contemporary upper Balui communities, hunters occupy a position in society that cannot be easily be classified among the normal stratified system. This is because they serve a vital role in the community as a source of protein, and they are seen to have a skill that is more difficult to acquire than laying gill nets across a stream. Socially, they can be quite close to the maren, without being maren themselves. On the other hand, while they are respected, there is a sense that hunting is not an occupation that one’s