Outcasts of the Islands: The Sea Gypsies of South East Asia. Sebastian Hope
poured half-and-halves, Carlsberg and Guinness.
‘It is very difficult to catch these people,’ Mustafa confided. ‘On the sea, they can see us coming a long way off. They just throw the bombs overboard, pick up their fishing lines, and move onto the shallow reef where we cannot follow them. The materials are so cheap and easy to find. You can make one at home. You have to get the proportions right, or else it is very unstable, but they know how to mix it. The detonators come from the Philippines, but they are home-made too, made from a bundle of matches around a small charge of explosive. You can buy them here for one ringgit each. We try to catch the people who bring the detonators across, but they are very small,’ he held up his little finger. ‘You could fit ten into this cigarette box. Oh yes, we catch plenty, but there are always enough that get through. What can we do? It is a big ocean. Sarani doesn’t bomb fish, does he?’
‘No, he says it is the Suluk people.’
‘Bajau also, Indonesian also, mainly it is the illegal immigrants.’ The immigration problem extends Malaysia-wide. Illegal immigrants were blamed for most anti-social crimes, I noticed from the newspapers: prostitution, mugging, smuggling, drug-dealing, car theft, burglary. Those who broke no further law after their illegal entry still faced deportation, in theory at least. Occasionally there were sweeps, ‘checkings’, followed by mass deportations, but the immigration laws are flouted at every level, from the ruling party handing out Malaysian documents to Muslim Filipino and Indonesian migrants at election time, to illegal Bangladeshi construction workers on prestige projects like the new Kuala Lumpur airport and the twin Petronas Towers, to loggers and plantation labourers in Sabah.
‘Sabah would close down if there were no illegals,’ said Ujan.
Unfortunately, the threat of deportation promotes the use of fish-bombs. If you were a poor fisherman who had left the Philippines with your family to make a living in Sabah, and you knew there was always a chance you could be caught tomorrow and sent back with only the clothes you had on, would you invest capital in nets and lines? Or waste what might be only a short time in these waters trying to catch fish by those laborious and uncertain methods, when for an investment of three ringgit, bomb and detonator, you can blow up twenty ringgit-worth of fish in an instant? And why should you care, while your luck holds, whether there will be any reef or fish left in a year’s time? It is not hard to understand the reasons people use fish-bombs, but it is very difficult to sympathise with them.
The speck on the horizon that I had glimpsed between the islands of the channel I took to be a large boat that had anchored off Mabul, maybe a naval patrol, or a freighter from Tawau. As we rounded Manampilik, and passed by the southern edge of the Creach Reef, I could make out five masts towering above the shape. Except they were not masts. Closer, it became apparent that they were legs; in the short time I had been absent from Mabul, someone had moored an oil rig 500 yards offshore.
I was returning on Sabung Lani’s boat, Sarani’s other son. He had no idea why it was there, but then he had no idea what it was either. I explained where diesel came from, and he brightened. He needed fuel. He always needed fuel. His boat was packed with people and their luggage; he was collecting passengers for the run across the border to Bongao. His own family was large, and his boat was no bigger than Pilar’s. He had come forward over the roof to sit with me, scattering girls singing their heads off amongst the nets. I shared their joy, to be on the sea again, in the warm light of the afternoon, knowing this time what lay ahead of me, and relishing the prospect. Sabung Lani sat close.
‘So you are sleeping on my father’s boat?’ He spoke gentle Malay. He always referred to Sarani as bapak saya punya, ‘father I have’, an elegant colloquialism to which he gave a humble and reverential intonation. I felt an immediate sympathy with Sabung Lani; he too suffered from acne. He looked like an older version of Pilar, heavier, and while they both had Sarani’s gentle eyes, Sabung Lani’s did not have his father’s mischievousness, nor Pilar’s sparkle. They had a sad expression, a memory of pain now distant. He was about forty years old, and had had eight children already with his large wife Trusina. The first six were girls.
‘You must spend a night on my boat, brother,’ said Sabung Lani, and I wondered if there would be room. ‘You want to come with me to the Philippines?’ It was a tempting invitation but the danger involved gave me pause for thought. ‘You will be safe on my boat.’ I said I would ask Sarani.
‘Bye-bye,’ said Sumping Lasa waving uncertainly, standing on the bow in her dirty green dress, still holding her flip-flops. From under the tarpaulin came the sound of rattling planks, and a musical shout of ‘Da’a, Don’t!’ from Minehanga as Sabung Lani’s boat, engine cut, glided in under way. Arjan, naked, burst out onto the bow. ‘Melikan, Melikan,’ he was shouting. He had both arms stretched out towards me. Sarani followed, all smiles. It seemed that they were as happy and excited to see me as I was to be back. This felt like the real beginning.
‘He’s been asking all the time, “Where’s the Melikan, where’s the Melikan?”. Careful,’ said Sarani as he helped me aboard, ‘there is Mbo’.’ Arjan was clamouring for me to pick him up. I stood on the bow with the little packet of naked sun-warm skin wriggling in my arms, and looked out over the fleet, the boats clustered in twos and threes, more than twenty, Pilar astern of us, and Sabung Lani poling forward to anchor ahead. People waved at me from other boats, ‘Oho, Melikan,’ shouted Timaraisa and her children, and I was taken back into the arms of the water-borne community. Arjan was trying to put something in my mouth with his snotty fingers. I accepted the gift, a morsel of shark jerky.
I put him down, and he was off, making the boards rattle under his vigorous little feet. ‘Da’a,’ Minehanga shouted again. Mangsi Raya was asleep. Sumping Lasa joined in the noisy fun. ‘Da’a,’ said Sarani, and grabbed Arjan on his next pass and gave him a smack. He sat down hard. It had to be serious for Sarani to become involved. Sumping Lasa had escaped to the stern and Minehanga had to go after her, calling across to Timaraisa, who paddled over in a dug-out. Both children were taken away. Mangsi Raya had woken and, finding her mother absent, she started crying.
‘Naughty kids,’ said Sarani. ‘They’ve been running around all day, disturbing the Mbo’. And now crying.’ A pandanus mat had been set up forward in the cabin, one end tucked over the tarpaulin’s port wall-strut, and adjusted so that the other end hung down onto the deck and formed an apron stage for the offerings, for the seat of Mbo’. On the overlap sat an old coconut in its brown leathery husk and a portion of unthreshed rice. The rice was contained within a band of bark over which had been placed a square of black cloth, and the rice poured in on top to make a pool of yellow grains. Simple, but specific, offerings on a simple altar, but offerings to what, to whom? I was eager with questions, but first I had to discover how to behave during the period of Mbo’.
‘No, no, it’s no problem that you are here,’ said Sarani, ‘but be careful with your feet. You can lie with your head near the mat, or sit near it, but do not point your feet towards it. Do not make a lot of noise like those naughty kids. There are other things which will disturb Mbo’, if the wind is too strong or the sea too rough. We cannot go anywhere in this boat, or start the engine, or do any work in the boat while there is Mbo’. On the first day, in the afternoon, we start Mbo’ Pai, and put out the rice and the coconut. It stays there tonight, and in the morning, we will pound the rice and grate the coconut, and cook them together. Everyone eats. Then tomorrow we can do nothing also, one more night the mat stays there, and in the morning, finished.’ I had missed the dressing of the altar and the consecration of the offerings. Sarani told me it had been accomplished by the old couple I had seen perform the ceremony on my first morning at Mabul. They spoke words, Mbo’ words, over the coconut and the rice.
The objects themselves excited questions, both land products, both enclosed within a husk. Why would a maritime people make an offering of land crops? I would have expected an offering of something from the sea. These objects would not have been out of place on a farmer’s fertility altar; did they point to an agrarian origin? Why rice? Unhusked rice? The coconut was less out of place, but Sarani told me it is only as part of the Mbo’ meal that the Bajau Laut eat old