Outcasts of the Islands: The Sea Gypsies of South East Asia. Sebastian Hope
stretched out under the awning, chewing betel, resting on a pillow. In the heat of the afternoon only the children were active. Even the fish-bomb detonations became infrequent. We were afloat again and the boat stirred with the water, its motion acting on me as quickly as a drug. Planks of wood had never been so comfortable. I fell asleep thinking about the pillow … and lice …
I was more wakeful after the wedding. We had returned to Mabul in the evening to join in the celebration of the village nuptial. The music continued under the palms long after we had returned to the boat, past the setting of the moon, and complemented the rhythms as it rode at anchor with its bow to the wind. The waves clunked under the hull. The boards creaked as the bow rose. The loose glass mantle of the oil-lamp clinked. It was soothing, until the elements of the polyphony began to change. The creak lengthened and multiplied. I could no longer hear the oil-lamp clinking over the noise of the flapping tarpaulin. Pots rattled. A glass tankard toppled over and rolled back and forth, the handle stopping it after a half-turn either way. The wind was cold and it had come around.
No one else was awake. Mangsi, cradled in a sarong hanging from the roof-tree, was still as a plumb line. The others seemed to be attached to the deck with Velcro. The wind promised rain. Sarani stirred in response and came forward nimbly on his hands and knees. He knelt in the bow, braced against the gunwale, and began to pole the bow round into the wind. Unbidden, I seemed to know what to do. I stumbled forward to the anchor rope and began to pull. I knew when to stop so that Sarani could go aft to cast off the stern line. I pulled us up to the anchor as he came forward again, and then hauled it onto the gunwale while Sarani, standing now, punted the boat out to deeper water. He nodded and I let it go. He stowed the pole, and took the rope, setting the anchor and tying off the line over the projecting bow and an iron spike driven into the stem. The sky was dark with clouds. The first drops of rain felt sharp and cold on my back. We turned our attention to the waterproof sheet that rolled down to close off the forward opening, tying the corners to lumps of coral that doubled as net weights. It was raining hard by the time we slipped round the sides of the sheet and under cover of the tarpaulin. The rest of the family were still asleep.
The two of us sat in silence, drenched, and watched for leaks in our shelter. The wind flapped under the sides of the tarpaulin and blew in gouts of rain. Sarani tied them down. We moved all the soft furnishings away from their usual stowage along the gunwales, bundles of clothes, pillows, a plastic shopping basket full of knick-knacks and hair oil. Minehanga woke up and moved the children, though they stayed fast asleep. Sarani dried himself off with a sarong which he then wrapped around himself. He reached for his betel box. We waited grimly for the storm to pass. ‘I’m going to build a roof,’ he said.
The rain died away, though the wind remained strong. As I lay down on the damp boards I could hear the wedding organ start up again. I had to admire their stamina. Sarani spat out the betel dregs and moved aft to the bilge pump, a contraption of grey plastic waste piping that projected above the deck with a ram made from shaped flip-flop rubber attached to a stick. He set up a steady counterpoint to the music until the bilge sucked dry and he settled down to sleep again. We had gone through the whole procedure almost without comment. We had worked together for the boat, satisfied its demands with promptness; a dragging anchor is not a piece of guttering blown down in the night that can be left until the weekend. What did the people ashore know of a rough night at sea? The wind in the palms, the thatch rustling, a child moving closer for warmth. The newlyweds, asleep now maybe, would know as soon as a baby came what it is to tend a boat through the night. Sarani, who had been born on a lépa-lépa and had spent no more than a handful of nights ashore in his long life, took rest when he could in a home that needed pumping out four times a day, propping up on a falling tide, battening against weather.
The kettle was on, and Minehanga was breastfeeding. Sumping Lasa had taken over the sarong cradle and was using it as a swing. Arjan was running around on the afterdeck looking for things to throw overboard. Life did not stop because we were underway and by the time we reached Kapalai Minehanga had dealt with a tantrum from Sumping Lasa who had been pushed out of the swing by Arjan, a puddle on the planks courtesy of Mangsi Raya, and the attentions of the hungry boy as she peeled plantains for breakfast. Sarani stood in the stern, one foot on the tiller, scanning the lightening horizon.
We arrived at Kapalai as other Bajau boats were returning from pulling up their nets, Pilar’s amongst them. He anchored close in behind us and began to sort out the pile of net on the bow, paying it out again, to wash it in the shallow water. While Minehanga made up a batter for the plantain Pilar transferred his catch of blue-spotted ray into the dug-out behind our boat, some still lashing the air with barbed tails, and set about gutting them. The tails went first and were flicked over the side of the canoe. I made a mental note to watch where I walked at low tide. The eyes and gills were removed like an apple core. The ray were hung out to dry on a pole. Pilar broke off to eat breakfast with the rest of us.
The sun was already hot and its strength was redoubled by the glare from the water. I retreated to the shade of the awning, only too aware after a night on the boards of the sunburn I had suffered the previous day. I could not go fishing. I watched from the boat as Sarani poled away in the dug-out over the bright shallows until his figure, standing in the bow of the canoe, became a silhouette at the edge of the reef against the empty eastern horizon.
The fleet had reassembled around us and in this social hour of the morning canoes plied between the boats, paying calls, returning a borrowed bowl, bringing food, others heading for the fishing grounds on the falling tide, collecting a pole or a paddle or a parang. We had our fair share of curious visitors. I listened without understanding to the lilting cadences of the language that seemed at odds with Minehanga’s sharp voice, listening for something that sounded familiar. I wondered how the two of us would get on without a common language. She spoke no Malay; I would have to learn Sama. This was my first time alone with her and I had no idea what she thought about my presence in her home. As helpless as one of her children and with a smaller Sama vocabulary than even Arjan, I had invaded her nest like an outsized cuckoo chick, an uninvited mouth to feed. She talked loudly and slowly at me, showing her buck teeth, and I felt like a Spanish waiter being mauled by a British tourist. I struggled to pick out something that I understood. Melikan was a word that had come up again and again in her conversations with the visitors. Now she was saying it and pointing at me. Half of it sounded familiar; ikan is the Malay word for ‘fish’. Was I expected to go fishing as well? It began to dawn on me that Melikan referred to what I was rather than what I was supposed to do, that it was a corruption of ‘American’ and meant ‘Westerner’ in general. And so I was named. She would say ‘Melikan,’ and point to a sarong near where I sat and I would pass it, or ‘Melikan,’ miming striking a match and I would proffer my lighter. We rubbed along.
Sumping Lasa was still scared of me. I only had to look at her and smile to send her running to her mother’s side. Mangsi Raya cried the moment she was more than a yard away from Minehanga. Arjan was more bold. He would run up to me, shout and run away chuckling, making the boards jump in his wake. Minehanga told him to stop, but he did not and on his next sortie he bumped into Sumping Lasa. She landed hard on her backside and started to cry. Arjan got a cuff round the ear and joined in. After the first few gusts of tears Sumping Lasa got up and went over to Minehanga for attention. She stood next to her mother, her hands cupped behind her ears, her mouth open wide and silent as her convulsed face began to redden. The silence was agonising, her face a mask of pure grief. It went on. Her mouth opened wider. And then the full force of the tantrum struck. She let out an awesome bellow, almost as long as the silence, followed by another and another. She had her mother’s voice. When it became obvious that Minehanga was not interested, she started hitting Mangsi Raya, who was startled by the surprise attack and began to cry as well. Whereupon Sumping Lasa got a clip round the head and doubled her efforts. Mangsi Raya stopped crying the moment the nipple touched her lips. Arjan knew he had won and dried his eyes. He started running up and down the boat again, his upper lip glistening with snot, taking care to avoid Sumping Lasa as she drifted around in a blur of tears, slapping