A good friend of
mine sent me a message saying that after reading the post on my incursion on
the jungle, she was actually curious about my reflections following
that. And now that I had a bit of time to ponder, I thought I'd share
them.
* I had no such
“their life is so beautiful and simple and how it's supposed to be”
moments. I am realistic enough at this point to see the good and bad
in any life style and not to idealize things. Especially in this
case, as the orang asli have a pretty unhealthy life style anyways –
life expectancy among them is about 57 years!!! Don't get me wrong,
food wise they're by far the healthiest I've seen in Malaysia –
they basically rely mostly on vegetables taken from the jungle. Meat
is reduced to a minimum and the unhealthy things I've seen were all
biscuits of stuff that they buy. But unfortunately they take from the
jungle also some less healthy habits. They all (and by all I mean
ALL, even small children aged 4 or 5!!) chew on this thing that is
called pinang. It looks a bit like this in its tree form, and inside
it looks like this. They put it inside a leaf together with some
white powdery thing (did not yet figure out what that is) and they
chew it like tobacco in the old days. Now, the thing is, that pinang
thing together with the powdery thing have some sort of chemical
reaction and the result is basically a light drug...you really get a
bit high. Your mouth is full of red (that's the colour that comes
from chewing it) and it's quite bad for the teeth, as well as for the
rest of your health. It's also obviously quite addictive. Funnily
enough, they actually believe that the thing keeps them young!! It's
a bit difficult to understand how they can believe this as all of
them look much older than they actually are. Apart from the kids. The
kids are seriously adorable!
* The whole
experience made me feel how special Malaysia truly is. I will be
honest, I love the nature in Malaysia but I can't say I am in love
with the country per se – I am not a big fan of its life style and
I don't like that feeling of everyone staring at me and considering
me “special” just because I am white. So I definitely cannot see
myself living here for a long time. At the same time though, I
realised that in 6 months here I learned a lot of stuff about more
cultures and types of people than I ever imagined! I actually
understand much better now Muslims and Indians. And this visit
brought me close to the life of indigenous tribes also. Obviously, I
am not pretending in depth understanding but at least I get some
reference points, some dimensions of perception if you will. I am
still working on the Chinese part but even the fact that I mainly
meet this group in tango, salsa and hiking activities, says a lot :)
* The spirits world
conversation came up again. Only this time it came much closer to me
and made me sort of make up my mind on it. I was never neither super
brave nor super afraid of spirits or ghosts. I was brought up in a
religious environment so stories of people possessed by the devil
were quite a common occurrence in my life. I even saw such people in
Romanian monasteries – difficult to believe anyone could fake such
behaviors. But what I saw in this village was different. The fear was
everywhere – absolutely everyone had things around their neck and
hands to protect them from evil spirits. The shaman was highly
respected and from what I understood had a busy schedule of healings
and other ceremonies. And what was amazing was that our questions of
“but why are you actually doing that? Why like this and not in
another way? What does this mean?” were met with blank stares. What
kind of explanations do we need? The ritual is being done because it
has always been done like this and it has always had power over the
spirits. So questions are completely useless and unnecessary. The
following day was even better – we actually turned back from the
jungle because of a strong wind that made the trees make loud sounds
and bend a bit. All the locals became super super scared as it was
obvious the spirits were around us.
We obviously had the
conversation among ourselves (the foreigners) on whether we believe
in ghosts. Aleks told us that the first 2 months he could not sleep
very well in his center and he was telling this to his community.
That obviously took him to the shaman (after asking him if he had
pee-ed in the jungle – apparently that's a very bad thing to do!).
The shaman performed a ritual and gave him a talisman to wear around
his neck. He has never had troubles sleeping since.
Tina (Slovenian
friend) on the other hand, could not sleep well the first night we
were there. When I asked her why, she went on “couldn't you hear
all the spirits?”. I must confess I did not.
So they sentenced me
to a “you really don't believe in this at all?”- to which point I
could not say NO, but I realised that what I always believe is that
it is the fear that makes them (whatever them is) exist. Whenever I
have thoughts that provoke fear, I tend to believe that it is
actually myself creating the fear, and that if I can just control the
fear than whatever that is will be non-existent. I guess this means
that I internalise it rather than externalising it. I guess that
means I don't really believe in them, though I've heard many weird
stories so am not sure what I would do if any odd things were to
happen to me.
* I had this very
clear moment when I realised I will actually miss this a lot. It
happened in the first night, before I fell asleep – I realised I
will miss this feeling. Lying on mattresses on the floor in a
building in the middle of nowhere together with people that feel now
very close, though in the beginning you would have never said you
could built such relationships again. Wonderful. It felt a lot like
summers at my grandma's (and that is by far the greatest compliment
any experience can receive!:))
* I am remembering
and thinking about my grandmother a lot lately. Talking about her
too. Funnily enough, always in the present tense. I wonder what that
means.