Seventeen Years Among the Sea Dyaks of Borneo: A Record of Intimate Association with the Natives of the Bornean JunglesGomes, Edwin Herbert
History
Seventeen Years Among the Sea Dyaks of Borneo: A Record of Intimate Association with the Natives of the Bornean Jungles
Gomes, Edwin Herbert
Iban (Bornean people); Sarawak (Malaysia) -- Description and travel
A few of my schoolboys, after being with me for some time, were sent on
to the larger school at Kuching to be taught English. These were the boys
who one hoped would in after years become teachers and catechists. There
is so little Dyak literature that it is necessary that a person learn
English so as to be able to educate himself by reading English books. But
the majority of my boys stayed with me for two, three, or four years,
and then returned to their Dyak homes. In my school there was manual
work as well as lessons to do. They lived plainly, cooking their own
food and doing most of their own work. They were cut away from all the
superstitious customs of their people, and received a certain amount of
moral and religious training. After three or four years of such school
life they were ready to return to their old surroundings, taking with
them the lessons they had learnt.
For the present, at any rate, there is no need for the Dyak to take up
new industries. What he wants is to be taught to do the work he has to
do more thoroughly, and to be released from the bondage of superstition
and the constant fear of evil spirits in which he lives. The problem of
his future will work itself out by a natural process. When the present
sources of supply fail him, necessity will force him to take up new
industries.
My schoolboys came from different Dyak villages, but the majority of
them were boys from Saribas. The Dyaks of that district are more anxious
to improve themselves than other Dyak races. The following incident
will show how keen they are to learn to read. A party of Saribas Dyaks
going on a gutta-hunting expedition asked for a copy of the first Dyak
reading-book, because one of them could read, and thought he would teach
the others in the evenings when they were not at work. And this is indeed
what did happen, and when the party returned most of them were able to
read. The Saribas women are just as keen as the men, and many of them
have been taught to read by some Dyak friend. I have myself noticed, when
holding services for the Christians in some villages in Saribas, how many
of those present were able to use the Dyak Prayer-Book and follow the
service and read the responses.
A Dyak schoolmaster, who had taught in Banting for many years, afterwards
worked as the Government clerk at Betong in Saribas. He told me that
he was struck by the number of Dyak men and women in Saribas who could
write, and how they often wrote letters to their friends who were away,
and received letters from them.
The school programme for the day was as follows:
5.45 _a.m._—The two boys whose turn it was to cook, and the two boys
whose turn it was to sweep out the school-room and the lower room of the
Mission House, would get up and begin their duties.
6.30 _a.m._—A gong would be struck telling the boys to come to breakfast.
They would all go to the kitchen and have their meal, consisting of rice
with a little salt fish or vegetables.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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