Holy Men, Holy Women 12 — Gawai 1

JUNE 30 — There was an air of great cheer and festivity at the departure lounge of the Low-Cost Carrier Terminal as passengers waited to board the plane for Kuching. The delightful Bahasa Sarawak peppered the air.

“Gawai” could be heard intermittently in the conversations as the passengers readied themselves to head home for the festivities.

A group of men dressed in black T-shirts and jeans occupied the front seats. They were all wiry, like a pack of lean, hungry wild dogs.

A few men behind me were calling out to each other, asking which hotel they planned to visit and booze the night away. “Kita mau tani di mana?” Meanwhile, young couples and old people chattered away non-stop on the flight.

To understand the Bidayuhs, I was told by Dr P, I had to observe Gawai in Sarawak. Many people I knew could only talk of the parties and drunkenness in longhouses when Gawai was celebrated. Babai, the priest I met and lived with in January, had also advised me to fly to Kuching to see the adat of the Bidayuh people.

Entering Sarawak is always a surreal experience. Peninsular Malaysians and foreigners clock in at immigration, and hold on to a tiny piece of paper which tells you that you have arrived in Sarawak and can only be there for a limited time. Peninsular Malaysians have to apply for work permits in order to work in Sarawak. The immigration counters of the airport never fail to remind me that I am but a tourist when I am in Sabah/Sarawak even though we are all Malaysians.

I was to stay in Kampung Grogo, so I had been informed prior to the trip. The evening I arrived I hitched a ride with Dr P, whom I had met on my last trip earlier in the year. He was a man on a mission, and in a hurry. We were late, and the villagers of Kampung Grogo would not start any ritual until he arrived.

He had found a family to host me; the matriarch of the family was one of the six priestesses left in the village. “And perhaps even among the Bidayuhs,” he said. The Dayung Boris was in great danger of extinction, and this was frightening as no healing could take place if there were no priestesses.

I found Dr P quite a delightful man of contradiction. He was a general practitioner who had participated in local politics. He was also in training to become a Bidayuh priest. He was an energetic man, determined to save the Bidayuh culture from ruin and extinction.

“I want to set up a centre so priestesses can be initiated,” he said.

“But I thought priestesses were chosen by Topa, the Almighty,” I countered. “You can’t decide to be one, if you don’t have those dreams.”

Dr P didn’t answer. He was concentrating on getting to the village before eight.

The women who eventually become Dayung Boris usually encounter a year of illnesses, all mysterious and cannot be resolved by Western medication. Most of them are married by then and have families. As they struggle to get back their health, it would be revealed to them in a series of dreams that they have been chosen by Topa, and that they have spirit-husbands. I remember asking a Dayung Boris once whether her husband felt jealous or intimidated by his rival.

“No. It is our adat. He has to live with it.” What a lovely way of sanctioning spiritual polyandry: Topa has said so.

A priestess’s role in Gawai is important as she and her colleagues would spend three nights praying and singing so the gods will bless the harvest and community. Her presence was also required at healing sessions for the ill and mad, the possessed and heartbroken.

Dr P peered into the dark as he drove up a trunk road leading into the provinces. Kampung Grogo was about 40 minutes away from Kuching but there were hardly any streetlights lining the road.

“I need to be sighted. But I wonder if I can handle that, because once I can see and talk to them, people will think I’m mad! I’m still a working man!” But it was only appropriate that he becomes a priest. His late mother was a chief priestess of the village. The lineage cannot be broken — healing is in their blood.

We arrived, and I was deposited at a priestess’s house. The few Bidayuh villages I had been to were similar. Longhouses no longer exist in semi-urbanised areas, and the houses which replaced them are compact, sited next to each other very closely, and located on steep hills.

The roads leading into the villages are always narrow. Also, there was a tangy-sweet smell which hovered in the villages I visited, a smell I could not place.

Sumuk (grandmother) and Babai (grandfather) were pleasant, but our introductions to each other were rushed. They had to hurry as they were needed at the Rumah Gawai. Sumuk was adjusting her priestess headgear. It kept tilting, and she didn’t like it.

Young children darted in and out of her house. “Nenek!” they called out before prancing over to the next house. A well-fed young boy sauntered in, plucking at his toy and looking at me unabashedly.

Dr P motioned to me to follow him. We’re to go to the Rumah Gawai. Tonight was the first of the three nights of rituals, he said. The priestesses would be living there for the three nights, and their duties were going to last well into the night.

Kampung Grogo, like all the villages in Sarawak, was going to celebrate Gawai Obuo Sowa, the end-of-the-year harvest festival. It was a time of celebration, especially if the harvest was plentiful.

The whole village was involved in helping the priests and priestesses in their work.

The Rumah Gawai, like all the houses in Kampung Grogo, was square in shape, and white. A small outhouse and kitchen were attached at the back. Inside, everyone was busy. The male priests were preparing the feast for the ritual, while six very old women in T-shirts, batik sarongs and headgear were on the floor, arranging offerings of sireh and betel nut. One of the Dayung Boris was a tiny and thin woman, who was hunched by age and wore goggle-like spectacles. She hopped about spryly in their section of the room, as she held onto bamboo stalks and leaves.

I heard singing outside. It was melancholic, and sounded like a hymn. It came from a house of one of the villagers who had died the night before, and the family was singing. They were Christians, and would only be participating in the Gawai festivities on the last night.

Clang!

Smoke filled the air. Teenage boys scampered into the Rumah Gawai, and took their seats. The clang I heard was now a full percussion set. They beat, clapped and drummed on the gongs enthusiastically. More children and teenagers appeared, cheering their friends on.

Two priests with bowed backs, dressed in white coats and batik headgear, walked to the centre of the room. Their hands were raised in the air as they paid homage to their gods, and they walked around the offerings which had been laid on the floor. Their hands moved up and down, as if they were receiving alms from the air.

The gong performance was hypnotic. The beat became faster. More smoke wafted in and out of the wired windows.

The Dayung Boris, all six of them, were on a swing, singing softly. The song was even incomprehensible to them, as it had come to them in a dream. All they had to do was to sing it the whole night until the next morning, in praise of Topa and Gawai.

Next: Gawai 2.

* The views expressed here are the personal opinion of the columnist.