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Kalimantan comprises
roughly the southern three-quarters of the equatorial island of
Borneo, the third-largest island in the world after Greenland and New
Guinea. Despite exploration and development, many areas of Kalimantan
are almost untouched by the Western world. Maps of Kalimantan's
river-laced interior still excite the imagination. On the political
map, the Malaysian states of Sarawak and Sabah and the sultanate of
Brunei lie to the north, occupying the top one-quarter of the island.
The territory makes a unique travel experience for the more rough and
ready traveller.
Tourist facilities are relatively undeveloped in Kalimantan, and
visitors are few. Those Westerners you do meet are leftovers from the
oil and wood booms of the 1970s, their jobs gradually being taken over
by Indonesians. Good roads are found only in the oil and timbering
centres and around big coastal cities. Travel is restricted in some
areas, as are border crossings into Malaysia. Although travellers may
arrive here to visit interior Dayak villages and wildlife reserves,
most natives will take you for an expat worker. Expect to encounter
officialdom wherever there are navigable rivers, airstrips and roads
(though most roads shown on maps don't exist). Good roads run between
Banjarmasin and Samarinda and around Pontianak, but rivers are the
main transportation arteries. There are airports in the major cities,
and airstrips throughout the interior serviced by commercial flights
and missionary aircraft.
Most of Kalimantan's population predominantly Chinese and Malays live
near the coastal areas. Javanese, Buginese and other Indonesians come
here to find work, competing with other Indonesians, and even other
nationalities, for skilled jobs. Under Indonesia's massive
transmigration programme, tens of thousands of Javanese and Balinese
families have been brought in to settle the island's hinterlands. 'Dayak'
is a collective name for the 200 or so different tribes that comprise
the island's native peoples. Living inland along the banks of major
rivers and tributaries, they make up almost half of the territory's
population. Each tribe has its own tribal name and speaks its own
dialect. Contrary to myth, the Dayak race is light-skinned (resembling
the Chinese) with rounded, well-featured faces and slightly slanted
eyes. Mountain Dayak tribes are physically imposing, taller than most
Asians, heavily muscled and weighing 75 kilograms (165 pounds) or
more. Numbering in the millions, the Dayaks have traditionally lived
upriver in the hill areas' thriving as hunters, gatherers and, more
recently, as slash-and-burn hill rice growers.
Since the 1970s, the government has encouraged them to take up
wet-rice cultivation and to produce such cash crops as rubber, pepper
and cloves, kerbau, cows, pigs, chickens, ducks and a few goats are
kept. Recent exposure to the forces of modernization is changing many
aspects of traditional Dayak life. The Indonesian government is
abolishing multiple-family long houses and replacing them with modern,
single-family dwellings, a drastic change in village life. Tattooing,
mastery of traditional crafts and the custom of wearing huge bunches
of metal ear-rings to elongate the earlobes are all disappearing. Few
Dayaks hunt with blow-guns and poison darts or spears these days
preferring instead home-made Daniel Boone-style flintlocks. Though
there are occasional unexplained decapitations in the more remote
regions, the traditional practice of head-hunting has officially
ended. Increasingly, young Dayaks leave their villages to work for
timber and oil companies or take menial jobs in Kalimantan's boom
towns. Children of wealthy Dayaks study engineering, forestry and
other subjects in Indonesian and European universities. |
