It's hot, hot, hot, right now. Even for Borneo. The last two or three days have been almost cloudless, allowing the Sun to suffuse the countryside with a buttery yellow light and making the temperature almost unbearable. Yesterday evening Sue's colleague Catherine invited me on a cycle ride to a nearby longhouse which she had visited recently and where there was a promising bike trail.
About ten kilometres out of Saratok we turned up a backroad which quickly became a dirt track. It was hard work with the Sun still above the tree line and passing four-wheel drives throwing up clouds of dust, their occupants peering at us inquisitively, then smiling and waving. Eventually we came to a turning off the track down to a longhouse, which to my surprise turned out to be the one of which my friend Ambrose is Headman. I had been taken there by Ambrose about three months ago and could not remember the way back. The picture above was taken from his garden and we crossed the suspension bridge you can see in it to an island in the river where there is a school.
There was a security man on duty at the entrance to the school, despite this being Saturday afternoon in the middle of nowhere. We passed the time of day with him then made our way to the other side of the island where there was a smaller suspension bridge, leading to another, yet more remote longhouse. As we walked our bikes across the bridge we could see down into the river where a young woman with long jet-black hair was bathing while her son swam, looking like a lithe tan-coloured frog from our vantage point high above him. Our eyes met theirs and we acknowledged each other with smiles. The Sun was visible through the trees and there was dappled light all around and a strong smell of woodsmoke in the air. At that moment on the bridge in the middle of the jungle I was aware of being in a kind of paradise, remote and safe from the world of everyday cares. I toyed with getting my camera out and dismissed the idea, as taking a picture would only break the spell of the moment and seemed somehow too intrusive in what was, after all, someone's open-air bathroom.
We got to the other side of the bridge, said "hello" to some of the occupants of the other longhouse, then made our way back up a steep and winding track and eventually onto the main road back to Saratok. The moment on the bridge may have been no more than a few tens of seconds, but it has sown a seed of memory which will grow and take strong root, I think.
Doug, not only would your camera have been intrusive, but I suspect
ReplyDeleteyou would have been disappointed with the image it captured. You may not even have enjoyed your moment on the bridge as much had you been fiddling with a camera. You've managed to convey to me a sense of being in the middle of a jungle. Thanks for that. Hope you are feeling better.
Chris
Thank you Chris. You're right of course. When you don't take the picture I guess you are also allowing something else to happen - the changes to one's memory of the event as the reality recedes. Already my image of the woman in the river owes as much to Gauguin's paintings of Tahitian women as to what I actually saw. If I'd snapped the shutter I'd not just have a dull unchanging image, I'd know what camera I used, the date and time I took the picture and even the GPS coordinates. But would I be any the wiser?
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