38
recommendation and working paper. The director and I also talked about the
American experience with Native Indian Reservations.
A Fish Eye for Dinner
On another occasion to interview an Orang Asli, I located him via a Chinese vendor.
The vendor sold rattan (Figs. 24 and 25).
The Orang Asli who cut the rattan from the forest was paid 70 cents per 100,
2.5 m sections. Clearly the middleman was making a huge profit at the Orang Asli’s
expense. The Orang Asli would have been better off had he had his own outlet to the
commercial market. I made a mental note of this. In talking to the Orang Asli man,
he invited me to follow him home.
I may have asked him if I could go to his house. In any event, his hut was in the
forest and built on stilts and was about 1.5 m off the ground. The dwelling was one
room about 4.5 square meters. His wife was in the dwelling when we got there. I
detected a slight smell of sewerage and noted that the room had a small hole in the
floor at one end, which served as a place to relieve oneself. Also, while it was too
dark for me to see, there was a small cooking fire in the dwelling, where the woman
was warming a pot of stew. There was no light, except from the fire inside. The three
of us sat there, while the wife was making us something to eat. Language was most
awkward, but they were kind and very welcoming to my efforts of conversation.
There was not much talking: we just enjoyed each other’s company. The woman
gave me a bowl of what appeared to be stew — some kind of tapioca mixed with
fish. The stew tasted excellent. Then my tongue discovered what appeared to be a
capsule in my mouth. It was a fisheye that had come out of the fish head in my bowl!
I had never eaten a fish eye — let alone include a fish head in my stew! Really, just
Fig. 24 Orang Asli rattan gathered from the forest, Pahang, Malaysia, 1974
A. Abee
recommendation and working paper. The director and I also talked about the
American experience with Native Indian Reservations.
A Fish Eye for Dinner
On another occasion to interview an Orang Asli, I located him via a Chinese vendor.
The vendor sold rattan (Figs. 24 and 25).
The Orang Asli who cut the rattan from the forest was paid 70 cents per 100,
2.5 m sections. Clearly the middleman was making a huge profit at the Orang Asli’s
expense. The Orang Asli would have been better off had he had his own outlet to the
commercial market. I made a mental note of this. In talking to the Orang Asli man,
he invited me to follow him home.
I may have asked him if I could go to his house. In any event, his hut was in the
forest and built on stilts and was about 1.5 m off the ground. The dwelling was one
room about 4.5 square meters. His wife was in the dwelling when we got there. I
detected a slight smell of sewerage and noted that the room had a small hole in the
floor at one end, which served as a place to relieve oneself. Also, while it was too
dark for me to see, there was a small cooking fire in the dwelling, where the woman
was warming a pot of stew. There was no light, except from the fire inside. The three
of us sat there, while the wife was making us something to eat. Language was most
awkward, but they were kind and very welcoming to my efforts of conversation.
There was not much talking: we just enjoyed each other’s company. The woman
gave me a bowl of what appeared to be stew — some kind of tapioca mixed with
fish. The stew tasted excellent. Then my tongue discovered what appeared to be a
capsule in my mouth. It was a fisheye that had come out of the fish head in my bowl!
I had never eaten a fish eye — let alone include a fish head in my stew! Really, just
Fig. 24 Orang Asli rattan gathered from the forest, Pahang, Malaysia, 1974
A. Abee