He went out and came to me afterwards with a very presentable rainmaker and he explained to the chief first how this worked. His mouth went like a machine gun -akk kkaak aakk kkaak. I went right over to him and explained how a rainmaker was made – explaining it in my mixture of English, Malay and things, but he understood my thought, he seemed almost to read it, because he called to two people and explained something. I looked, “Have I no friends here?” Suddenly I saw an old man wink. I looked, and I saw all these grim figures standing there with crooked foreheads. The other Dayaks refused to go close to it. And so I went on.Īnd then we came to the next village. And finally, the one guard, who had been along with the Malay came smiling, with a gun, gave the gun to me and said, “Malay no like us, he gone back.” He was of course killed.

Three Dayak carriers and a policeman with a gun behind us, together with one of the carriers. No.” “I insist.” So again we want a policeman, so we walked up to the next village. I have to go on on my own.” “I’ll give you my Malay policemen.” “Oh no, the Malay is in the dark, that means they’re enemies – they won’t help me.” “I’ll give you one policeman.” “No. I came here to see the Amend River’s sources. I haven’t even seen the sources of the Amend River.

And when we came in there things went rather well and the controller said, “Oh, I have to go back, you have to come back with me, Bryn.” “Oh no. We were so stupid, we didn’t even think of the danger.

So we went in there, thinking nothing of that. And they thought that their shrunken heads would be a decoration on some Dayak chief’s bed. And once, I thought, “Bryn, what about a little adventure going up into Dayakland and finding out about the sources of the…”Ī few years earlier, a Dutch man and twelve envalets that went in there – they all disappeared. The water came from rivers, in Borneo we had a river called the Amend River. The sugar people tried to bribe us to give them more water, they had a big plantation. And we had to be just and see that the poor people on the rice fields got enough water. And also sugar for the sugar plantations. I was working for irrigation, to bring rice fields to bloom for these poor people there.

A Dayak Elder, today The Young Engineer in Dayakland

Welcome to the ricefields