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- Story Listed as: True Life For Adults
- Theme: Love stories / Romance
- Subject: Biography / Autobiography
- Published: 02/10/2023
The Most Beautiful Woman In Borneo
Born 1944, M, from Santa Clara California, United StatesThe Most Beautiful Woman In Borneo
It was long ago, but for me, not so long ago.
She was beautiful, alluring, enchanting, but then everything changed.
At age 22, I’d just graduated from college, was immature, a naïve youngster.
Now 80, recently retired, I’m an old man.
I wonder when it happened, becoming old. Was it when pop culture figures were unfamiliar, when more dead were known than alive, when none my age were present at an event?
Was it when a seat was offered, a door opened, a senior discount given? Or was it when I preferred to sit than stand, stay home at night, take an afternoon nap, retire early to bed?
It matters not. My earth trek’s time consumed can’t be denied, old age is now my stage.
Yet, elderly have pleasures too. While time's minute hand moves faster as the clock's spring winds down, I'm no longer rushed. I enjoy dilatory morning coffee, read books, watch movies, and tend a garden, once too busy to do. There’s no need to rush. I’ll hear the Banshee’s wail soon enough.
I have a special pleasure too. I wallow among a midden of memories. With the scrutiny of age’s honest reflection, the patina painted requires revision from what once I thought was true.
To the adage, 2 things are unavoidable, death and taxes, I add another, change. My midden of memories occurred in a world time now gone, one hard to image, even though not so long ago.
Like any story, much is unsaid.
I was a Peace Corps Volunteer.
In June 1967, with other Volunteers, I flew on one of the 2 flights a week, from Singapore to Jesselton, Sabah, Malaysia, on a British Comet jet, shortly before they were pulled from commercial service.
Seated by a window, l stared at the South China Sea below and imagined the pilot on the intercom, with his calm English accent, was talking to his bomber crew, as we flew above the English Channel after a mission over Germany, 22 years earlier.
Sabah is a Malaysian state on the northwest corner of Borneo, the earth’s 3rd largest island. Back then, like most of the island, it was sparsely populated with only 650,000 people.
When we reached our destination, he banked the plane for a view of Jesselton, Sabah’s capital of 25,000. It looked a comfortable little city. It was.
On my visit last year, Sabah’s population had swelled to 3.5 million and its capital, now called Kota Kinabalu or KK, had increased by 20-fold to over 500,000.
The tarmac of Jesslton’s little Quonset hut airport terminal ran parrel to miles of coconut tree adorned sandy beach. It faced the South China Sea. Inland from the landing strip was a residential subdivision with rows of leisurely spaced detached residential houses with asbestos roofs. Their lawns and gardens were well attended with flowers evident.
When the plane’s wheels touched the runway, the pilot sharply reversed its engines to avoid the end of the tarmac. On ground observation the residential bungalows, all neat and clean, suggested a pleasant place to dwell. It was.
It’s all gone now, replaced by two large multi storied air terminals with jets coming and going at all hours, every day. The residential dwelling units have been replaced by mid-rise and a few upper rise residential developments further inland. Throngs now enjoy the commercial developments along the sandy beach.
The female Volunteers on the plane were nurses or medical technicians. They had defined jobs and were assigned comfortable bungalows like those adjacent the airport in towns, near a hospital.
We males, aged 21 to 23, were being sent to rural areas to be farm schoolteachers, a vocation vaguely defined and unsure of by us. Most had a liberal arts college degree and urban backgrounds. Only 3 had an agricultural degree and only one had lived on a farm, a Wisconsin dairy.
We’d spent the previous 3 months in Hawaii learning to speak Malay and Malaysian customs plus a smattering of how to grow vegetables. We did get to see the only rubber tree in Hawaii and tour a sugar mill.
Growing up in California’s Santa Clara Valley, an agricultural wonderland before it became Silicon Valley, I’d seen lots of agricultural farm operations. The Peace Corps’ confidence in our liberal arts degrees impressed me, a confidence I knew not to question.
After a round of government meetings, parties hosted by the Sabah Flying and Yacht Clubs, billeting in a cheap hotel, we were introduced to the Sabah Agricultural Department, an organization in flux. Most of the senior staff were British, or Australians as Sabah transitioned from colonial status to Malaysian independence. Our appearance and inane questions were received by the lingering English, as if we were the final insult to their years of devoted colonial service.
They delegated us down to the care of a new Agricultural Officer, a Chinese gentleman fresh from an English university, Mr. Hew. It was an assignment he must have wondered what evil thing he’d done in a prior life to deserve.
In a couple of Land Rovers, he took us to visit and spend a night at the rural agricultural stations we were to be parceled out to. All were on paved roads, had a house for the volunteer, electricity, running water, a toilet and proximity to a town except one, Damai.
Damai lacked everything. With the tour finished, our assignments were allotted. Perhaps we each had a preference or two, but Damai was on the bottom of everyone’s list. As each posting was announced, a smile replaced the grim uncertainty of the Volunteer selected, not for the location given but relief it wasn’t Damai. A roar of laughter broke out when it was announced Damai was my fate, not at my predicament, but relief it wasn’t them.
I ransacked my brain what I’d done to upset Mr Hew, put on a fake smile, and said, “I’m pleased, to get Damai, it’s what I’d hoped for.” A declaration which turned true with time.
With a motorcycle provided, the next day, I puttered off from the comforts of Jesselton the 100 miles to Damai.
Damai was in an agricultural valley at the base of Marudu Bay which lies between the South China and Sulu Seas. The nearest asphalt pavement and electric light bulb were 40 miles over steep hills on a rock and gravel rutted road to the south at Kota Belud or 50 miles to the north at Kudat. The nearest town was the government outpost, Bandau. It was 10 miles away. Bandau consisted of a grade school, post office, police station and a couple of wood shack “kedis” (Chinese shops). The dirt roads were near impassible during rains, dry they were motocross challenges.
Even when it didn’t rain, leaving Damai usually required traversing 2 swinging bridges over rivers, an arduous motorcycle entry push up and strenuous exit hold off. Once on a side’s crest, the ride across the swinging section required avoiding the support wires by handlebars.
The agricultural station included a small house on 10-foot piers for the station manager and his family, a couple of outhouses with squat boards, where the water level matched the surface during monsoons, rain barrels for washing and cooking, a little dorm divided into male and female sleeping rooms, and a small classroom, with adjoining kitchen/dining area . The kitchen included a flat cement slab next to a window for wood fire cooking. Furnishings included a large slab bench on which 5 or 6 students could sleep in the dorm sleeping rooms and another bench in the classroom for me to sleep on with a mosquito net.
Staffing included the manager, his wife, 3 laborers, and me. The station’s manager was, William, a Dusun from a suburb of Jesselton, called Penampang. Penampang was long civilized by proximity to the capital with schools, churches, and electricity. William had graduated from Form 4, a Catholic English language school, and spoke English, perhaps better than I. His wife, pretended not to know English, did, and was the station’s home economics teacher. The laborers were illiterate, with one shrewd. None knew what to make of me or what I was supposed to do, including me.
William and I had 2 things in common, well 3 if sense of humor is included, drinking and gambling. His wife only allowed him to display these on Fridays which were “Hari Tamu” days (village market days). Then women gathered under palm covered hutches across the road from the station to sell local merchandise from fish to beads while the men drank rice wine and gambled on cock fights. Due to William’s size and light weight, he often rode on my shoulders as we drank and made wagers during cock fights. His wife considered me a bad influence.
My direct supervisor was Mohammad, stationed in a little government office at Bandau. He was a Malay from Malaysia, part of the shift of personnel occurring after independence. Like me, he was new to Sabah, an alien of sorts with his home 1,500 miles to the west in Malaya. His boss was an Australian in Kudat. Neither of them had an idea about what to do with me. Mohammad knew I was college educated, an “orang puteh” (white) and potentially trouble, one way or another. He spoke English, but not fluently. Politically he was astute.
We developed an uneasy, but friendly truce, he let me be and I agreed to whatever he said and stayed out of his way.
I played cards occasionally with the workers and the shrewd took a bite out of my $100 US a month Peace Corps living allowance. While illiterate, he knew numbers and odds better than I. The real gambling action was at Bandau. It hosted an illegal Chinese gambling shop off the path and hosted a running Russian poker game where all 52 cards are delt to 4 players and everyone could make side bets. It kept a crowd as big as a cock fight until a policeman walked by. Warned in advance, the shop emptied. It was a Mayberry TV game, the police acting out Barney Fife, a charade with all acting their part without arrests.
Due to my paltry month living allowance my wagering consisted of petty antes and chump change bets. Losing $5 in a month was a crisis of depression and winning that amount was exaltation.
All the men smoked, except William. He only smoked with me when his wife was absent. The workers used local grown tobacco, rolled into rice stalk husks, an environmentally friendly exercise. An occasional English cigarette generated a lot of loyalty from them. I never turned down a swig of their rice wine.
A cigarette with Mohammad relaxed us both to be able to share a joke, even a rare beer. Cigarettes, alcohol, and gambling let me fit in with all except Kampong Damai. As Seventh Day Adventist, they didn’t smoke, drink or gamble and considered me suspect. Even their minister, an American from Alaska, kept his distance.
It was Mohammad and William who clued me in on the luck of being stationed in Damai. They explained, no one with authority comes to bother us. The big shots stayed in their air conditioned offices, occasionally drove an air-conditioned vehicle on a paved road to check on underlings, but never traveled the rutted or deep mud roads to get to Bandau, let alone Damai. Without telephone service they couldn’t tell us what to do from afar.
With this discovery, I was free to do what I wanted, including deciding what being a farm schoolteacher was. The first action was not wearing a helmet racing about on my motorcycle, often with William on the back smoking a cigarette. Even when I rode my motorcycle to Jesselton, I didn’t fear being “Sent Home” for not wearing a helmet. I knew the Peace Corps Director wouldn’t recognize me if he saw me, because he’d forgotten what I looked like.
An additional feature of the Damai’s Agricultural Station was its “hantu” (ghost). The station was haunted by a former resident of the area, an old Dutchman, buried somewhere on the station grounds. No one would go about the station alone at night and few dared doing so during daylight. Only I was alone at the station after sundown. At first, I considered the ghost imaginary.
It’s different when you can’t flip a switch and the electric light turns on. Then you see there’s no ghost about, even in the jungle’s dark. Without the electric light switch, however, ghosts linger among the shadows of the candle or flashlight held. Without electricity, I lacked the flip of a switch to dispel the Dutchman’s ghost.
I did have a pressure gas lantern. Unlike white gas camp lanterns in the US, it burned kerosene. It had similar ash, silk wicks and required pumping to get pressure, but required a complicated ritual to get light’s glow.
After pumping, you poured alcohol into a heating tray using a little plastic bottle with a twisted straw atop. You finagled the straw up into a little hole under the glass and squeezed alcohol into the tray, then inserted a lighted match in the hole to light the alcohol.
The alcohol’s blue flame heated the lantern’s kerosene intake pipe. With the fuel pipe hot enough to vaporize kerosene, you opened the lantern’s fuel valve, waited until the ash wicks oozed kerosene, and set a match in a top hole to start the wicks glow while adjusting the intake valve to the proper pitch of kerosene to bright light.
It ended up with a wonderful bright light with assuring pressure release hiss that dispelled ghosts, even the Dutchman’s. In the dark, it’s more complicated than pawing the wall to find the switch. Occasionally it took me 2 or more attempts to fight the night.
Until then, the ghost had free reign to lurk about in the dark. I never saw the ghost but knew he was about and was displeased by my presence. I’d hear him. He didn’t say boo or moan. He tossed things about and banged on walls. Once the light burned bright, he’d flee but, on occasion pound on an exterior wall or knock things about in the kitchen or dorms to rouse my curiosity. Reading a book by my lantern, I’d pretend not to hear him. Eventually his persistence would arouse me, and with a mix of curiosity and apprehension, lantern held high, I’d go to the kitchen, dorm, or outside to shoo him away.
So it was, soon after my arrival at Damai, I believed in ghosts too.
Once you accept ghosts are real it’s a small step to other spirit beliefs.
The local population was divided into ethnic and religious groups by kampong. The Bajaus, Muslim sea people, hung around Marudu Bay with houses on stilts in shallow water. They were boat people who historically practiced piracy between the Philippines and Borneo despite The British Empire efforts. Radio communications, jet airplanes and napalm, however, had convinced them to shift their means of livelihood to fishing and smuggling.
Shop keepers and a few commercial rubber, copra and tobacco growers were Hakka Chinese. By a strange twist of missionary work most were Basil Lutheran Christians, a Switzerland religious sect. They retained Buddhist tendencies during Chinese New Year.
That left the Dusun, and Rungus, historically renowned headhunters of North Borneo lore. A young male historically had to “get ahead” before marriage to attract a suitable bride.
The Rungus still lived in longhouses and the women adorned themselves with brass tubing on legs, arms and necks which announced their longhouse social status and presence when they walked.
The Dusuns lived in a mix of detached houses and longhouses and the women adorned themselves on their waist with Chinese free trade silver dollars.
The men of both still hunted with blow guns and poison darts to augment their subsistence farming which for the Rungus was slash and burn hill rice and monsoon flooded field rice for the Dusuns.
Both, in addition to being former headhunters, previously were pagans and practiced complicated black magic rituals. An old woman tended to be the priestess but men too were involved in their ceremonies and folklore. Having heads in the house rafters greatly enhanced spiritual power as the dead spirts made great other world mediums.
Women were also involved in kampong medicine and concocted not only cures for jungle illnesses but hexes to cause disease, even death in another. Their best trick was having the victim’s image appear in a bowl of liquid.
Faithful adhered to strict beliefs. Rainbows were a symbol of ill luck, and none would venture out if one was in the sky. Religious rituals, like Catholic communion, were assisted with wine, rice wine, sipped out of large tau-jau jars, filled with fermenting rice. One sipped while gongs were rung. On festivals they put notches on the straw which required sucking down a notch, a fast way to get the ceremony or party going. In longhouses and at parties I drank a few notches but the next day’s headache made me rue the notch.
Gongs were banged for just about anything and people danced to their rhythm. If there was a lunar eclipse, they out did themselves to keep the dog from eating the moon. Due to their excellent gonging, assisted with lots of notches dropped in the jars, the dog always pooped back out the moon. Gong ringing in a kampong was also good for keeping ghosts at bay. Riding my motorcycle in the jungle night, gongs ringing in a kampong, behind the roads jungle’s facade enhanced the night’s experience.
Two missionary groups contested for the remaining pagans, Seventh Day Adventist (SDA) and Catholics. Religious orientation tended to be by kampong. SDA is an American, health oriented, religious sect. Smoking, alcohol, betel nut, coffee, tea and even meat are taboo, but not sins. Their absence is a way of life. Due to lack of alternate vegetarian protein in Borneo, eating meat and fish by SDAs was accepted as good, except pork. Damai had gone SDA. You could tell an SDA by their healthy appearance.
The Catholic missionary seeking souls was a priest from Scotland. He spoke Dusen, a complicated language distantly related to Hawaiian. The switch from pagan to Catholic was less jarring. They could continue to drink, smoke, chew betel nut and eat pork if they attended church on Sunday and received the sacraments.
Kampongs had shifted to either religion based on missionary zeal but there remained many pagan kampongs to convert due to the area around Marudu Bay being the last area of resistance to British rule.
All, Muslims, Basil, SDAs Catholics, pagans, and now including me held one belief in common, ghosts are real.
My vague Peace Corps purpose was to train Sabahans farming, something they’d been doing forever but which I knew little about. I decided on a 2-week class on making vegetable gardens for boys to be held at the same time as William’s wife put on a home economics class for girls. Mohammad and William sent the word out to the kampongs boys could take a 2-week “farm” school class while girls were learning home economics.
Those who came were young Bajaus and Dusuns. Of course, they didn’t come to learn about growing maize or rice as their family had been doing it forever. They didn’t come to learn how to grow vegetables either. They came to escape kampong boredom and meet other kampong girls. To them, Damai was big time.
My first 2-week class started with William’s wife an economics teacher for the girls and me a farm schoolteacher for the boys. Officially, I taught them to grow vegetables to expand their diet and make extra cash but was really creating myself a job.
There was another agenda. The Agriculture Department was introducing other crops beyond subsistence farming. Farmers could grow IR-8, a new, high yielding rice strain developed by the Rockefeller Foundation which produced a huge yield, grew to maturity quickly and allowed annual double cropping, a get rich quick program. They also wanted the locals to grow peanuts and eventually I got into the maize business, but that’s another story.
On registration day, a cloud of road dust came into view as I was registering walk-in students. The Land Rover generating it emerged into focus. It slowed and parked. After the tail of dust settled, the driver emerged, then 3 young males from the back seat. They came from a remote kampong, Tandek, a village beyond the influence of local missionaries.
They looked about for direction, responded to waved motions to come over, then the front seat passenger door opened. She was a tall Dusun woman, her long, straight, black hair tied in a bun behind her head. She wore a batik sarong below and flower printed jacket blouse above, native kabaya attire that provides demure cover from neck to ankles. It’s not a Dusun costume, instead a chic Malay outfit.
It had been re-stitched to sensually caress her movements under the thin cotton cloth. Like a cheongsam, there was a side slit in the sarong to provide a seductive glimpse of leg as she walked. Everyone turned to look at her but none more than me. Self-assured, she strode to my little table. The closer she came, the more beautiful she was. She sat before me, smiled directly into my eyes, and informed me in pigeon Malay, she’d come to enroll in school, Dusun being her native tongue.
I filled out her school application card. Her name was Rusia, her only name, and i was disappointed to learn she was only 16. When asked her religion she replied, “blum adar”, meaning, ”I’ve not chosen one.” I typed, Pagan. The card completed, I pointed where to sign. She put down an “X”, a very feminine one, while I was entranced by her elegant fingers.
William’s wife, teaching the girls home economics, gave me a harsh look, and led her to the girl’s dorm. I watched her suggestive gait hinting of a wondrous body under her kabaya.
William talked to one of the male farm school students who then came to me and whispered in Malay,
“Tuan Jim, jagaa, jaga, ahli sihir perempuan!”, translated as, “Lord Jim, she’s very dangerous, she’s a witch.”
I smiled and thought how nice it would be to have her hex me, then admonished the informer about not calling me Tuan, something the British insisted on but as a Peace Corps volunteer, I discouraged.
During the 2 week class I became fascinated by Rusia, Every day she wore a different alluring outfit. She always smiled invitingly to me.
There were 2 problems to my attraction, her age and lack of schooling. As a Peace Corps Volunteer, I also needed to act respectfully, at least publicly. That limited my actions to secretive leering and whispered inquiry chatter. I did hatch an idea.
I had a close Peace Corps friend 40 miles to the south at the Kota Belud agriculture station. We’d become friends when we trained in Hawaii. He had been given the plum Kota Belud assignment where there was not only electricity but a defined job.
I rode my motorcycle fast over the steep rutted road south to visit and explain there was a girl he should enroll in his station’s 3-month advanced farm school class. He was skeptical due to her lack of literacy but as a favor agreed to overlook details and enrolled her.
Rusia left in a Land Rover on the end of her 2-weeks at Damai to Kota Belud. I saw her go with a mix of relief and regret. I balanced regret with knowing she’d come back. The relief was removal of temptation. William’s wife seemed more relieved than me.
Surprisingly, during her sojourn in Kota Belud, I didn’t think of her. It was my friend who’d overlooked details to enroll her that again brought her to my attention. After 2 months, he rode his motorcycle to Damai to see me. He drove up, turned the motorcycle off, dismounted, put the kick stand down, set the bike at a slant rest, approached me, and announced, in a possessive manner, “I came to tell you, Rusia and I are getting married.”
I warned him some said she was a witch. He said some of his students said such crazy things, but he was in love and brushed off their superstitions. I tried to go rational and explained the difficulties of age, education, and suddenness of his decision. He accused me of being jealous. To my surprise, I wasn’t.
To forestall a sudden marriage, I suggested he talk to our Chinese farm school director, in Jesselton, Mr. Hew, and ask if it was possible to have her attend the one-year course the government gave to train home economics teachers.
The next morning after sleeping it over, he agreed it was sensible to have her learn home economics and “age” a bit. He left to convince Mr. Hew of my idea.
Efficiency was never a British colonial trait. There were always ways to muddle things through to accomplish a desired end. I don’t know how they did it, but after 3 months in Kota Belud, Rusia boarded another Land Rover to Jesselton. After a year of training, she would be a home economics teacher, but unable to sign her name on a pay voucher.
Me? I forgot about Rusia.
By a year later, my farm school had blossomed. I had my own house on stilts. There were 2 additional houses for 2 other farm schoolteachers who had failed at their stations and were assigned to mine. We gave classes regularly and worked on getting the individual kampongs to give up their unique rice variety and grow IR-8, an ugly, low height plant that produced a high yield, fast growing crop of bland tasting rice which used heaps of urea. The motivation was they could work twice as hard, double crop and get rich, the American dream.
The station then even had electricity for 4-hours after sundown. Soon after the sun dropped below the horizon, the station’s big diesel generator engine kicked in. After a few piston stroke thuds, the lights flickered on. Once the diesel sang its throaty song, the lights turned bright, brighter than the kerosene lantern.
With electricity, I started showing movies against the farm school wall on Fridays after “Hari Tamu” (market day). Movies garnered throngs, even from far away. increasing sales across the road and generating local good will. The audience watched British educational films, the only available from the Agriculture Department. Kew Gardens of London was popular. It showed a jungle enclosed in glass. Snowstorms were also popular. It didn’t matter, they were seeing things never seen before.
My house even had a porch. In the late afternoon, I’d sit, there, smoke a cigarette, watch the sun drift toward the horizon, and then do its sudden drop to let darkness reign. With a whiff of chill in the air due to sudden darkness, the thud, thud, thud of the diesel engine was heard as a worker pushed its starter button. The generator kicked in, lights flickered, the diesel caught its rhythm, and light overruled darkness, a wonder not appreciated by those who take electricity for granted. The Dutchman’s ghost was banished, for 4 hours, after which I’d be asleep.
On a late afternoon, after Rusia had been gone for a year, I sat on the porch for my sundown ritual. A cloud of road dust approached. Traffic was rare, any vehicle attracted attention. An eerie remembrance came to mind. As I watched the dust trail come to me, I thought of when I first registered students and watched another dust trail approach from the other direction. As I wondered who was coming an unease took hold. Rarely did an unexpected vehicle stop at the farm school but knew this one would. It did.
It was my supervisor, Mr. Hew. He’d never come to Damai after introducing it to us before to make station assignments. I was surprised he’d made the 8-hour trip from Jesselton, to see me.
Surprise flipped to stunned. He opened the passenger door. A woman in expensive attire, holding an umbrella from the fading sun exited.
They came to the porch stairs and ascended.
Mr. Hew explained they he was on his way to Tandek and he wanted to stop and introduce his bride. She wore a silk kabaya, dripped jewelry, and led her husband about as if a servant.
Stun flipped to shocked. It was Rusia.
She still stared openly, but her eyes were dark pools of menace. She still openly smiled, but her mouth formed a toothy grin. Her kabaya still caressed her closely, but revealed a bony body.
She was ugly. Scary ugly. She let out a laugh shaking my hand, a shriek from the underworld.
After they left, I walked to William’s house.
“William, please have the worker time the diesel to keep running until morning. There’s a ghost about tonight”.
That was in 1969, 54 years ago. I left Sabah shortly after the end of my Peace Corps tour. I have no further knowledge of Rusia or Mr. Hew.
It’s all gone now; the Sabah I once knew. Few there know there once were Peace Corps Volunteers. I visit Sabah every 2 or 3 years. 20 years ago, I drove on a paved highway through the steep hills to see Damai. The buildings I knew were gone. Along the paved frontage road are electric lines. I wandered about the station, but the Old Dutchman’s ghost was nowhere about.
Bandau no longer exists. A new town a few miles away, called Kota Maradu, replaced it. The jungle has been logged off and replaced with oil palm plantations.
The Bajous, Rungus and Dusun still inhabit the area but only tourists sleep in the long houses. Brass tubing adornments have been assigned to museums and attic heads were properly blessed and buried. Mosques and churches abound. None reply “blum adar” when asked their religion.
Jesselton is now Kota Kinabalu with a 20-fold increase in population. I have a house there. Typically, like other houses, tucked in a corner, is an old radio, not listened to in years. A dusty TV set on a mantel is no longer viewed. Everyone is on the internet or a cell phone.
Customs have changed. Unlike back when no women drove, now most do, in an air conditioned car. A few years ago, I hunted down William. He’d retired comfortable to Kota Kinbalu and had a daughter attending the University of Michigan. Like me, most of those who smoked stopped years ago. The young simply never did.
I still drink with friends but, I know they think me the old man. I don’t care, I am. I had a great time back then and do now.
Was it or is it better then or now? If I try to tell those young what it was like back then, they don’t want to know. They want to connect with friends on the I-Pads and I-Phones or at least continue their game.
Borneo was occupied by homo sapiens 40,000 years ago. Semi isolated it developed its unique cultures. I was fortunate to live at a time, in a rural area there, where I could glimpse Borneo’s historic past as it changed to an electrical world.
I still believe in ghosts.
The Most Beautiful Woman In Borneo(James brown)
The Most Beautiful Woman In Borneo
It was long ago, but for me, not so long ago.
She was beautiful, alluring, enchanting, but then everything changed.
At age 22, I’d just graduated from college, was immature, a naïve youngster.
Now 80, recently retired, I’m an old man.
I wonder when it happened, becoming old. Was it when pop culture figures were unfamiliar, when more dead were known than alive, when none my age were present at an event?
Was it when a seat was offered, a door opened, a senior discount given? Or was it when I preferred to sit than stand, stay home at night, take an afternoon nap, retire early to bed?
It matters not. My earth trek’s time consumed can’t be denied, old age is now my stage.
Yet, elderly have pleasures too. While time's minute hand moves faster as the clock's spring winds down, I'm no longer rushed. I enjoy dilatory morning coffee, read books, watch movies, and tend a garden, once too busy to do. There’s no need to rush. I’ll hear the Banshee’s wail soon enough.
I have a special pleasure too. I wallow among a midden of memories. With the scrutiny of age’s honest reflection, the patina painted requires revision from what once I thought was true.
To the adage, 2 things are unavoidable, death and taxes, I add another, change. My midden of memories occurred in a world time now gone, one hard to image, even though not so long ago.
Like any story, much is unsaid.
I was a Peace Corps Volunteer.
In June 1967, with other Volunteers, I flew on one of the 2 flights a week, from Singapore to Jesselton, Sabah, Malaysia, on a British Comet jet, shortly before they were pulled from commercial service.
Seated by a window, l stared at the South China Sea below and imagined the pilot on the intercom, with his calm English accent, was talking to his bomber crew, as we flew above the English Channel after a mission over Germany, 22 years earlier.
Sabah is a Malaysian state on the northwest corner of Borneo, the earth’s 3rd largest island. Back then, like most of the island, it was sparsely populated with only 650,000 people.
When we reached our destination, he banked the plane for a view of Jesselton, Sabah’s capital of 25,000. It looked a comfortable little city. It was.
On my visit last year, Sabah’s population had swelled to 3.5 million and its capital, now called Kota Kinabalu or KK, had increased by 20-fold to over 500,000.
The tarmac of Jesslton’s little Quonset hut airport terminal ran parrel to miles of coconut tree adorned sandy beach. It faced the South China Sea. Inland from the landing strip was a residential subdivision with rows of leisurely spaced detached residential houses with asbestos roofs. Their lawns and gardens were well attended with flowers evident.
When the plane’s wheels touched the runway, the pilot sharply reversed its engines to avoid the end of the tarmac. On ground observation the residential bungalows, all neat and clean, suggested a pleasant place to dwell. It was.
It’s all gone now, replaced by two large multi storied air terminals with jets coming and going at all hours, every day. The residential dwelling units have been replaced by mid-rise and a few upper rise residential developments further inland. Throngs now enjoy the commercial developments along the sandy beach.
The female Volunteers on the plane were nurses or medical technicians. They had defined jobs and were assigned comfortable bungalows like those adjacent the airport in towns, near a hospital.
We males, aged 21 to 23, were being sent to rural areas to be farm schoolteachers, a vocation vaguely defined and unsure of by us. Most had a liberal arts college degree and urban backgrounds. Only 3 had an agricultural degree and only one had lived on a farm, a Wisconsin dairy.
We’d spent the previous 3 months in Hawaii learning to speak Malay and Malaysian customs plus a smattering of how to grow vegetables. We did get to see the only rubber tree in Hawaii and tour a sugar mill.
Growing up in California’s Santa Clara Valley, an agricultural wonderland before it became Silicon Valley, I’d seen lots of agricultural farm operations. The Peace Corps’ confidence in our liberal arts degrees impressed me, a confidence I knew not to question.
After a round of government meetings, parties hosted by the Sabah Flying and Yacht Clubs, billeting in a cheap hotel, we were introduced to the Sabah Agricultural Department, an organization in flux. Most of the senior staff were British, or Australians as Sabah transitioned from colonial status to Malaysian independence. Our appearance and inane questions were received by the lingering English, as if we were the final insult to their years of devoted colonial service.
They delegated us down to the care of a new Agricultural Officer, a Chinese gentleman fresh from an English university, Mr. Hew. It was an assignment he must have wondered what evil thing he’d done in a prior life to deserve.
In a couple of Land Rovers, he took us to visit and spend a night at the rural agricultural stations we were to be parceled out to. All were on paved roads, had a house for the volunteer, electricity, running water, a toilet and proximity to a town except one, Damai.
Damai lacked everything. With the tour finished, our assignments were allotted. Perhaps we each had a preference or two, but Damai was on the bottom of everyone’s list. As each posting was announced, a smile replaced the grim uncertainty of the Volunteer selected, not for the location given but relief it wasn’t Damai. A roar of laughter broke out when it was announced Damai was my fate, not at my predicament, but relief it wasn’t them.
I ransacked my brain what I’d done to upset Mr Hew, put on a fake smile, and said, “I’m pleased, to get Damai, it’s what I’d hoped for.” A declaration which turned true with time.
With a motorcycle provided, the next day, I puttered off from the comforts of Jesselton the 100 miles to Damai.
Damai was in an agricultural valley at the base of Marudu Bay which lies between the South China and Sulu Seas. The nearest asphalt pavement and electric light bulb were 40 miles over steep hills on a rock and gravel rutted road to the south at Kota Belud or 50 miles to the north at Kudat. The nearest town was the government outpost, Bandau. It was 10 miles away. Bandau consisted of a grade school, post office, police station and a couple of wood shack “kedis” (Chinese shops). The dirt roads were near impassible during rains, dry they were motocross challenges.
Even when it didn’t rain, leaving Damai usually required traversing 2 swinging bridges over rivers, an arduous motorcycle entry push up and strenuous exit hold off. Once on a side’s crest, the ride across the swinging section required avoiding the support wires by handlebars.
The agricultural station included a small house on 10-foot piers for the station manager and his family, a couple of outhouses with squat boards, where the water level matched the surface during monsoons, rain barrels for washing and cooking, a little dorm divided into male and female sleeping rooms, and a small classroom, with adjoining kitchen/dining area . The kitchen included a flat cement slab next to a window for wood fire cooking. Furnishings included a large slab bench on which 5 or 6 students could sleep in the dorm sleeping rooms and another bench in the classroom for me to sleep on with a mosquito net.
Staffing included the manager, his wife, 3 laborers, and me. The station’s manager was, William, a Dusun from a suburb of Jesselton, called Penampang. Penampang was long civilized by proximity to the capital with schools, churches, and electricity. William had graduated from Form 4, a Catholic English language school, and spoke English, perhaps better than I. His wife, pretended not to know English, did, and was the station’s home economics teacher. The laborers were illiterate, with one shrewd. None knew what to make of me or what I was supposed to do, including me.
William and I had 2 things in common, well 3 if sense of humor is included, drinking and gambling. His wife only allowed him to display these on Fridays which were “Hari Tamu” days (village market days). Then women gathered under palm covered hutches across the road from the station to sell local merchandise from fish to beads while the men drank rice wine and gambled on cock fights. Due to William’s size and light weight, he often rode on my shoulders as we drank and made wagers during cock fights. His wife considered me a bad influence.
My direct supervisor was Mohammad, stationed in a little government office at Bandau. He was a Malay from Malaysia, part of the shift of personnel occurring after independence. Like me, he was new to Sabah, an alien of sorts with his home 1,500 miles to the west in Malaya. His boss was an Australian in Kudat. Neither of them had an idea about what to do with me. Mohammad knew I was college educated, an “orang puteh” (white) and potentially trouble, one way or another. He spoke English, but not fluently. Politically he was astute.
We developed an uneasy, but friendly truce, he let me be and I agreed to whatever he said and stayed out of his way.
I played cards occasionally with the workers and the shrewd took a bite out of my $100 US a month Peace Corps living allowance. While illiterate, he knew numbers and odds better than I. The real gambling action was at Bandau. It hosted an illegal Chinese gambling shop off the path and hosted a running Russian poker game where all 52 cards are delt to 4 players and everyone could make side bets. It kept a crowd as big as a cock fight until a policeman walked by. Warned in advance, the shop emptied. It was a Mayberry TV game, the police acting out Barney Fife, a charade with all acting their part without arrests.
Due to my paltry month living allowance my wagering consisted of petty antes and chump change bets. Losing $5 in a month was a crisis of depression and winning that amount was exaltation.
All the men smoked, except William. He only smoked with me when his wife was absent. The workers used local grown tobacco, rolled into rice stalk husks, an environmentally friendly exercise. An occasional English cigarette generated a lot of loyalty from them. I never turned down a swig of their rice wine.
A cigarette with Mohammad relaxed us both to be able to share a joke, even a rare beer. Cigarettes, alcohol, and gambling let me fit in with all except Kampong Damai. As Seventh Day Adventist, they didn’t smoke, drink or gamble and considered me suspect. Even their minister, an American from Alaska, kept his distance.
It was Mohammad and William who clued me in on the luck of being stationed in Damai. They explained, no one with authority comes to bother us. The big shots stayed in their air conditioned offices, occasionally drove an air-conditioned vehicle on a paved road to check on underlings, but never traveled the rutted or deep mud roads to get to Bandau, let alone Damai. Without telephone service they couldn’t tell us what to do from afar.
With this discovery, I was free to do what I wanted, including deciding what being a farm schoolteacher was. The first action was not wearing a helmet racing about on my motorcycle, often with William on the back smoking a cigarette. Even when I rode my motorcycle to Jesselton, I didn’t fear being “Sent Home” for not wearing a helmet. I knew the Peace Corps Director wouldn’t recognize me if he saw me, because he’d forgotten what I looked like.
An additional feature of the Damai’s Agricultural Station was its “hantu” (ghost). The station was haunted by a former resident of the area, an old Dutchman, buried somewhere on the station grounds. No one would go about the station alone at night and few dared doing so during daylight. Only I was alone at the station after sundown. At first, I considered the ghost imaginary.
It’s different when you can’t flip a switch and the electric light turns on. Then you see there’s no ghost about, even in the jungle’s dark. Without the electric light switch, however, ghosts linger among the shadows of the candle or flashlight held. Without electricity, I lacked the flip of a switch to dispel the Dutchman’s ghost.
I did have a pressure gas lantern. Unlike white gas camp lanterns in the US, it burned kerosene. It had similar ash, silk wicks and required pumping to get pressure, but required a complicated ritual to get light’s glow.
After pumping, you poured alcohol into a heating tray using a little plastic bottle with a twisted straw atop. You finagled the straw up into a little hole under the glass and squeezed alcohol into the tray, then inserted a lighted match in the hole to light the alcohol.
The alcohol’s blue flame heated the lantern’s kerosene intake pipe. With the fuel pipe hot enough to vaporize kerosene, you opened the lantern’s fuel valve, waited until the ash wicks oozed kerosene, and set a match in a top hole to start the wicks glow while adjusting the intake valve to the proper pitch of kerosene to bright light.
It ended up with a wonderful bright light with assuring pressure release hiss that dispelled ghosts, even the Dutchman’s. In the dark, it’s more complicated than pawing the wall to find the switch. Occasionally it took me 2 or more attempts to fight the night.
Until then, the ghost had free reign to lurk about in the dark. I never saw the ghost but knew he was about and was displeased by my presence. I’d hear him. He didn’t say boo or moan. He tossed things about and banged on walls. Once the light burned bright, he’d flee but, on occasion pound on an exterior wall or knock things about in the kitchen or dorms to rouse my curiosity. Reading a book by my lantern, I’d pretend not to hear him. Eventually his persistence would arouse me, and with a mix of curiosity and apprehension, lantern held high, I’d go to the kitchen, dorm, or outside to shoo him away.
So it was, soon after my arrival at Damai, I believed in ghosts too.
Once you accept ghosts are real it’s a small step to other spirit beliefs.
The local population was divided into ethnic and religious groups by kampong. The Bajaus, Muslim sea people, hung around Marudu Bay with houses on stilts in shallow water. They were boat people who historically practiced piracy between the Philippines and Borneo despite The British Empire efforts. Radio communications, jet airplanes and napalm, however, had convinced them to shift their means of livelihood to fishing and smuggling.
Shop keepers and a few commercial rubber, copra and tobacco growers were Hakka Chinese. By a strange twist of missionary work most were Basil Lutheran Christians, a Switzerland religious sect. They retained Buddhist tendencies during Chinese New Year.
That left the Dusun, and Rungus, historically renowned headhunters of North Borneo lore. A young male historically had to “get ahead” before marriage to attract a suitable bride.
The Rungus still lived in longhouses and the women adorned themselves with brass tubing on legs, arms and necks which announced their longhouse social status and presence when they walked.
The Dusuns lived in a mix of detached houses and longhouses and the women adorned themselves on their waist with Chinese free trade silver dollars.
The men of both still hunted with blow guns and poison darts to augment their subsistence farming which for the Rungus was slash and burn hill rice and monsoon flooded field rice for the Dusuns.
Both, in addition to being former headhunters, previously were pagans and practiced complicated black magic rituals. An old woman tended to be the priestess but men too were involved in their ceremonies and folklore. Having heads in the house rafters greatly enhanced spiritual power as the dead spirts made great other world mediums.
Women were also involved in kampong medicine and concocted not only cures for jungle illnesses but hexes to cause disease, even death in another. Their best trick was having the victim’s image appear in a bowl of liquid.
Faithful adhered to strict beliefs. Rainbows were a symbol of ill luck, and none would venture out if one was in the sky. Religious rituals, like Catholic communion, were assisted with wine, rice wine, sipped out of large tau-jau jars, filled with fermenting rice. One sipped while gongs were rung. On festivals they put notches on the straw which required sucking down a notch, a fast way to get the ceremony or party going. In longhouses and at parties I drank a few notches but the next day’s headache made me rue the notch.
Gongs were banged for just about anything and people danced to their rhythm. If there was a lunar eclipse, they out did themselves to keep the dog from eating the moon. Due to their excellent gonging, assisted with lots of notches dropped in the jars, the dog always pooped back out the moon. Gong ringing in a kampong was also good for keeping ghosts at bay. Riding my motorcycle in the jungle night, gongs ringing in a kampong, behind the roads jungle’s facade enhanced the night’s experience.
Two missionary groups contested for the remaining pagans, Seventh Day Adventist (SDA) and Catholics. Religious orientation tended to be by kampong. SDA is an American, health oriented, religious sect. Smoking, alcohol, betel nut, coffee, tea and even meat are taboo, but not sins. Their absence is a way of life. Due to lack of alternate vegetarian protein in Borneo, eating meat and fish by SDAs was accepted as good, except pork. Damai had gone SDA. You could tell an SDA by their healthy appearance.
The Catholic missionary seeking souls was a priest from Scotland. He spoke Dusen, a complicated language distantly related to Hawaiian. The switch from pagan to Catholic was less jarring. They could continue to drink, smoke, chew betel nut and eat pork if they attended church on Sunday and received the sacraments.
Kampongs had shifted to either religion based on missionary zeal but there remained many pagan kampongs to convert due to the area around Marudu Bay being the last area of resistance to British rule.
All, Muslims, Basil, SDAs Catholics, pagans, and now including me held one belief in common, ghosts are real.
My vague Peace Corps purpose was to train Sabahans farming, something they’d been doing forever but which I knew little about. I decided on a 2-week class on making vegetable gardens for boys to be held at the same time as William’s wife put on a home economics class for girls. Mohammad and William sent the word out to the kampongs boys could take a 2-week “farm” school class while girls were learning home economics.
Those who came were young Bajaus and Dusuns. Of course, they didn’t come to learn about growing maize or rice as their family had been doing it forever. They didn’t come to learn how to grow vegetables either. They came to escape kampong boredom and meet other kampong girls. To them, Damai was big time.
My first 2-week class started with William’s wife an economics teacher for the girls and me a farm schoolteacher for the boys. Officially, I taught them to grow vegetables to expand their diet and make extra cash but was really creating myself a job.
There was another agenda. The Agriculture Department was introducing other crops beyond subsistence farming. Farmers could grow IR-8, a new, high yielding rice strain developed by the Rockefeller Foundation which produced a huge yield, grew to maturity quickly and allowed annual double cropping, a get rich quick program. They also wanted the locals to grow peanuts and eventually I got into the maize business, but that’s another story.
On registration day, a cloud of road dust came into view as I was registering walk-in students. The Land Rover generating it emerged into focus. It slowed and parked. After the tail of dust settled, the driver emerged, then 3 young males from the back seat. They came from a remote kampong, Tandek, a village beyond the influence of local missionaries.
They looked about for direction, responded to waved motions to come over, then the front seat passenger door opened. She was a tall Dusun woman, her long, straight, black hair tied in a bun behind her head. She wore a batik sarong below and flower printed jacket blouse above, native kabaya attire that provides demure cover from neck to ankles. It’s not a Dusun costume, instead a chic Malay outfit.
It had been re-stitched to sensually caress her movements under the thin cotton cloth. Like a cheongsam, there was a side slit in the sarong to provide a seductive glimpse of leg as she walked. Everyone turned to look at her but none more than me. Self-assured, she strode to my little table. The closer she came, the more beautiful she was. She sat before me, smiled directly into my eyes, and informed me in pigeon Malay, she’d come to enroll in school, Dusun being her native tongue.
I filled out her school application card. Her name was Rusia, her only name, and i was disappointed to learn she was only 16. When asked her religion she replied, “blum adar”, meaning, ”I’ve not chosen one.” I typed, Pagan. The card completed, I pointed where to sign. She put down an “X”, a very feminine one, while I was entranced by her elegant fingers.
William’s wife, teaching the girls home economics, gave me a harsh look, and led her to the girl’s dorm. I watched her suggestive gait hinting of a wondrous body under her kabaya.
William talked to one of the male farm school students who then came to me and whispered in Malay,
“Tuan Jim, jagaa, jaga, ahli sihir perempuan!”, translated as, “Lord Jim, she’s very dangerous, she’s a witch.”
I smiled and thought how nice it would be to have her hex me, then admonished the informer about not calling me Tuan, something the British insisted on but as a Peace Corps volunteer, I discouraged.
During the 2 week class I became fascinated by Rusia, Every day she wore a different alluring outfit. She always smiled invitingly to me.
There were 2 problems to my attraction, her age and lack of schooling. As a Peace Corps Volunteer, I also needed to act respectfully, at least publicly. That limited my actions to secretive leering and whispered inquiry chatter. I did hatch an idea.
I had a close Peace Corps friend 40 miles to the south at the Kota Belud agriculture station. We’d become friends when we trained in Hawaii. He had been given the plum Kota Belud assignment where there was not only electricity but a defined job.
I rode my motorcycle fast over the steep rutted road south to visit and explain there was a girl he should enroll in his station’s 3-month advanced farm school class. He was skeptical due to her lack of literacy but as a favor agreed to overlook details and enrolled her.
Rusia left in a Land Rover on the end of her 2-weeks at Damai to Kota Belud. I saw her go with a mix of relief and regret. I balanced regret with knowing she’d come back. The relief was removal of temptation. William’s wife seemed more relieved than me.
Surprisingly, during her sojourn in Kota Belud, I didn’t think of her. It was my friend who’d overlooked details to enroll her that again brought her to my attention. After 2 months, he rode his motorcycle to Damai to see me. He drove up, turned the motorcycle off, dismounted, put the kick stand down, set the bike at a slant rest, approached me, and announced, in a possessive manner, “I came to tell you, Rusia and I are getting married.”
I warned him some said she was a witch. He said some of his students said such crazy things, but he was in love and brushed off their superstitions. I tried to go rational and explained the difficulties of age, education, and suddenness of his decision. He accused me of being jealous. To my surprise, I wasn’t.
To forestall a sudden marriage, I suggested he talk to our Chinese farm school director, in Jesselton, Mr. Hew, and ask if it was possible to have her attend the one-year course the government gave to train home economics teachers.
The next morning after sleeping it over, he agreed it was sensible to have her learn home economics and “age” a bit. He left to convince Mr. Hew of my idea.
Efficiency was never a British colonial trait. There were always ways to muddle things through to accomplish a desired end. I don’t know how they did it, but after 3 months in Kota Belud, Rusia boarded another Land Rover to Jesselton. After a year of training, she would be a home economics teacher, but unable to sign her name on a pay voucher.
Me? I forgot about Rusia.
By a year later, my farm school had blossomed. I had my own house on stilts. There were 2 additional houses for 2 other farm schoolteachers who had failed at their stations and were assigned to mine. We gave classes regularly and worked on getting the individual kampongs to give up their unique rice variety and grow IR-8, an ugly, low height plant that produced a high yield, fast growing crop of bland tasting rice which used heaps of urea. The motivation was they could work twice as hard, double crop and get rich, the American dream.
The station then even had electricity for 4-hours after sundown. Soon after the sun dropped below the horizon, the station’s big diesel generator engine kicked in. After a few piston stroke thuds, the lights flickered on. Once the diesel sang its throaty song, the lights turned bright, brighter than the kerosene lantern.
With electricity, I started showing movies against the farm school wall on Fridays after “Hari Tamu” (market day). Movies garnered throngs, even from far away. increasing sales across the road and generating local good will. The audience watched British educational films, the only available from the Agriculture Department. Kew Gardens of London was popular. It showed a jungle enclosed in glass. Snowstorms were also popular. It didn’t matter, they were seeing things never seen before.
My house even had a porch. In the late afternoon, I’d sit, there, smoke a cigarette, watch the sun drift toward the horizon, and then do its sudden drop to let darkness reign. With a whiff of chill in the air due to sudden darkness, the thud, thud, thud of the diesel engine was heard as a worker pushed its starter button. The generator kicked in, lights flickered, the diesel caught its rhythm, and light overruled darkness, a wonder not appreciated by those who take electricity for granted. The Dutchman’s ghost was banished, for 4 hours, after which I’d be asleep.
On a late afternoon, after Rusia had been gone for a year, I sat on the porch for my sundown ritual. A cloud of road dust approached. Traffic was rare, any vehicle attracted attention. An eerie remembrance came to mind. As I watched the dust trail come to me, I thought of when I first registered students and watched another dust trail approach from the other direction. As I wondered who was coming an unease took hold. Rarely did an unexpected vehicle stop at the farm school but knew this one would. It did.
It was my supervisor, Mr. Hew. He’d never come to Damai after introducing it to us before to make station assignments. I was surprised he’d made the 8-hour trip from Jesselton, to see me.
Surprise flipped to stunned. He opened the passenger door. A woman in expensive attire, holding an umbrella from the fading sun exited.
They came to the porch stairs and ascended.
Mr. Hew explained they he was on his way to Tandek and he wanted to stop and introduce his bride. She wore a silk kabaya, dripped jewelry, and led her husband about as if a servant.
Stun flipped to shocked. It was Rusia.
She still stared openly, but her eyes were dark pools of menace. She still openly smiled, but her mouth formed a toothy grin. Her kabaya still caressed her closely, but revealed a bony body.
She was ugly. Scary ugly. She let out a laugh shaking my hand, a shriek from the underworld.
After they left, I walked to William’s house.
“William, please have the worker time the diesel to keep running until morning. There’s a ghost about tonight”.
That was in 1969, 54 years ago. I left Sabah shortly after the end of my Peace Corps tour. I have no further knowledge of Rusia or Mr. Hew.
It’s all gone now; the Sabah I once knew. Few there know there once were Peace Corps Volunteers. I visit Sabah every 2 or 3 years. 20 years ago, I drove on a paved highway through the steep hills to see Damai. The buildings I knew were gone. Along the paved frontage road are electric lines. I wandered about the station, but the Old Dutchman’s ghost was nowhere about.
Bandau no longer exists. A new town a few miles away, called Kota Maradu, replaced it. The jungle has been logged off and replaced with oil palm plantations.
The Bajous, Rungus and Dusun still inhabit the area but only tourists sleep in the long houses. Brass tubing adornments have been assigned to museums and attic heads were properly blessed and buried. Mosques and churches abound. None reply “blum adar” when asked their religion.
Jesselton is now Kota Kinabalu with a 20-fold increase in population. I have a house there. Typically, like other houses, tucked in a corner, is an old radio, not listened to in years. A dusty TV set on a mantel is no longer viewed. Everyone is on the internet or a cell phone.
Customs have changed. Unlike back when no women drove, now most do, in an air conditioned car. A few years ago, I hunted down William. He’d retired comfortable to Kota Kinbalu and had a daughter attending the University of Michigan. Like me, most of those who smoked stopped years ago. The young simply never did.
I still drink with friends but, I know they think me the old man. I don’t care, I am. I had a great time back then and do now.
Was it or is it better then or now? If I try to tell those young what it was like back then, they don’t want to know. They want to connect with friends on the I-Pads and I-Phones or at least continue their game.
Borneo was occupied by homo sapiens 40,000 years ago. Semi isolated it developed its unique cultures. I was fortunate to live at a time, in a rural area there, where I could glimpse Borneo’s historic past as it changed to an electrical world.
I still believe in ghosts.
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Lillian Kazmierczak
03/06/2023I really enjoyed this story! I t was interesting from the first word to the last. Congratulations on story star of the day!
ReplyHelp Us Understand What's Happening
James brown
03/06/2023I'm pleased you enjoyed my "Ghost/Witch" story. I worried it might be a bit too unbelievable but truth is often stranger than fiction.
Help Us Understand What's Happening
JD
03/05/2023There was a lot to unpack in your story, James, but it was an interesting read from beginning to end. Even though your title and theme categor suggested your story was about a romantic encounter w/a beautiful woman, that really doesn't fit w/what u wrote, which had a lot more depth and intrigue. Thanks for sharing your experience in the Peace Corps with us. Happy short story star of the week.
ReplyHelp Us Understand What's Happening
James brown
03/06/2023Perhaps the witch of Borneo would have been a more apt title. If I put my electric light bulb thinking on, it may have been a 16 year old blossoms like a cherry flower but wilts as a 17 year old but perhaps we intellectually rationalize what is actually spiritual.
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