Vanishing Tattoo -- Trip Updates
A Tribal Diary -- Borneo

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Update 7

Tuesday, November 14th 2000 -- Vince Hemingson 

Last night, while most people had trickled away to their beds I has been up until about two in the morning answering the myriad questions that the Iban had about Canada. It had only seemed fair that I stayed up to answer them after I had spent the last few days pestering them with questions of their own culture. I was flattered that they were equally interested in mine.

They knew that Canada had four distinct seasons to their two. They wanted to know what crops we grew. How people lived. Where they lived. Astonishingly, the Iban wanted to know why the French in Quebec wanted to leave Canada.

I was stunned. And ashamed that I had assumed they lacked that kind of knowledge and political sophistication. The Iban said that they had heard that Canada was a good country, where many different kinds of people with many different languages and religions and cultures lived in harmony. It made me proud of the Canadian pin I carry on my vest everywhere I travel.

When I told them Canada was a country so large it took many days to cross they shook their heads in amazement. They said they'd like to see that for themselves!

The trip down river was somehow anti-climatic. I felt saddened that I was leaving. Riding with the current we moved at nearly twice the speed we had come up river.

As we neared the spot where we had nearly capsized the day before, the boat driver called out loudly. "Bad Omen!" "Keep Silent!" Thomas looked around in bewilderment and said, "Where, where?" Edward David shushed Tom and we ran the spot in silence.

Later Tom, who has competed around the world as a top pistol shot and as a result is slightly hard of hearing in one ear, confessed that he hadn't heard what the boat driver was saying. Tom thought he was saying, "Old Man, Beside Us!" Tom looked around in vain for an old man on the bank of the river to photograph... 

It turned out that the spot where we had nearly capsized had already claimed three boats and drowned two people already that year. It was considered a spot of bad spirits and the best way not to offend them was to stay silent.

Soon it begins to rain. Steadily and non-stop for three hours. Torrential rainy, wet season rain. Relentless rain. The worst of weather. All Tom and I can do is suffer in silence and try to keep the cameras dry.

We cover in half a day what had previously taken two to traverse. We catch the bus for Sibu, still soaked to the skin. 

Because the bus has the air-conditioning turned up full I cannot get dry. I am blasted with icy air. I shiver uncontrollably for the next three and a half hours until we reach Sibu.

We rent a hotel for 18 ringhat, or about six dollars and try to find a cyber-cafe.

We catch up on e-mail and I find out I have a personal banking disaster in Canada that is only getting worse. My mood does not improve. Ahhh, the glamourous life of an independent filmmaker.

Then, next e-mail, EUREKA! A producer named Kim Baldwin from something called Internet TV (formerly ZDTV) wants to do a phone interview with me about The Vanishing Tattoo! Their program goes out over the internet and Cable TV and television to an audience of 80 Million viewers.

I now feel as if I have won the lottery. But Kim wants to do the interview in two days. Tom and I are still planning to go up to Kapit on the Rajang and then up the Balai Rivers. How to make it back to Kuching, the only place with phone lines we trust for an international call, in time?

I e-mail my dispatches like mad for two hours. Then disaster strikes. My internet connection crashes and I lose everything... I stare at the monitor, stunned. I can't even contemplate going on.... Tom leads me back to the hotel and I collapse on the bed and pass out.

November 14, 2000 -- From the journal of Thomas Lockhart

Well we managed to find some boats and headed up the Skrang River. Fortunately we had an entire family of Ibans, (urbanites from Kuching) to introduce us at the various longhouses we encountered. A couple of white men had drowned in the rapids a few years ago so they were hesitant to take us up to the headwaters as the government had clamped down. Lotsa skulls hanging from baskets in all the Longhouses, lotsa head hunting stories from the Communist insurrection in 1948 and the Japanese invasion in 1941. They weren't too choosey who's head they took. Vince and I bought a pair of fine looking fighting cocks as we wanted to watch a cock fight, the Ibans did okay as we didn't put spurs on them, consequently they survived and the Ibans got the roosters back. We are in a petroleum, logging town called Sibu right now. It is on the Regang River but about 60km inland from the South China Sea... tomorrow we head upriver again to Kapit and then branch up the Balleh river to visit another Longhouse I visited five years ago and where I received a tattoo. Hope to scout a few good locations there as they are all heavily tattooed and also have quite a few skulls. Great visuals.

Off to get our developed film back... they make great postcards.

Selemat Jalai
Thomas

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