3. Dreams

Contrary to what is the case among a number of so-called Orang Asli of Peninsular Malaysia (notably the Temiar; cf. the writings of e.g. Kilton Stewart, Geoffrey Benjamin and Iskandar Carey) the Lom do not often talk about their dreams. Theirs is far from being a 'dream culture'. This is not to say that dreams play no role whatsoever. But typically dreams — insofar as they are held to convey 'truths' — reveal numbers; i.e. the digits of the winning ticket of the forthcoming draw in local semi-illegal lotteries. Indeed, many Lom never buy a ticket unless they have had a 'number dream' (mimpi nomor) in advance.⁽⁶⁵⁾ Dreams should also be heeded when one is planning to collect agila-wood (garu or tebek), a resinous, fragrant material collected all over Asia. The Lom collect it primarily in order to obtain cash. Although the Lom have 'always' used garu in certain rituals (viz. when learning spells and during the funeral proper), the search for garu has only recently become economically important.⁽⁶⁶⁾ One cannot just walk into the forest and gather this substance as if it were regular firewood. In a sense the trees containing the substance are protected and one must interpret one's dreams the night before one plans to go gathering. If the dreams are in any way ominous the message is that collecting is hazardous. An incidence involving a young girl who visited Air Abik was interpreted as proof of this: She had been scorched by lightning five days earlier when she accompanied her older brother searching for garu. The brother had died on the spot, almost cut in two. Elderly Lom saw this incident as a warning that this old custom must not be neglected.

More significant in the present context, however, are the reportedly rarely occurring dreams interpreted to carry unequivocal messages about crucial matters, viz. agriculture, disease, and location of a dwelling.

While planning and preparing one's field one must therefore heed one's dreams since they may contain information vital to the success of imminent productive efforts. If 'something' enters one's dream (kalau ada barang didalam mimpi) one asks 'it' permission to proceed — there are, according to the Lom, various signs that dreams employ. There is a code (kode) here, I was assured. One may, for example, dream that one's teeth are loose or being pulled out; this is a negative sign imperatively signalling not to go ahead; to cease whatever activity one is engaged in or to plan it differently. Another negative indicator is a large uninhabited house. Both of these may mean 'swidden agriculture is not allowed, go somewhere else' (tidak boleh berhuma — mau ke lain pola). In order to be certain that one may trust the signs displayed in one's dreams at all, however, it is important that one refrains from sleeping during the day; not permanently, but during the critical stages, i.e. the stages the dreams are considered to be about.

It is during the day, however, that questions to one's dream are to be posed. The Lom insist that no particular procedure is required in order to ensure that they are asked correctly and indeed neither culturally acknowledged instructors nor 'correct' ways to ask one's dreams appear to exist. Only the answers — the 'signs' (tanda) in the dreams — are interpreted according to culturally disseminated codes or interpretive rules. During the ensuing or the following night one hopes to receive an answer to one's question; this could be about something trivial (as e.g. a lottery number) or about more important matters such as moving from or even relocating one's house because of extranormal disturbances such as visitations by hantu, iblis, or pedaré (supernatural beings discussed in the previous chapter).

The negatively charged dream symbols such as empty houses and loose teeth may also appear unprompted, i.e. without a consciously posed question, in which case they are interpreted simply as ominous tidings concerning the health of members of the household. No Lom was able to offer examples of positively charged dream symbols that could be interpreted as saying silakan ('go right ahead') and according to one individual such symbols do not exist.

Activities regulated by dream information are, say the Lom, limited to the planning and preparation of dwellings, gardens and swiddens. Thus the only productive sphere dreams relate to is agriculture.⁽⁶⁷⁾ By their own account, hunting and fishing (either in fresh water or at sea) remain unaffected.

An important question arising from the Lom conceptions of dreams and their applicability is whether they provide insights relevant to one of my concerns during fieldwork, viz. why the Lom became (or, alternatively, have remained) Lom. I shall leave this issue unexplored here, however, and return to it in chapter six because it relates directly, I think, to certain implications of Lom conceptions of productive pursuits.

4. Relations between humans and animals

4.1. Mockery of animals

This is a theme familiar from studies on aboriginal peoples of the Malay peninsula. Howell, for example, writes that the Chewong consider it wrong to laugh at animals and that doing so may cause a huge supernatural snake to devour the transgressor, or, less drastically, that a thunderstorm will ensue — this rule is called talaiden (1984: 178-83)⁽⁶⁸⁾. Among the Lom I know of no similarly named rule. The Lom do, however, consider it improper to mock animals, but they refer to it as gawi yang bukan-bukan, which is best translated simply as 'untoward/improper acts'. Examples of such behaviour include laughing at, or even just staring at a trapped or netted animal, and gaping at fish that are still alive in the baskets after having been transported to the shore. One 'just doesn't do' those sorts of things, I was told: "bierlah" (leave it). The repercussions to be suffered by the offenders seems to be less clearly defined among the Lom than they are among the Peninsular Malay groups — indeed the point was made that it is far from obvious to just anyone what the punishment is. One example concerns two children whose hands were deformed at birth (two of their fingers were grown together). This was referred to as ciri (which means 'identifying mark') but I was simultaneously explained that it is a coded sign which is understood only by those 'who understand'. In this case the thing to understand is that the children's fathers habitually engage in such gawi yang bukan-bukan as just mentioned and that they now suffer the consequences through their children; that getting deformed children is their own fault.

4.2. Food prohibitions

The Lom distinguish between three named abstentions: pesumpah, pantang, and do'a — all of which are valid either for single individuals or all descendants within a certain number of generational levels.⁽⁶⁹⁾ I shall return to these three categories shortly. First I shall mention a more generally applicable 'discouragement' (by using this word I imply that what is involved here is a weaker sort of prohibition than a positive taboo, a common translation of the Malay word pantang) from jaman kulot (ancient times) against consuming cat, dog and monkey. While this is not viewed as a prohibition as severe as the prohibitions proper, it is yet conceived of as more than a recommendation. The perceived social discouragement from consuming the meat from monkey, dog, and mouse is different from the pantang: No direct ill effects are held to result from ignoring this discouragement. Linguistically it is expressed as jén demakan (don't eat it). As regards the two former animals the explanation was quite direct and straightforward, namely that the dog will guard (jaga) the rice-field by chasing kerak and lutong (species of monkey), the cat would do likewise by catching mice. Monkey, however, is included here because monkeys are fond of rice (as are humans) and they would be afraid of the rice-field were they to be hunted there by the farmers. In turn the rice itself would fear the cultivator. Thus, breaking the affinity between rice and monkey would lead to a severing of the equally strong affinity between rice and man: By hunting or eating monkey one would endanger the harvest, possibly the continued survival, of one's basic staple.

Alim confessed that he had broken his father's pronouncement concerning the above — while he was in fact still a youngster — and he had practiced swidden cultivation without problems for several years while he resided in Benak. Thus one could suggest that when transgressions are not putatively punished by supernatural elements and injunctions are couched in the most general of terms there is more scope for individual experimentation as to what the consequences of breaking rules actually amount to or, indeed, if there are any consequences to be suffered at all.⁽⁷⁰⁾

Pesumpah is the severest of the three prohibitions and is most typically the swearing of an oath like the following: "I swear that I and my descendants for three (or seven) generations will not kill, harm or eat [species X] as long as we live." Thus, to many Lom the food they may not eat is often the result of a predecessor's, and not their own, actions; they inherit their parents' food prohibitions. But if an individual (or an entire household) moves permanently outside the area in which adat Mapur is recognised the prohibitions may be ignored; they are no longer valid.

Pantang merely means that the consumption of one or several species is forbidden for a person for a certain period of time — typically while s/he undergoes a cure (whether or not spells (tangkel) are employed) or if s/he is chronically ill.

Do'a comes into play the following way: While a person is ill or distressed s/he is out walking and has a chance encounter with a certain species of animal (including fish and bird). S/he might then say to the animal: "If I recover from this disease (or: if my situation improves) I promise that I will never hurt or consume you."

A typical example of how pesumpah comes about is the following: An 'ancestor' had a large sore on his leg which did not heal — not for a long time. Then one day while he was in the forest, a kijang (k.o. deer) came along and licked the sore. Soon afterwards he was well. To this day his descendents refrains from kijang — although the children of the informant who related this particular example are allowed to eat it; seven generations have now passed. Pesumpah invoked by humans may last only for a specified duration — expressed in terms of generations  —  and seven generations is the longest period of time that humans may invoke.

There is also a conspicuous relationship between a person and the species in question expressed as akin to that to a sibling (beradek). Birds pesumpah do not fly away, fish and animals do not get frightened. However, as soon as someone else who has not pesumpah that species is approaching, it quickly disappears. A person can also tell, when seeing a particular member of the species in question, whether or not it will die soon. If s/he says that it will die in two days it certainly does. If one is sick and meets, for example, a peregam (wild pigeon) in the forest, one may promise not to bother/eat the species for a certain time to come. Then one goes home, cooks glutinous rice (nasi ketan) with saffron (kunyit) and grills a hen over the fire. One may not eat this oneself; this is niat ('vowed') food that must be eaten by others. If no visitor happens to come by to partake of the food it should be wrapped in banana leaves and brought to the forest. Should one submit to the temptation to eat the niat food one would fall fatally ill and neither traditional nor hospital-based medicine would be of any help.⁽⁷¹⁾

The term for eating prohibited foods (any kind of prohibition) before the prohibition period is over is termakan radak ('to have eaten something stabbing or piercing'). The prohibition on 'hot' (panas) foods⁽⁷²⁾ would be an example of this: kijang (k.o. deer; the hottest of all), penyok (sea-turtle), tenggiling (anteater), kerak (monkey), tugang, and siau (the latter two are species of birds). All other kinds of game are 'cold' (lemengk) as are all species of fish. The prohibition on 'hot' foods affects people suffering various diseases, particularly respiratory disorders such as asthma and emphysema,⁽⁷³⁾ it likewise holds for women during the 44/45 days long post parturition period (a point I shall return to in chapter five). What must be remembered, too, the Lom say, is that even if one has been cured of one's respiratory ailment one must avoid the 'hot' foods for another year or two. 'Hot' foods are, on the other hand, preferred by most Lom in cold weather (i.e. in the rainier season). Also, there is no type of sickness for which the treatment includes eating 'cold' foods.

In chapter two I cited examples of how the Lom — practicing pig husbandry — experience mixed feelings when confronted with Islamic standards of cleanliness and propriety. Another incident, also involving the headman of Pejam who this time had to act according to one or another rationality, illustrates a similarly grounded ambivalence: He and I were on my motorcycle just outside the village when I spotted a small turtle crawling by the ditch. I asked Wakim to pick it up, but he said there was no point in doing that — declining to explain why when I asked him. I finally pressed him to pick up the turtle which, glumly, he held away from his body as we drove on. When, back at the village, I told one of my neighbours about the incident and how very surprised I had been at the headman's near-refusal to get the turtle for me, my neighbour was not surprised at all. The headman has pesumpah turtles.

Unwittingly I had placed him in a dilemma between on the one hand the dictum of adat and its corollary: a real fear that some misfortune might befall him, on the other his wish to cooperate with me. But I am fairly certain too, that he had felt slightly ill at ease at demonstrating, though without really admitting, his adherence to 'primitive' or 'backward' notions somewhat discordant with his position as headman and Lurah (Local Area Headman). This was, and remains, conjecture, but when I asked him about it later he admitted that his relationship to the turtle is indeed one of pesumpah, but he refused to discuss it further, saying tidak apa-apa (never mind) in a way I have experienced other Indonesians doing when embarrassed.

I have noted that, according to the Lom, pesumpah animals know full well that they are not going to be bothered and they behave accordingly. Even the easily scared kejawak (monitor lizard) only cowers. Once, over ten years ago, Alim and Gundim were on their way somewhere when they caught sight of a monitor lizard on the side of the road. The reptile was climbing up the trunk of a tree when Gundim, for no particular reason, slung a piece of wood at it and hit it at the lower part of its back. Alim was furious with him because the animal was supposed to be safe when he was around; he has pesumpah the monitor lizard.

About a month later a sore developed at the small of his back (Alim buttoned down his trousers to show me a scar the size of a large coin) that took some three months to heal. To him the interpretation was obvious: he had been punished: like for like. Much later I was told that Alim had been cured by Sudi (who died in 1980). He was the last to hold two, now defunct, Lom institutionalised positions: dukun buaya (crocodile shaman)⁽⁷⁴⁾ and penaber. The function of the latter (in conjunction with the penitit) was to ensure that the Lom abided by adat Mapur in general, and observed the marriage rules in particular so as to avoid the various forms of buyong (incestuous) relationships (cf. chapter eight). It is to a discussion of these former institutionalised offices I now turn.

5. Former institutionalised 'offices'

In former times — but within living memory of today's grandparental generation — the state of the world in general and certain aspects of peoples' behaviour in particular were monitored by persons whose positions were, as I understood it, inherited. Each of these positions were associated with specific worldly domains: 1) mankind/world/ground, 2) disease, 3) water, 4) sky, 5) mountain, 6) wind (cf. Table 4.1). It is important to realise that these holders are/were not extraphysical entities, but human beings. The titled holders are more important and basic than are the ones merely associated with a location.

Formerly there was also a 'holder of honey', but after WW II nobody has performed this function and the Lom claim that the reason is that people lack courage ("sapé berani?" — "who dares") — this is the reason, too, why there no longer exists either penitit or penaber to supervise behaviour.

Penitit: From Air Abik. Associated with Gunung Pelawan, centrally located on Tanah Mapur (the Lom Land), midway between the two main Lom settlements Air Abik and Pejam. While Gunung Maras is held to contain seven sources of water, Gunung Pelawan is held to contain three. The penitit occupies the highest position of these institutionalised holders; above or primary (kakak, or elder sibling) to that of penaber (adik or younger sibling) who is from Pugul, associated with Gunung Maras and/or Gunung Penaber (the latter is 'held' by Pugul) and the (subcategories?) penaber umat ('healer of mankind') and penaber dusé buyong ('neutraliser of incestuous sins'). Both of them, it is stressed, are Bangkanese and "watch over the world". The penaber had punitive rights; specifically the right to punish transgressors of the wide-ranging incest rules (discussed in chapter eight). Importantly, the offspring of the penitit and the penaber were not allowed to marry each other (buyong ilmu/buyong aik lemu, incest of magic). This prohibition was only valid for the descendants of the office-holders — it was not a general one for the inhabitants of the two villages. But the magical knowledge (ilmu) itself was lost three generations ago. The ilmu could not be passed on by any other means than utos (inheritance, succession).

The penaber at Gunung Penaber was a Muslim and none of his female descendants were allowed to pulang Mapur (i.e. marry a Lom and settle virilocally).

The penimék aik is always a woman. The task she is entrusted with is to guard Gunung Pelawan so that it does not melitus (burst, explode) and lead to floods the way it did numerous times before Gajah Mada brought adat to the world.⁽⁷⁵⁾

The holder of mountains is termed tekabek. He resides in Kampung Bukit, a village south of the Lom homeland — near Gunung Maras — where the adat is recognised to be different.

About the holders of the sky (a Muslim) and wind (a Christian) — nothing is known. While the first is located in Gunung Muda no location is associated with the latter.

It will be noted that none of these aspects are 'held' by the Chinese. All aspects except the wind are held/controlled by a Malay, in the inclusive sense of the word (cf. chapter two). This should not come as a surprise, of course, bearing in mind that the Chinese are not indigenous inhabitants of the island. But it is interesting, nevertheless. First, because the first written record of the Lom as an 'ethnic' group is fairly recent, in other words, the Chinese were well established on Bangka by the time the Lom received their first mention (for how long the Lom have had their 'separate' cosmology we will probably never know). Secondly, because the Chinese are important to the Lom today (mainly in an economic sense, but still). Thirdly, because according to the Lom cosmology the Chinese are not recent arrivals to the world.

While the titles of the holders of the sky, mountains, and the wind remained unnamed, a place (mountain) is associated with the first two, and a belief-tradition ('religion') for all three of them. Gunung Maras, situated (in a straight line) some 25 km south of the Lom village Air Abik is the highest mountain on Bangka (some 700 metres above sea level). More accurately the mountain consists of a series of peaks along a ridge visible from a great number of villages and hamlets over much of the northern part of Bangka where the local populations associate these peaks with legends of the creation and populating of the island. Not so among the Lom. But they bury their dead with their heads toward the east (the opposite direction of what is Islamic practice) in order that their dead — when looking over their shoulder can look southwards in the direction Gunung Maras.

So, while Gunung Maras can be said to be the mountain of the island — a mountain significant to most of the population  —  it has been appropriated on the one hand by the Malay Muslims through myth and legend and on the other by the Lom through their burial ritual.

Gunung Muda is more specifically linked to Islam. Gunung Maras, as I just noted, belongs, as it were, to all Bangkanese — from a time prior to religious division. But Gunung Muda has a special significance to the Lom.⁽⁷⁶⁾ The village of that name, according to Muslim Malays and Lom alike, was Islamised in the early part of the nineteenth century⁽⁷⁷⁾. A version of how the Lom came to be Lom (less grand than the one outlined in chapter three) holds that it was Orang Panji (the people of Gunung Muda and environs) who divided/split up (bagi) into Malay Muslims and Lom. Those Gunung Muda villagers (four persons) who did not convert removed themselves to the jungle; notably to Air Abik (but after some time to other locations as well) where they have lived to this day as Orang Lom, the 'not yet religionised' people. Thus Orang Lom and Orang Gunung Muda, in spite of their differences regarding religion, are close kindred.

6. Kidnapping power

The reason why one is not allowed into the premises of power stations lies, according to the Lom, in the very way electricity is made: by tapping the energy of a pair of newborn babies placed in acid. The proof of this, they say, is the very fact that no one is ever allowed into the inner workings of Minting, the Belinyu power station.⁽⁷⁸⁾

Such energy is held to last for several decades. The babies in question are assumed to be kidnapped on commission by convicts serving life sentences. They are entrusted with money to leave behind as recompense in the houses from which the babies are stolen, and by doing the authorities this favour they are thought to be pardoned. There are no specific times when these kidnappings take place; "the important thing is the need" (pokok ada perlu).

Naturally, these babies will be (though very young) usually at least a week or more old. It is even better for the authorities to ally themselves with persons working in maternity wards. They have the opportunity to give a newborn baby a lethal injection and then tell the mother that her baby just died and that it had been impossible to save.

Better still is to kidnap a heavily pregnant woman, chop her head off, open her abdomen and take the foetus out. The younger the baby, the more power it is thought to harness.

But infants are not only held to be essential for producing electricity. The skulls and hearts of babies and small children are believed to be used for strengthening large engineering projects (notably bridges); much as armoured concrete is sturdier than regular concrete. Several Lom offered the former bridge at Baturusa (near Sungailiat, the island's capital) as an example. It had regularly had to be replaced every two or three years. The one in use today, however, has stood for decades because the Japanese engineer designing it blended the skulls and hearts of babies into the cement.

Children may also be kidnapped by 'babysitters' who sweet-talk their way into people's houses and trick unsuspecting mothers not to worry, coaching them to just go ahead and take that bath in the stream they want. By the time the mother is back both baby and 'sitter' are gone. Another technique is to drive around in residential areas or between villages after school in cars without license plates and snatch a lone child on its way home.

According to the Lom this practice was initiated by the Dutch who proclaimed no responsibility for stray cats, dogs, and chickens between 4 pm and 6 am — for three months of the year. "Of course they didn't mention children, but everyone knew that they were meant as well."⁽⁷⁹⁾ Rather than having been discontinued after the liberation from colonialism this practice, to the dismay of the villagers, has escalated: the danger which used to last only for three months a year is now perennial and there is no warning given.

Interestingly, the Lom have no idea how a pair of dead babies can supply electricity. "Paling pintar, propesor itek!" ("Extremely clever, that professor!"). But they say that babies born elsewhere are more potent than those born on Bangka — i.e. when used on the island — and children from Bangka are likewise preferred 'abroad' (i.e. on other islands).

My informants contended that the blame rests primarily neither on the kidnappers, nor on the government, but on those responsible for the children; their parents or whoever else in custody. The morale of this tale is therefore that children should at no time be left with babysitters unknown to the parents or walk about alone. What impact such tales have psychologically is difficult to speculate on, but common sense may allow us to infer that it is unrelated neither to the Lom's self-proclaimed general fear (ketakutan) of strangers nor to their widespread unresponsiveness to governmental modernisation efforts.

7. Spells

Magical spells, whether protective or curative, are in many societies exclusively known and controlled by one or very few persons often referred to by the English glosses shaman or medicine man. Not only do lay members of these societies depend on the specialists for whatever treatment they need, they are also frequently barred from learning the techniques and, moreover, have no influence on decisions as to whom the magical knowledge is to be shared with or passed on to. Furthermore, while shamans often occupy positions entailing political influence or power this is, I think, empirically contingent; depending largely (as I noted in chapter one) on the relative status ascribed to the knowledge in question. There are three Malay terms for 'shaman': bomoh (or bomor), pawang, and dukun (the two former widely used in Peninsular Malaysia, the latter mostly in the Malay-speaking parts of the Indonesian Archipelago and therefore employed here). The Malay dukun is also, more often than not, skilled in concocting medicines, giving massages, etc. A few Lom were, when I asked, acknowledged to be dukun (or rather dukon, which is the Lom pronunciation of the term). But these persons appear not to accept that term for themselves. Furthermore, there seems to be no consensus as to who are 'real' dukon and who merely know a few spells and, importantly, no one is dukon to the exclusion of being producer — in the straightforward economic sense.⁽⁸⁰⁾

Among the Lom many individuals know the same few spells, not considered very potent, a small number of persons know a large number of spells, several of which are held to be very powerful (some even fatal) and still others know a few spells which are known by perhaps only one or two other members of society. Importantly, knowledge of spells does not confer 'political' authority on individuals.

Spells are used to cure someone (notably from respiratory ailments and unspecified fevers, headaches, or other common ailments attributed either to the disturbing influences of minor spirits or to 'the wind' (angin)); to lure someone (amorously); and to protect oneself (or others) and one's gardens/fields from natural and supernatural dangers (sometimes rather combatively). The Lom word for 'spell' is tangkel (the verbal form of which is nangkel), although the term jampi is well known, too.

The Lom say that if someone who has acquired 'effective magic' (ilmu masin) goes 'abroad' his powers are strengthened. For a Lom this would mean to leave Bangka and stay for some time in e.g. Sumatra or Java, possibly it suffices to leave Tanah Mapur. The reason they give is that Bangka mentinak punya ('is female'); women are polluted, men (i.e. 'other lands') are clean.

7.1 Learning spells

There is an important difference between those spells that descend directly either through one's matri- or patriline (ikut keturun) and those that are learnt from more distant relatives, or even friends. The first kind may be applied universally, the second only within one's own household — but bearing in mind the inclusive character of affinal relationships (cf. chapter eight) spells learnt may conceivably be used for, say, one's parents-in-law too. Moreover, keturun spells may be an exchange item in that individuals belonging to other households generally offer something in return for a spell being said for their benefit. While this by definition has an economic side to it I can assert that its impact is rather negligible. The Lom, whether they be spell-knowers or not, agree that remunerations for services rendered should be kept to a reasonable minimum. One man, for example, who is the only Lom in his settlement to know a spell against back-ache⁽⁸¹⁾ never receives, in return for his services, more than half a kg or a kg of rice. Therefore, while the statement above — that 'patients' generally offer something in return for being helped — holds true, this may very well take the form of (and thus be indistinguishable from) common hospitality as the spells themselves are often given — in an already established social context — in return for regular hospitality already enjoyed.

It is not uncommon for someone to ask a friend or acquaintance for a spell. But such knowledge is not imparted with in a light manner: "jén sebasing-basing" (not casually/haphazardly). The personality of the one who asks will be subject to some scrutiny by whoever holds the spell; a quick-tempered person is more likely to be disqualified than a patient one. And spells that are already rather commonly known are more easily obtained than those that are known by a few.

I turn now to the procedures for learning (megang, lit. 'hold') a spell that a Lom has had the fortune to be introduced to. While spells differ in their applicability, as I noted above, depending on whether they are descended or have been transmitted, there appears to be no corresponding difference in the rites that must be performed for appropriating them. This is not to say that all spells are appropriated through identical ritual actions. A number of spells have unique learning (and maintenance) practices associated with them.

In the very early morning (4 a.m.) of the three days around the full moon (i.e. the 14., 15., and 16. days of the Chinese lunar calendar) one goes to a brook or river and before anything else recites the spell. Then one takes a bath containing the juice of a charmed lime (jeruk tipis). This means that one may not take a bath by submerging oneself (rendam); one must pour water over one's body with a scoop of some sort (siram) and lime is squeezed over the water. Significantly, the Lom never bathe this way under normal circumstances: all baths are taken by stepping into small rivers and (natural) pools and thus the very bath is a culturalised and non-ordinary way of doing something otherwise perfectly ordinary. The lime should be thrown away into the flowing water (air beranyut) after use. Then, until the sun has set, one must speak to no-one and keep walking.

My chief source on this matter prefers to walk about in the forest because this way one is less likely to encounter other people and thus be tempted to talk. It is further prohibited to smoke, eat or drink anything, and neither is one allowed to swallow one's saliva. Except the prohibition against speaking these abstentions are parallel to the ones pertaining to the Muslims during their month of fasting⁽⁸²⁾ (Ramadan) and serve, it seems, to effectively seal one's body from being invaded by outside forces. At sunset one takes an evening bath and afterwards a meal is allowed: Three handfuls (kapel) of rice (the 'handfuls' pertain to husked, uncooked rice) must be eaten prior to smoking one cigarette. Then one is allowed to eat one's belly full — but only on rice. No side-dish (lauk) is permitted.

This regime is observed for three days. One (lunar) month later the same three-day rituals are repeated, as they are during the next. Someone aspiring to learn ilmu (magic), therefore, must persevere for a total of nine days, to ensure the efficacy of the spell.

Now, if for any reason the rules outlined above are violated (and one still wants to learn the spell) one must go through the same procedures again. But this time three days for three months is not sufficient. One must perform the monthly three-day ritual for nine months, or a total of twenty-seven days. Again, therefore, whoever makes a mistake has to pay for it.

Spells fall into two groups. Some are 'light', others are 'heavy', and there are two differences between learning one and the other. The first is that when one is learning the former a morning meal is allowed. The second is that one may also stay at home sleeping if one wants to. Both are prohibited to the person attempting to make the 'heavy' magic stick.

Certain spells are considered very powerful and should be practised only in cases of extreme danger. About one of these spells I was told that if forced to use it more than seven times during a day, one must 'reinforce' it by using a charmed lime.⁽⁸³⁾ This lime should be held over a colonial 2 Rp coin, the coin should be imbued with the smoke from garu (agila wood), the juice of the lime immediately smeared three times over one's hair, and the fruit thrown away into running water. The regular procedures to make it masin (efficacious) are insufficient in the case of this particular spell; afterwards one must write the spell on a sheet of paper, burn it, and rub the ashes on one's lips. It is tulak (potentially dangerous or 'mad') in that if it is dealt with carelessly it may turn back on the practitioner. It should be imparted with to others with the utmost care. Whoever learns this spell must learn it as the only one at the time.

A linguistic point I should note is that some of the spells are expressed in a language which might best be described as 'informal Indonesian' (or Malay), some are in 'Bangkanese', others are in the Lom vernacular, and yet others are in a 'mixed' language. That the practitioner understands each word of a spell is not a prerequisite for its efficacy. This is secured by 1) saying it right (i.e. no changes must be made in it) and 2) learning it right. Spells are never said out loudly and clearly. They are typically said over rice or water that become vessels temporarily carrying the forces envisaged to be constantly contained in the person who activates them by reciting the words. The rice is then eaten and the water is either drunk or applied to one's skin. Alternatively the spell is mumbled over the patient's body. Imitation spitting usually accompanies recitals of spells.

The three spells I include here are not, I think, of an exclusive nature. While probably not all Lom know them I am fairly certain that many do: If someone knows a spell at all it is likely to be one against the influence of pedaré (cf. chapter three). I reproduce them in the original and provide my own translation and a brief commentary immediately afterwards.

The last text to be included here is not classified as a spell (tangkel) proper; it is a divination used in order to ascertain the identity of a troubling spirit and has no curative or protective qualities in its own right.

I shall not attempt to analyse the texts in detail but a general concluding comment is called for. Endicott notes that "a substantial proportion of most spells consists of pleas, commands, and threats designed to persuade or coerce the essence to do the magician's bidding" (1970: 131). This observation pertains also to the Lom spells. However, he also states that they are often backed by material offerings, something that is not the case in any of the spells I came across. He further states that the spirits are often ranked, observes that "this ranking almost amounts to a class system" (op. cit.: 119), that the social and political distinctions among jin parallel those among men, and contends that the superior-inferior relationship thus implicated derives from the fundamental class divisions in traditional Malay society (op. cit.: 120). While this may be accurate as far as Peninsular Malaysia is concerned it can equally plausibly be argued that the ranked relations are modelled on a possibly even more pervasive feature of Malay culture, viz. the relative ranking of kindred — siblings in particular. This issue is one of my central concerns in chapter eight, but some evidence supporting my interpretation has already been presented: the account of Gajah Mada's 'ethnic' offspring. As will be recalled, the Dutch (the colonial power) descend from the first-born. The Lom prophet was the second-born, the Malay prophet his younger brother. Thus — despite the fact that Muslim Malays have doubtless ruled Bangka both before and after the colonial period (first through the Palembang Sultan and later through the post-liberation national government) — they are not considered superior to the Lom.

A final point which may be taken to support my contention is that among the Lom themselves there has been and is little or no differentiation of individuals in what one could call 'class' or political terms. The very fact that their magicians and other specialists are also without exception 'generalists' (i.e. they live by the labour of their own household members) underscores this.

8. Miscellaneous

Formerly the prohibitions were numerous — or, more accurately: formerly the numerous prohibitions were more uniformly adhered to. The 'Good Life' of earlier times consisted essentially in that it was one of strict discipline (ketertiban) which led to firm conviction and certainty (keyakinan).

Some of these prohibitions are: never urinate in the direction or vicinity of a place where a sing se (SM/I: sing sang, Chinese healer) habitually prays. Almut, Sulin and Alim agreed that transgressing this taboo might have fatal consequences; they knew of such cases.

Never whistle inside the house because it may cause the rice to cease growing. Whistling is also prohibited at sea where it is feared that it might make the wind stronger.

Unhusked rice (padi't) and cooked rice (bu:k) are likened to life and death. One must never place a container of bu:k on top of a sack of padi't. That might 'kill' the padi't which, potentially, is the seed for next year's crop. To place tobacco on top of a sack of rice is also pantang.

When building a house one must take care to use not only novel materials: the roof, in particular, must be constructed with some atap in addition to tiles or corrugated iron.

A house struck by lightning must be 'cleaned' my making a small bonfire inside it. This is called buang hantu petér ('getting rid of the lightning-ghost'). Furthermore, no wood from a tree struck by lightning may be used for house building because (as has already been proven) it will attract lightning.⁽⁸⁸⁾)

What it means not to recognise prohibitions is exemplified by the proverbial lack of stamina displayed by Chinese-owned hunting dogs. Among the Lom, meat procured through the assistance of dogs may not be cooked with coconut oil, vinegar, or soy sauce. Disregard of the prohibition will have an adverse effect on the hunting ability of the dog — it will be 'burnt out' after a year or so.

Land was 'originally' divided into what may grow and what may not grow in an area. After this became known (in time immemorial) one should not attempt to cultivate crops not originally meant to survive in a given area. Thus it was/is pesumpah to plant coffee and clove — both of them important Indonesian export crops — in Bangkanese soil. Nor should one attempt to cultivate fields of wet rice (sawah) on the island.⁽⁸⁹⁾ If plants not allotted to the land manages to live and thrive it means that the primeval order is no longer valid and the end of the world is obviously imminent.

But the taboos are not only related to what may be planted. The exchange of products is also strictly regulated. Selling rice, for example, is likened to selling children.⁽⁹⁰⁾ Selling timber is likened to selling bones: what remains then is just isi't (flesh) and it becomes impossible to move about. Selling akar (lianas; roots) is likened to selling urat (sinews); the simplest movements become impossible. Nowadays, after "the Indonesians took over" all kinds of things are sold. Gajah Mada (Orang Kuasé; God) generally prohibited the sale of sumber hidup ('sources of life' or 'life essentials' such as rice and timber (it should be remembered that a prerequisite for swidden farming is the presence of burnable timber). Tin and pepper (Bangka's primary commodities for centuries) are exempted from the taboo. The island was not designed to supply others with 'life essentials'. Bangka, as will be remembered from chapter three, is female, while Java is male (although within Bangka women are Javanese and men Buginese), and it is the duty of the male to be the breadwinner — also in the cosmic order of things. When the President of the Republic of Indonesia proclaims that the country must berasal diri (i.e. not be dependent on others) this is interpreted as an impetus to accelerate commercial exploitation of the vital sources of life (sumber hidup). The result of this is that today's parental generation will be happy, but only, the Lom hold, at the cost of the well-being of future generations. Our children, and their children again, will 'sink' (kelebu) and die — even more drastically, the island itself will sink.

When there is war there is no trade and when there is no trade there is no food. Trade means peace and a steady supply of food. These are not abstract Lom exhortations on 'political science' but statements reflecting the experiences of those adults who lived through the Japanese occupation. Thus, because the presidential decree is interpreted by one Lom as a proclamation of 'un-dependence', this is viewed with suspicion — and a fear, even a warning, of imminent war.

A bachelor, Jumin, told me a story he had heard from his mother's mother. Gunung (Mount) Cundung, which he said means 'the precipitous' or 'jagged' mountain, is a name which on the face of it is paradoxical since it is a well-defined, rounded mountain.⁽⁹¹⁾ But there is a hole, or a scar in it; hidden, and in the depths of this hole is the mas kijang (gold deer), one male and one female — shining like light.⁽⁹²⁾ But in reality this is a mysterious, or esoteric thing (barang gaib) so those who look for the treasure — and there have been many — by digging for it will inevitably fail. The closer one thinks one is getting to it, it will recede yet again. Jumin likened it to groping for something in a mirror: what you see in front of you is in reality behind you; it will always elude you.⁽⁹³⁾

Jumin thought this a very good story (I like it too!) and said, "the stories of old people of ancient times are indeed true" (cerité orang tua kuno memang benar). The elders never lied. They got their learning through the stories they were told, they led a physically arduous life but a life with reasonable (layak) rewards, and the truths of the stories which descended from earlier generations were demonstrated and verified through people's interactions with nature. Similarly, the appropriateness of the prohibitions (which used to be legion) was evidenced through relations with one's physical and social environment.

As examples Jumin cited the prohibition against whistling after dark and another taboo I have not so far mentioned: that against pen and paper (daun selait ng rang sebatang). He said that the reason for these prohibitions was that parents wanted to control their children, in particular their daughters who were never allowed to stray from the house and its immediate environs. A bachelor wishing to meet a maiden would therefore perforce have to do it publicly: in the presence of the girl's parents and siblings — thus minimising the possibility of illicit affairs. To circumvent this restriction one would have to give the object of one's desire some kind of message — preferably in coded form (cf. section one in this chapter) — about one's intentions, notably time and place for a rendez-vous. Obviously a most practical solution would be to write a note (using pen and paper), another to whistle a signal. In other words, the purpose of the prohibition against pen and paper was the regulation of sexual relationships (or rather, perhaps, the suppression of premarital sex). To respect the prohibition meant that one adhered to custom and simultaneously, probably more importantly, that one acquiesced to parental authority.

To disregard the prohibition, according to Jumin, would effect difficulties in the pemikirkan (a word-construct not in my dictionaries, but probably meaning something like 'ideational orientation'; cf. SM/I pemikiran) of one's parents — more likely it would mean protest entailing conflict. Secondly, he said, to break one dictum would facilitate breaking others — all the way down to political involvement — "bahaya!" (dangerous!)

While Jumin's thoughts on the consequences of taboo transgressions are pertinent and informative I should like to draw attention to yet a third consequence — which possibly has even more far-reaching impact than the ones he was concerned with: To proscribe the use of pen and paper is in effect to prescribe illiteracy. And it is on account of this proscription that it is taboo to build schools on Tanah Mapur. This taboo is still very much in effect: When the authorities built the proyék in Air Abik in the mid 1970s they could not call the school building a school (sekolah); they had to call it an education building (gardu pendidikan) in the — vain, as it turned out — hope that villagers would send their children to receive instruction (cf. appendix III). And when Wakim had decided he would work as a teacher (extraordinary in itself) he first asked if he could raise the school building halfway between Pejam and Mendulang (for practical reasons because the houses lie spaced along the beach in both directions from this point). He had been told that he could try. Three days later lightning struck and the barely begun building was burnt to cinders. It was impressed on me several times by orthodox Lom that reading and writing were for the Dutch, Malays, Javanese, and Chinese — but not for the Bangkanese in general and Lom in particular. The fact (as just noted) that even the present headman, who is not a Muslim, attempted to set up a school on Tanah Mapur indicates to orthodox Lom that times are irrevocably changing — to the worse.⁽⁹⁴⁾

Umbrellas are pantang; it implies "pulling the sky down". Shoes — including the kind of inexpensive plastic sandals millions of Indonesians use daily — are also prohibited. Endicott suggests that the "prohibition on wearing shoes or sarongs and on carrying umbrellas in mines and at fishing stakes may exist because these too strongly recall civilisation to be ignored by the spirits" (1970: 116). While this may be true in the peninsular context (and I have no reason to believe that it is not) I think a similar interpretation in the Lom case would miss the point. In the Lom case the prohibitions are less in order to propitiate the semangat (in whatever state of condensation) than in order to preserve cultural difference. It appears that the severest Lom prohibitions — including those on literacy, houses of worship and irrigation farming — are on objects and practices associated with, if not symbolising, other ethnic groups. Insofar as the prohibited categories recall civilisation to the Lom it is a civilisation of the Other. An analysis of the import and meaning of Lom prohibitions must therefore take account of the Lom insistence that balance between the major social groups of the world (one of which is the Lom) hinges on cultural consolidation (seen from an internal perspective) and non-permeation (from an external one).

I noted above (in the section on food prohibitions) that various dicta of Adat Mapur are no longer valid for a Lom moving permanently outside Tanah Mapur. When this is viewed together with the fact that magical powers are assumed to be strengthened by travelling in 'other lands' we get a picture that at first sight appears contrary to the one Berger sketches when he discusses the situations arising

"...when different religious systems are in pluralistic competition with each other... For the individual, existing in a particular religious world implies existing in the particular social context within which that world can retain its plausibility. Where the nomos [meaningful order, OHS] of individual life is more or less co-extensive with that religious world, separation from the latter implies the threat of anomy. Thus travel in areas where there were no Jewish communities was not only ritually impossible but inherently anomic (that is, threatening an anomic disintegration of the only conceivable 'correct' way of living) for the traditional Jew, as travel outside India was for the traditional Hindu. Such journeys into darkness were to be shunned not only because the company of pork-eaters or cow-defilers caused ritual impurity but, more importantly, because their company threatened the purity of the Jewish or Hindu world — that is, its subjective reality or plausibility. (Berger 1969: 49-50)

There can be no doubt that Berger's observations are generally correct and the question to be answered, therefore, is why they do not obtain among the Lom. It can, of course, be argued that Adat Mapur is not in a true sense a religion. It lacks a coherently expressed and unified body of knowledge (a theology), the existence of ritual specialists is dubious, there is no concept of the sacred, etc. But dispensing with the question this way is unsatisfactory because, as I have tried to show, it is clear that the Lom conceptualise Adat Mapur as a world-view counterpoised to world religion(s) and precisely in that sense on a par with them. The key to the answer is provided, I should argue, by the fact that the Lom do not compete. To them nothing is gained if Muslims convert to Adat Mapur, their aim is to preserve their adat on their own land and by implication other groups' adat on theirs. Thus Berger's observations are in no way refuted by the Lom case; on the contrary, his discussion is premised precisely on "religions in pluralistic competition with each other".

However, the Lom no longer live in a world where this wishful mutual 'non-involvement' obtains. While there exists at present no serious threat to their adat and way of life from any particular religious community as such, the impact of the government's housing projects is likely to become deeper and extend also into ideational realms. Thus, what has until recently been possible for the Lom ever since they became differentiated from the rest of the Bangka Malays, viz. to keep to themselves and if at all threatened retreat further into the forest, is no longer feasible. They are on the very brink of becoming encompassed by the modern nation-state. Whether this imminent incorporation will take the form of integration or assimilation is presently difficult to predict. What is clear, however, is that a situation analogous to the one Berger discusses is likely to emerge: Some kind of confrontation between the government's interests as proclaimed in its Panca Sila ideology (all Indonesian nationals belong to one of the four world religions) and the Adat Mapur requirements seems unavoidable. The government is not very likely to tolerate the continued existence of an ethnic group prescribing, among other things, illiteracy for its members. How the Lom will act in this re-contextualised setting, precluding as it does their established strategy of fleeing, I am not prepared to state with certainty. If evidence from the Pejam settlement (where children at the termination of my fieldwork were eagerly attending school) is anything to judge by we may speculate that the Lom will gradually transform into the kind of Indonesians the government wishes for and in the process discard the admonitions of the elders. If, on the other hand, this proves incompatible with the practicalities of life as perceived by the Lom (e.g. labour requirements in swiddens and animal husbandry) a situation as is found in the Air Abik settlement might develop: a further refinement of the strategy of non-involvement.

9. Concluding comment

While it may be difficult to extract a common feature pertaining to all the rules informing or modifying behaviour discussed above it would appear that an essential aspect of many of them are their essentially ethnic complexion. By following the rules one maintains one's Lom identity — and by transgressing them one becomes a threat to social — and ultimately cosmic — order. This pertains most obviously, perhaps, to the prohibitions involving animals. These rules simultaneously differentiate the Lom from the Muslim Malays (with whom the Chinese might have confused them on account of their language and physical appearance) and from the Chinese (with whom the Malays might have grouped them on account of their partiality towards foods haram to the Muslims). The prohibition against pen and paper similarly sets the Lom off from their neighbours: The Muslim Malays and the Chinese (and, of course, the Dutch) are supposed to be literate — not the Lom. Both are fairly straightforward and almost classic examples of how groups tend to identify themselves in opposition to others. What the Lom say is, "rules are different here".

Finally, a further example of how the Lom link danger to strangers is provided by their account of how electricity is made. It is, I think, symptomatic that they blame parents, and not the strangers, for the alleged kidnappings. Erring individuals suffer, as I have demonstrated earlier, potentially far-reaching consequences, as do their consociates. And by extending this interpretation to encompass not only strangers as individuals but also as representatives of the violent Other — embodying possible cultural infringement reminiscent of the turbulent past — the preoccupations of the Lom seem to merge into the theme outlined in chapter one.

Chapter five — Life crises I: Birth, incision

This chapter deals with two life cycle events, one of which is inherent to all Lom, and one experienced by males only. The first is birth, the second is the male puberty rite. The first is central to the Lom, and the other — if not peripheral — at least perceived by them, as I shall argue, as being far less crucial. I proceed in a 'natural' order, beginning in section 1. with pregnancy and birth and go on to describe and analyse the puberty rite in section 2.

1. Pregnancy and birth

While I frequently discussed a variety of sexually related topics with casual and less casual Malay/Indonesian and ethnic Chinese acquaintances, Lom men appeared to find such issues embarrassing and consequently I never even attempted to discuss them with women. When (male) ethnic Chinese villagers, for example, sometimes alluded — visibly abhorred and amazed — to my self-imposed protracted celibacy and confessed that they themselves would not have survived sanely a week without sex, the Lom present would remain silent.

Now, after several summers of my early student years spent working in a variety of 'male' jobs where females in glossy magazines were routinely admired; after a previous year-long stay in a North African country where I had received the impression that Muslim men find women in various positions to be a superior subject of conversation; and after a brief visit to a Malaysian village en route to fieldwork where I had been positively interrogated on Scandinavian bed-manners I had come to the provisional conclusion that men — wherever their origins — had something in common. I was therefore somewhat surprised that my male Lom friends displayed little or no interest in man-to-man talk. For a long time I feared, as is perhaps always the case when anthropologists fail to obtain information on a certain subject, that my rapport with the Lom was sub-standard. By the time I left them, however, I felt certain that whatever the attitudes of Lom men to sexuality may be they are rarely, if ever, the subject of discussion, and that their attitudes to women in general is that they be respected (dihormati) as full, necessary, and complementary members of society.

With these introductory remarks I shall presently discuss pregnancy and birth.

1.1. Context

When a Lom wife becomes pregnant neither she nor her husband announces the fact to friends and fellow villagers and when her state becomes visible there is obviously little need to make a great fuss about it. There appears, in general, to be little interest between the households in the matter. I was never able to find out for certain the cause of the Lom's measured attitudes in this respect. But rather than interpreting them as expressing blatant indifference towards fellow villagers' affairs I believe it should be understood in the context of their more general attitude that sexually related matters are private matters, as I indicated above.

There are no restrictions on sexual intercourse after the wife has become pregnant; it continues to take place as long as the couple wants to. On the other hand it is anathema for a husband to have sexual intercourse with his wife while she is menstruating (nundek kotor); then he may not even sleep on the same ambén (multi-purpose bench) as she does. I do not believe that this explains why all proyék (government housing scheme) houses have at least two ambén. The Lom socialising pattern is arguably equally determining here: I have already noted (chapter four, section one) that the Lom, particularly the men, regularly visit each other in the evenings to talk, smoke tobacco, and drink tea, coffee, or alcohol. Often these visits last well into the night. Young children retire early to an adjoining room and their mother usually goes to sleep at the time her children do or soon thereafter. The ambén does not exist in Lom traditional houses. Rather, the entire floor is elevated about one metre above the ground. But the fact that two ambén (or, in the traditional houses, a minimum of two 'bedrooms') exist at least means that there is no need for husband or wife to sleep in separate houses while she menstruates.

Pregnancy is accompanied by neither food prohibitions nor — with one exception — prohibitions on behaviour. The single item of behaviour proscribed while pregnant is to sit in a doorway. Doing so is held to cause a difficult/prolonged childbirth (susah beranak). Further, there are, I was assured, only two acts the expecting mother ought to perform in order to ensure an easy childbirth: (1) remove the stitches of something one has sewn while pregnant and (2) extract some/any nails which have been hammered into a wall or beam of one's house by either husband or wife during the pregnancy. Although these nails are obviously made from iron — and iron plays a significant symbolic role during a late stage of the delivery, as we shall soon see — it seems that the significance — and this goes for the removal of the stitches as well — is one of sympathetic signature: Extraction facilitates expulsion.

The (very slight) modifying impact the above rules have on the behaviour of pregnant women aside, women in any stage of their pregnancy may, and do, participate in all the economic and household activities they normally engage in: planting, weeding, wood-collecting, cooking, etc. Their role in production is thus in no way curtailed; they even carry very heavy burdens until delivery without fear they might miscarry.⁽⁹⁵⁾

As soon as a pregnancy successfully terminates, however, and also if a miscarriage occurs, a period of taboo, or prohibition (pantang) sets in. This period, called repas (which also means 'brittle', 'fragile') lasts for 44/45 days; after the birth of a girl/ boy respectively.⁽⁹⁶⁾ It is characterised by seclusion of the new mother in her home (which does not preclude others visiting her), daily herbal baths with heated water prepared for her by her husband, sexual abstention, and prohibition against eating certain foods as well as against productive/economic efforts.

If a miscarriage occurs too early in the pregnancy for the sex of the foetus to be determined the repas will last 45 days so as to ensure that one does not make the terrible mistake of cutting the period short. What might happen in that case became clear when I asked village midwives how they deal with breech deliveries (they answered that they find them extremely difficult to handle):

When the time came for Jamal's wife to give birth to a pair of twins the first baby was delivered without problems. The second, however, lay in a jack-knifed position with spread legs and could not be reached. The delivery lasted three days. Both babies lost their lives and their mother was totally spent. She made a remarkably speedy recovery, though. After having rested for some three weeks she felt able to resume horticultural work. Shortly thereafter she fell ill and died. She had not heeded the adat, I was told, prescribing rest and (comparative) seclusion and she had suffered the consequences.

Births, without exception, take place in people's homes and are attended to by what for the time being I shall refer to simply as village midwives. While the hospital in Belinyu, run by the government controlled tin mining company UPTB (less than an hour away by motorised vehicle) does accept patients who are not employed by the company, there are three reasons why the Lom are disinclined to seek assistance there. Firstly, it is comparatively expensive: a fee of at least Rp 2000 per day plus the cost of possible medication: a lot more than the remuneration the village midwives expect for their services which typically equals some Rp 2000 but which are usually paid in kind, rather than in cash. Secondly, tin has undergone a slump on the world market, the company's revenue has therefore become drastically reduced, and the hospital is currently rumoured (by Lom, Muslim Malays, and Chinese alike) to use sub-standard medication because the better medicines are too expensive. These two considerations would probably have sufficed for the Lom to avoid the hospital, but a third reason is even more important: The hospital is believed to steal babies. I have already examined this issue in some detail in chapter four, here I merely note that the assumption that babies are abducted — and worse, killed, before their bodies/energies are exploited for various economic purposes — strongly motivates Lom women against giving birth in hospital.

Returning now to the village midwives these, it should be noted, may be of either sex. Few, if any, refer to themselves as 'midwives' (dukun beranak) but for the sake of convenience I shall do so here.⁽⁹⁷⁾ Importantly, a man may, if he so wishes, assist in the birth of his own children. But he may not cut the umbilical cord. The reason for this, the Lom say, is that the person receiving the chicken typically given to the person who does this cannot be a member of the household giving it. As far as male 'midwives' (and men who know spells) are concerned they may not eat food cooked by menstruating women. This, the Lom say, is because the ilmu ('supernatural' knowledge; primarily spells) would become campa (SM/I: tawar) or kurang masin (lit. 'unsalted'), meaning 'flat', 'insipid'. Wak Mia and Cakam (the former a female, the latter a male midwife) both emphasised that they consider it inappropriate that the term dukun beranak be used about themselves. They are only 'helpers', they said; "we want to help out" (kita mau tolong-menolong). They explained that assuming the title 'dukun' (even accepting to be called one) might result in jealousy (iri) — leading, presumably, to icy neighbourly relations.

Wak Mia said that a certain Lom, presently residing in the predominantly Chinese neighbouring settlement Pesaren, is a dukun in the proper sense of the word. She charges Rp 8000 per birth she attends to. A similar arrangement, according to her, obtains both in Tuing (a small, ethnically mixed settlement) and Kampung Mapur (again chiefly Chinese) — indicating, probably, an increased monetisation in areas that are heavily influenced by ethnic Chinese. She was visibly indignant at this state of affairs. For her own part, she said, all she asked for was a chicken and a lump of dian (bees-wax), the fumes of which are considered to help clear up 'foggy' eye-sight. If people were to offer her one or two thousand Rupiah instead she would accept it — she would not mind: "People are poor here."

She made the distinction between 'here' (the Lom settlements) and 'there' (the Chinese/mixed settlements) saying that here anyone who knew how to assist would do so when called for — whereupon she named some five women and an equal number of men, none of whom is termed dukun. When I commented that I thought this sounded like a good arrangement she shrugged and said "nta:" ("I don't know") as if she did not wish to come across as someone passing judgement on the practices of others. However, a short while earlier she had been talking about the nearly impossible situation which would exist were people to rely on a dukun beranak: On this side of Gunung Cundung there are only two persons (both of whom are women) she referred to by this term; one of them resides in Tengkalat, the other spends most of her time in Air Duku (on the far side of Gunung Cundung) and the rest of it in Benak. To reach any of them would take a minimum of one and a half hours to which must be added the return trip which would take longer considering that both women are grandmothers several times over. And a final point is that the latter of these women does not want to practise any more.

The midwives/helpers said that they would often get a prickly sensation in the centre of the palm of their hands and/or the sole of their feet — or perhaps a twitching eye — this way they would be warned of an impending delivery. In the absence of such physically perceptible premonitions they might instead feel an irresistible urge to return from their fields or wherever else they might be at the time. After such unmistakable warnings there would be a matter of hours or one night — at the outside — before the call to assist would arrive.

As an attempt to present the customs surrounding birth among the Lom in a way offering the reader an idea of some of the variations with which they are actually practiced I shall proceed immediately to give a detailed account of one delivery.⁽⁹⁸⁾ This will be followed by comparative material from two other births I attended.

1.2. Delivery

Description

Alim, Almut, Gundim, and I were talking in my house when Alim's son from his first marriage came to say that Akum, Alim's present wife, was sakit perut (had 'stomach pains', i.e. was in labour).

When we arrive at Alim's house the midwife/'helper', Siani, is already present. We all have some betel and cigarettes, we talk, and Alim makes coffee. Because the sun set a couple of hours ago we have brought my torch and two hurricane lamps and an extra bottle of kerosene in order that the midwife see better. We make ourselves comfortable on the ambén and prepare for a long wait. But we have hardly had our coffees when Gundim is called into the adjoining room by Siani, squatting in front of Akum who is reclining with raised knees on straw mats spread out on top of the ambén. Gundim positions himself against the wall (on Akum's left side) and starts to massage her abdomen with downwards movements. Two or three minutes later the baby is born. From Akum there is not a sound except heavy breathing.

The baby is left to itself on the straw mat, screaming, while Siani busies herself twisting the umbilical cord, gently tugging it. Gundim continues the abdominal massage in order to expel the placenta. Meanwhile Alim has been fetching a couple of buckets of water and heated some of it, which he brings into the room — barely glancing at his wife and the newborn.⁽⁹⁹⁾ Some five minutes later the placenta is released, to Siani's obvious satisfaction. Until now she has hardly looked at the baby except to determine its sex, and when the baby screams she mimics the sound, screaming good-naturedly back at it.

Alim brings seven pieces of bark string (tali terap), each about 25 cm. long. Siani examines each of them carefully and selects three that she proceeds to tie around the umbilical cord. The four remaining pieces are to be thrown away. She tries to cut the loose ends of string with a pair of rusty scissors Alim has brought her, but they are too dull and she uses a machete instead: She then places the metal handle of the machete over the baby's thighs (the baby yelling out at what must be a pretty cold touch) and uses it as a cutting-board, severing the umbilical cord with a sharpened piece of split bamboo. The stump of umbilical cord is then smeared with asam Jawa (fermented tamarind, a much used condiment). I hold a flashlight for her to see what she is doing.

When this has been taken care of she picks up the baby, telling me it is kotor (dirty). Akum says she has a 100 Rupiah coin on the shelf above the door. Gundim fetches it and tosses it into the washbasin Alim has brought. Siani washes the newborn all over — an attempt is also made to remove the grease on the scalp — while Gundim rummages in a cardboard box I gave to Alim a few days ago. Finally he finds two minute pieces of cloth that the midwife proceeds to wrap around the baby. After thus having been bathed and swathed the baby is put next to the mother. A length of bark rope is tied around Akum's waist. The 100 Rupiah coin stays in the basin until the mother's post partum period is over (44/45 days; girl/boy respectively).

The barang kotor, 'dirty things' (placenta with umbilical cord attached, blood-stained sarung and straw mat) remain in a corner of the ambén until morning. At dawn Alim carries the bundle, at arm's length, to the door and kicks it forcibly into the front yard.

Alim does not sleep at all this night. As the most pressing requirements of both baby and mother now have been attended to, he fetches more water and heats some of it for his wife's first of many post partum herbal baths. A heavy scent of lemongrass pervades the house and he pours a couple of liters of the boiling liquid into a bucket, adds cold water until it is pleasantly warm and carries it to the bedroom where his wife splashes herself while sitting on the ambén. He also boils some rice for her first (very light) post partum meal.

Akum's mother has slept in the kitchen with the other two children. In the morning she makes coffee for Alim, Gundim and myself. For Akum's warm baths, three times a day, for the following 44 days Alim is obliged to fetch three kinds of plants: serai bugur (lemongrass), kecapé (Sandoricum indicum, Cav.?), and mengguas (Alpina Galanga). This is supposed to make the bau melahir (smell of birth) disappear.

1.3. Variation in birth practices

While the two other births I attended did not deviate substantially from the one just described — at all three, for example, both male and female 'helpers' were present — there were some added elements and minor differences which may be of some significance. On a general note, I was told that the bamboo knife with which the umbilical cord is to be cut must always, before it is used, be campa bisé ('ridden of danger/ power'; 'blunted'; 'cleansed').⁽¹⁰⁰⁾

For example, after one successful delivery the midwife, Wak Mia, brought the severed umbilical cord briefly to the lips of the newborn and brushed them lightly. Later she gave the six years old brother of the newborn a metre or so of bark string in which she had just made seven knots and told him something I did not catch. The boy darted off and was back soon afterwards whereupon the midwife proceeded to say a spell over it. At first I thought that she had just sent the boy away to get it 'charged' (in lack of a better English word) and could not understand — or at least I had never thought it possible — that one and the same vessel could be 'charged' by two different persons. The husband later told me that the baby's maternal grandfather, living less than a hundred metres away, had indeed been asked to say a spell over it but "he is unable to 'charge' the aforementioned string" (dia tidak sanggup jampi tali tadi). This string, called tali bangkeng, is tied around the mother's waist in order that the abdomen and uterus contract. The newborn gets a black thread tied around her waist — this is to prevent the baby's abdomen from bloating — for the baby neither knots (bukak) nor spells are necessary.

When Wak Mia was about to wash the newborn she waited until a rusty, four-inch nail was dropped into the water. Whether this nail substituted for a coin, or whether in the previous case it was the other way round, or if the use of different materials can be attributed to idiosyncrasies of the midwives must regrettably remain an unanswered question in empirical terms.⁽¹⁰¹⁾ But significantly coins — especially old silver coins minted by the Dutch colonial government — are employed at other auspicious moments too: at the time of death and while learning magical spells. This might suggest that the nail was indeed used in place of a coin. On the other hand, the protective effect attributed by Malays to iron against hantu is well documented (cf. e.g. Skeat, 1900: 274, 340), especially pertaining to newborn infants. Endicott, interpreting the use of iron to be what he calls a 'boundary strengthener' ensuring the integrity of the body writes:

"Gold and silver seem to have the same power in ritual as iron, though they are used considerably less frequently, undoubtedly because of their greater scarcity and economic value. ...as ritual materials (gold, silver, and iron) seem to form a set." (1970: 133-4)

My hunch is to agree with Endicott, although I have no evidence of the use of metals, precious or not, at times other than those already mentioned (Endicott cites some examples which have no counterpart among the Lom). At least there appears to be no reason to believe that silver and gold cannot be used among the Lom, at the appropriate times, the same way these are used among Peninsular Malays.

At the third birth toba-leaves (toba, or derris root, is used also as a fish stupefying agent) were briefly heated over a fire and wiped across the abdomen of the delivering mother who simultaneously was given thin slices of charmed betel and lime. In this case explicit measures against hantu and iblis were taken (possibly because the woman was, in her own words, tiang kebu; pregnant in the tenth month — possibly, too, because she had experienced violent birth pangs during the previous two days): a neighbour was busy mumbling spells near her head, over her body, out of the door, then out of the house.

Immediately after one birth the husband fetched a bottle of 'childbed wine' or Anggur Beranak — which had cost him Rp 750 — out of which his wife will have a thimbleful with every meal. A bottle like this will last her about a week, so 4 — 6 bottles will be consumed during the (post partum) period. So-called arak manis (a weak liqueur made from rice liquor, palm sugar, and glutinous rice) may serve the same purpose: to speed up the recovery of the mother by stimulating her circulatory system. This is not an indigenous practice but one the Lom have recently adopted from the Chinese, and should be regarded as entirely optional. The same husband showed me how he had arranged a so-called tali sekuak above the multi-purpose bench for his wife to hoist herself up by.

Optional, too, but conceivably of greater curative effect than the wine, is a particular form of post partum massage called detimpo. It is distinguishable from the massage designed to facilitate delivery (which is but a manipulation of the abdominal area) by being explicitly directed towards bones, joints and ligaments and it is offered by only one (male) midwife/helper, Cakam. According to him others are afraid that the woman might suffer a relapse (called kambu; an infection, he said). While massage techniques for a number of reasons can neither be comprehended nor evaluated by description (which therefore remains a highly unsatisfactory form of presentation) I include my observations on the detimpo here because it possibly prevents puerperal hypermobility either of the sacroiliac joint or in symphysis pubis, a rather more commonly suffered post partum affliction (among Western women, at least) than has been assumed until recently.

Cakam started off by peeling the skin off a couple of small onions (garlic may be used, too) which he put in a saucer together with a few spoonfuls of coconut oil and promptly proceeded to apply the oil to Ki's (the new mother) abdomen, massaging it firmly from the upper to the lower abdomen. Then he did her left calf and foot, then her right, then her right arm, then the left. Next he gave her a gentle leg massage from her feet to her hip. He stood up on the ambén, lifted his left foot with his right hand and said a spell over it, spat a couple of times at the sole of his foot and gave Ki three not-so-gentle kicks on her left buttock. This he followed up with a 'diagonal arm pull' (Ki all the time stretched out on her right side): her right arm was jerked backwards. All the while he and Ki were chatting, telling each other stories about other births — both of them obviously enjoying themselves.

This massage (which seemed to me to be performed almost too forcefully for comfort) is given three times: Immediately following parturition (I twice observed it performed before the newborn was cleaned); after seven days; and at the termination of the repas (the taboo period), i.e. 44/45 days hence.

As the birth described in full above happened at night the inherently social aspects of a birth were not immediately observable. But the other two births I attended took place in the full light of day and the number of congratulating visitors pouring in as soon as word got around that everything had gone well was striking. Curious children, too, both those of the new parents and those of neighbours, were freely allowed to enter the delivery room. This caused no comments from the adults.⁽¹⁰²⁾

After one of the births I expressed some surprise at the fact that during the first hour or so after having been born the baby hardly gave a sound. This appeared to be perceived as an insensitive remark: the midwife muttered something under her breath and exchanged glances with others present. Later, when she and I were alone, I asked her if my comment about how quiet the newborn was had been out of place, but her reply to this was only a non-committal shrugging mumble and I never learnt if in my ignorance I had been tactless or possibly something worse.

I return now to the account of the first birth which I left at a point where certain significant rites are performed:

Around 7 a.m. Alim, Siani, and I leave the village, walking towards Labu. The other two carry the barang kotor (placenta, bloodstained clothes and soiled plaited mat). Siani recites while walking: "Bang barat, bang barat, bang air, bang air." ("Westward, westward, towards water, towards water.") At a brook some five minutes' walk past the end of the village they stop. Alim steps into the water and begins to wash the bloodstained clothes. Siani takes the placenta in her hands and rinses it out, thoroughly. When every trace of blood has disappeared she places it on the straw mat. Then she, too, washes clothes. Paku and bong lai (an iron nail and wild ginger)⁽¹⁰³⁾ are placed inside the cleaned placenta and then Siani bows down, water reaching her thighs, searches with her hands on the bottom for a good place to put it. Afterwards she uses her feet to press it down firmly — at a point where the brook runs northwards. Finished, she says, "sudah buang" (already thrown away). The clothes are washed again, this time with a detergent, and rinsed.

This account contains the central elements of the obligatory observances immediately following a birth but certain of these practices vary depending on the habits of the midwife/helper. But what does not depend on the more or less personal dispositions of midwives is that the placenta (called kakak, or elder sibling) should be rinsed out in the running water (it must be running) of a brook. The practice of cleaning the placenta — an act that is always performed regardless of its subsequent treatment — prevents, the Lom say, the baby's abdomen from bloating (gendut). Great care is taken to remove all fleshy parts of the placenta and rinse the umbilical cord to the point where all that is left is membranous tissue.

After the placenta (which is the chief barang kotor, or 'dirty stuff', when it has been discharged from the mother's body) has been cleaned, however, there are three ways in which it may be disposed of: (1) buried under a rock in the same brook it has been cleaned in (as Siani did), (2) buried in the ground, and (3) suspended in a tree. The midwife decides which of these methods is to be used — neither the woman giving birth nor any member of her family has any say in that matter.

In the event that the placenta is buried in the ground or in a brook it is done so together with a piece of wild ginger with an iron nail stuck into it.⁽¹⁰⁴⁾ The reason for these two substances being buried together with the rinsed-out placenta is that the Lom (as Malays in general) conceive of it as the kakak (elder sibling) of the newborn. The elder sibling (placenta), the Lom say, offers its life to the younger sibling (child). Bonglai (or buli't, as the Lom call it) separates life from death; by disposing of the placenta together with wild ginger one therefore ensures that the life of the adik (the newborn 'younger sibling') is neither reclaimed nor disturbed by the kakak (the placenta or 'elder sibling'). If substances other than iron and wild ginger are used potentially harmful effects may ensue. Thus, if lime (kapok) is used in connection with the placenta it is thought to turn into a hantu (conceivably the pontianak⁽¹⁰⁵⁾ but I was given no name). The iron nail is held to frighten all 44 kinds of hantu and 44 kinds of iblis that the Lom say exist.

When the placenta has been buried there is nothing more to it — and all that is required is to find a spot near a brook. Pokoknya (the point is that) it leads to the sea — which they all eventually do, as one Lom remarked with a smile — i.e. the direction of the brook is not generally assumed to be of consequence.

The bloodstained clothes are, as I mentioned, washed thoroughly with a detergent, and both cutlass and straw mats should be rinsed until all traces of blood have disappeared. When the midwife returns to the village s/he takes care that the cutlass is not placed inside the rolled-up straw mat. This, the Lom say, would cause the baby to cry. That the cutlass must be visible at the time of return is, I would suggest, directly related to the fact that it is made from iron. Iron, as mentioned, generally frightens hantu and iblis and it also — as noted by Endicott (cf. above) — demarcates body boundaries (it "separates life from death", as the Lom state it) and thus it might be a visual 'message' to malevolent spirits to the effect that they not bother the inhabitants of the house to which the midwife returns.

The third method is undoubtedly the one which involves the most care and labour, not on the part of the midwife, but on that of the husband. He is the one who must check — daily — that the placenta, which has been put in a container (presently plastic bags may be used) tied to a branch, is not invaded by ants. If it is, the newborn is believed to be certain to fall fatally ill. According to yet another midwife this practice is risky (gawat) for another reason: if worms get into the placenta the baby's eyes will close up; the baby will go blind.

1.4. Post partum food prohibitions

I have mentioned earlier that among the Lom the new mother is subject to a number of food prohibitions.⁽¹⁰⁶⁾ My observations on this subject are far from conclusive (i.e. I neglected to trace the complications envisaged to arise from the consumption of the species in question) and not readily suited for comparison with other, more comprehensive treatments. Still, an article by Laderman on Peninsular Malay food prohibitions may serve as a frame of reference for my own brief remarks. Laderman notes that there are frequent discrepancies and occasional contradictions in what different people in a given community lists as proscribed foods in connection with illness and birth (1981: 470). Particularly this refers to the classifications of 'hot', 'neutral' and 'cold' foods. But rather than viewing this as a problem intrinsic to the data, she holds that it is

"...created by the investigators' expectation of finding a taxonomy with clear-cut boundaries, a classificatory system in which categories are forever frozen like flies in amber." (Ibid.)

Laderman links her analysis of the Malay hot/neutral/cold division to another Malay concept, that of bisa. Bisa foods are not toxic or poisonous but rather, according to her, intensifiers of disharmonies already present within the body (op. cit.: 484) and at the end of her article she writes:

"On its most abstract level (bisa) is a synonym for pure power, with no moral implications. On a more concrete level it refers to an intensifier which exacerbates whatever disharmonies are already present." (Op. cit.: 487)

It is clear that among the Lom both the hot/neutral/cold system and the concept of bisa exist, and they are both employed when the post partum foods are listed.

Thus, a number of the meats prohibited during the repas, notably larger deer (not the mousedeer), monkey, turtle, anteater (or pangolin) and at least two species of birds are 'hot', while prohibited fishes — which are all classified as inherently cold by the Lom — are bisa. These are first of all the so-called ikan duri (fish with spines, both venomous and non-venomous), but also the talang, feared to cause skin disease.

Corresponding to what Laderman's own observations (and those of other authors she cites) tell us, the Lom prohibitions are far from universal. Great inter-personal (or perhaps inter-familial) variation is allowed: Food prohibited to one new mother may well be permitted to another. Thus at least one woman did not have to heed the prohibition against ikan duri, probably one of the most pervasively prohibited foods to post partum women in the Malay world. The following list of prohibited foods (Table 5.1) can therefore only be taken as an approximation to what obtains in each particular instance. A great number of items regrettably remain unidentified. I also asked what foods were permitted to the new mother, and it is possible that this list is more universally applicable than the list of prohibitions.

When the repas is over the mother, as mentioned above, may receive her third and last detimpo massage. On this day a rite is held for the child, too.⁽¹⁰⁷⁾ The rite is the same for boys and girls. The head of the child is shaved (a small lock should remain) and the midwife who delivered the child carries it from the house to a small brook. The mother follows. The child is then washed in the running water and afterwards dipped, while in a horizontal position, into the running water three times. Afterwards there is a communal meal, usually a simple one, but preferably a chicken is slaughtered for the occasion.

1.5. Significance

I hope to have demonstrated that Adat Mapur, compared with customs pertaining to Peninsular Malays — as these have been described by Skeat (1900) and analysed by Endicott (1970), confers practically no restrictions on the activities of a pregnant woman. This obtains for her in her role as wife, as mother, and as (re)producer. As soon as a pregnancy terminates, however, a period of prohibitions or taboos (pantang) — lasting for some month and a half — sets in which curtail a number of her normal activities and limits them to be conducted within — or at least in the near vicinity of — the house.

Interestingly, my observations are rather in contrast to those King made among the Malo. He writes:

"Pregnancy is marked by a number of prohibitions which serve to mark the transitional status of a pregnant woman and her close family by separating them from everyday life". (1976: 196)

But because the labour of a pregnant woman is just as needed as that of an unmarried one she is "not physically excluded from the village or from performing certain tasks" (op. cit.: 197). The prohibitions marking the "transitional status" are of a largely symbolic nature, much as the few Lom prohibitions are (but far more numerous). Furthermore, there are "ways of avoiding the inconvenience of some of the restrictions" of which King cites a few examples (op. cit.: 198, cf. Jensen 1966: 170 for similar circumventions among the Iban). King goes on to say of childbirth itself that

"...it ends the period of pregnancy and the majority of the taboos which go with it, although those to prevent the death of either mother or child are still maintained. Childbirth therefore marks a decrease in supernatural danger. Nevertheless, the restriction of sexual intercourse between husband and wife is continued for forty days in the puerperal period and indicates that both are in a transitional state. In the interests of the mother's health various food taboos are also introduced." (Op. cit.: 200, emphasis mine.)

Here is where I disagree with King. Not with the facts as he presents them, but with his interpretation. He contends that pregnancy, characterised by a great number of pregnancy taboos (which may be avoided by culturally acknowledged 'tricks') is a highly dangerous period of transition. The post partum period, on the other hand, characterised by the maintenance of some of the taboos, the introduction of food taboos, and further rituals such as 'roasting the mother'⁽¹⁰⁸⁾ designed to safeguard the new mother's health is seen by King as a period of decreased danger. It is more reasonable, I think, to argue the opposite, and this would bring the circumstances reported among the Maloh and those among the Lom on a par with each other. I should think that precisely the fact that the Maloh (and the Iban) 'permit' taboo transgressions indicate that these are not so indicative of danger as King contends. In this regard it is interesting to note that he omits mention of any similarly 'permitted' circumventions of the food prohibitions. I take it that it is precisely because transgressions of post partum food prohibitions are considered an extreme risk that they are not committed and hence not reported — in turn this may be viewed as circumstantial evidence corroborating my suggestion.

2. Incision

2.1. Context

The Lom do not practice any form of ritual mutilation of female genitals. Nor is regular male circumcision practised, but incision, called sepét (which I am shortly to describe), is performed on boys/young men. Islamic circumcision (sunat, in Indonesian) is referred to as jumpong in the Lom vernacular, and is thus, both linguistically and in point of fact, distinguished from Lom incision. It should be noted, however, that since after incision (as it is practiced by the Lom) the prepuce is no longer visible, Lom males who are about to marry Muslim women obviously cannot undergo the mandatory circumcision accompanying the required religious conversion preceding such a marriage except in a symbolic sense: It suffices to draw one drop of blood.

There is no particular season or auspicious time set aside for the incision rite, nor is there a set age at which the rite should be performed — there is, I should mention, little importance attached to chronologically reckoned age in general and adults often guess both at their own age and that of their children. The Lom insist, however, that a man cannot marry until he has been incised. They also insist that Lom are incised, Malays circumcised, hence an intrinsic ethnic aspect is attributed to incision.

Prior to having the chance to observe the rite itself I was told by various Lom that what happens when the boy is 10 or perhaps 12 years old is that the tukang sepét (incisor) will pierce the boy's prepuce with a thin, sharpened piece of rotan. Then, with a swift motion, the prepuce is split open lengthwise above glans. Some herbal poultice is applied. The boy will then walk with all his friends through the village. The wound will heal in about a week, during which the boy will wear a sarung in order to avoid rubbing his penis. This is, I was assured, all there is to it. There is no kind of communal celebration or feast; although there will in all likelihood be a good family meal, usually chicken.

Before I arrived in the field the reading of anthropological literature had led me to assume that great (psycho-)cultural importance is invariably attached to circumcision/incision — both as a socially and a personally salient event: Performed on small children it signifies their status as genderised humans, performed on adolescents it marks their transition from the innocence of childhood to the responsibility of adulthood. Furthermore, among Peninsular Malays much labour and many assets are spent on circumcisions: "Days of preparation, and the expenditure of hundreds of dollars, are the rule on these occasions" (Rosemary Firth 1966: 148). While the Lom certainly (as I indicated above) regard an unincised male as a youngster, they attach little importance to the event of sepét itself — arguably even less than I had been told before I had observed it. Moreover, neither preparation nor expenditure is integral to its performance, as the following two cases illustrate. The first is a 'non-event', the second an account of the rite as I observed it.

2.2. Description

Alim, a Lom with whom I was in almost daily contact, is a tukang gunting (lit. 'cutter'; or barber) who doubles as a tukang sepét (incisor). Alim is not the only tukang sepét in Pejam, the other two being Alun (Alim's eldest brother whose vision is now reduced to the point that he never performs anymore) and Alan, a 40-year old bachelor in Tengkalat. Alim at Pejam, Alun at Benak, Alan at Tengkalat; possibly a significant spatial distribution. I thought that the resembling personal names of these incisors might point towards some interesting speculation, I but was assured that it had no significance. A point of interest, however, is that Alan is an ethnic Chinese who was adopted by a Lom couple while an infant. To be a Lom by birth is thus no prerequisite for becoming a tukang sepét, though having had the incision performed on oneself, as Alan in fact had, is.

When Alim became a tukang sepét it was without ceremony. His father, himself an incisor, just informed him one day that in the future Alim would have to do it. Alim had roared: "I don't know how to." His father's reply to that was "ngerapik!" (rubbish!). A year or so later (in 1972) Alim performed the sepét, nervously, for the first time; all went well.

I had mentioned to him on more than one occasion that I would very much like to witness an incision but he had told me that he knew of no-one planning to have the rite performed.

I was relieved, therefore, when a young man, approximately 15 years old, whom I had met on several occasions, informed me that he wanted to be desepét (incised) "soon", that he had no objections to me photographing the event, and was going to let me know in advance so that I could be present. During the following couple of months after we had reached our agreement he told me that no, it would not take place next week, but perhaps the week after next. Then one day he announced that he had decided not to get incised that year after all. He had been offered a job as a hand on the bagan — the nocturnally operated fishing scaffolds — for which he would be paid Rp 750 per night. Not only did he not want to relinquish this opportunity to make money, it would in fact be difficult to work the long nights at the bagan with a fresh and painful cut in his penis. My heart sank.

But a couple of months later I was wakened one very early morning by the tukang sepét himself who, after having excused himself for waking me before dawn, told me that if I wanted to witness the incision rite I had to come immediately.

On our way I asked Alim why he had not told me the day before that Usu was to be incised this morning. It turned out that Usu had paid him a visit at a late hour the previous evening and informed him that he wished to have the rite performed the following day. Usu confirmed this, saying he had not thought about it much; he just "wanted to do it now". He was still a member of his parents' household, and when I asked his father if Usu had decided to get incised just like that he answered, yes, he himself had not known about it until after the fact.

On our way to the appointed spot we stopped at the roadside for Alim to pick a handful of flowers from a kemunting bush, then we continued to the Pejam river in which Usu, a young man of about 16, was sitting as Alim and I approached shortly before 6 a.m. Usu had been immersed in the river for about an hour and was shivering with cold. This is not a test of endurance but the only practical way to lower sensitivity/heighten the threshold of pain; Alim knows no anaesthetics. Usu approached us without the customary left-handed covering of his genitals which is otherwise common between males — whether they are incised or not — from early adolescence onwards.

Alim gave the flowers he had picked to Usu before the 'operation' took place. Usu already had something else in his hand which he dropped as soon as Alim gave him the flowers; kemunting⁽¹⁰⁹⁾ are more effective: if kept in one's hand during incision they are considered to prevent scar tissue from forming. No spells are said over them. When the rite is over they are discarded.

Alim ordered his 5-year old son, who had come rushing towards us as we arrived, to return home; this had no effect and Alim did not pursue the matter further.

Usu sat down on a log. A lit cigarette in his mouth, Alim brought out a few lengths of sharpened ijér (palm-leaf rib; SM/I: lidi)⁽¹¹⁰⁾ that he keeps ready-cut at home since they are stiffer and therefore easier to use when dried. After choosing one he carefully measured the length of glans (with the prepuce covering it) and cut off a piece about an inch long. He squatted in front of Usu' parted legs and eased the sharpened end of the ijér under the prepuce while pulling it gently outwards with his left hand. He pushed the ijér slowly upwards until it pierced the prepuce and a few droplets of blood appeared. With a final push about 3-4 mm of the ijér was visible on either side, with about 20 mm of the prepuce covering glans now between the two end-points of the ijér. Alim's son, who had watched the séance from very close quarters, did not look much perturbed and Usu didn't even grimace.

Alim now produced a foot or so of cotton sewing thread. Looping it around the topmost point of the ijér he spun it around the lower, then back again and so forth in "8"-fashion (as one would fasten the rope to a flagpole) between the projecting points until there was no more thread. Hardly a word was said. Alim's son, as I mentioned, was as interested an onlooker as the anthropologist, and although Ajul and his grandson were also there their presence was coincidental; Ajul had been looking for Alim in order to get a haircut.

After Usu had put on a sarung we all went over to the house of Alim's parents-in-law where Akum, Alim's wife, made coffee. Neither Alim nor Usu had any, but Amak (stopping for a rest on his way to pick coconuts at Mendulang), Ajul and I had a cup each. I bought 10 cakes for us from Angsi passing on her way to the proyék to peddle cakes as a way to finance her children's approaching first year at school.

During the rest of the day of incision and for at least a week to follow, possibly ten days, the adolescent (optionally wearing a sarung in order not to irritate the wound) is obliged to cari getah (lit. 'search for sap'), i.e. roam the forest looking for fresh buds (pucok) from which he will extract juices to smear on the affected part, particularly the cotton thread. This will be his chief occupation for the days to follow and, significantly, he is exempt from whatever productive and otherwise economic household duties normally enjoined him.

Neither of the bud-saps employed are used for curative purposes;⁽¹¹¹⁾ a fact which may be taken to indicate that the Lom do not regard incision as a 'medical' matter at all. Medication (whether hospital-based or traditional) is always referred to as ubat whereas the sap is simply called getah (sap). The native categories of the plants from which bud-sap may be collected are listed in the following note together with some information on the plants used for 'post-operative' treatment of incision in another part of Bangka (regrettably most plants remain unidentified)⁽¹¹²⁾. Buds from any or all of these plants may be used alone, together or intermittently; in the case of rawé its bark may be used as well. As the sap dries up more of it must be applied, and as soon as the buds gathered lose their juice the young man has to collect more. Importantly, no food-prohibitions pertain as usually is the case as regards disease; the prepuce "mau deburok" ("is supposed to rot"), Alim explained with a laugh — it is not supposed to heal. This, according to him, is in contrast to the Islamic circumcision where proper medication is involved, but I have no data on this. It is true, however, that the Islamic circumcision is performed by cutting the prepuce off. That this is perceived as a form of surgery that needs subsequent care in order to heal properly is hardly surprising, moreover it is now often performed in hospitals. It remains to be said that no celebration of Usu's ordeal took place (unless the cakes I bought are to count as one). His parents never slaughtered a chicken and they invited neither kinsmen nor neighbours over to congratulate their son.

Usu himself displayed little, if any, pride in the fact that he had 'come of age'. He was busy for a few days roaming the forest for the requisite buds, appeared entirely unhampered in his movements; in fact he donned a pair of shorts the day after the rite had been performed and told me that the cut didn't hurt at all.

2.3. Significance

Following van Gennep (1960 transl.) it is possible to view Lom incision (and similar instances of genital mutilation performed in other societies at or around the time of puberty) as a rite signifying the individual's transformation from the category of childhood to that of adulthood. From this perspective the 'roaming' period the Lom prescribe could be interpreted as what van Gennep calls a 'liminal' phase between the statuses of boy and man. Basing her argument on van Gennep's work Mary Douglas contends that such transformations — crossing categorical boundaries — are intrinsically dangerous: "Danger lies in transitional states, simply because transition is neither one state nor the next, it is indefinable" (Douglas 1966: 96). She calls attention to the fact that "the novices are temporarily outcast" — which, if one stretches the interpretation of the above account the Lom novice could perhaps be said to be — and holds that the point of ritual is to control the danger. For if a person has "no place in the social system and is therefore a marginal being, all precaution against danger must come from others" (op. cit: 97). While Douglas cites rites in which boys symbolically 'die' it is clear that her argument is not limited to them; she refers again to van Gennep who (says Douglas) "saw society as a house with rooms and corridors in which passage from one to another is dangerous" (op. cit.: 96). Needham notes that there are certain difficulties with this view, one being that

"the idea of danger cannot be directly deduced from what other peoples do or abstain from doing, or from the dire consequences that they say would follow if they did not conduct themselves as they do. If they perform certain acts, e.g. sacrifice, in the set and rather careful way we usually call 'ritual' this is because it is the proper way to do it." (Needham 1979: 44, emphasis mine.)

And he continues:

"No doubt an individual suddenly confronted with something that he cannot identify is liable to be put off balance: a figure distorted by mist, or a grotesque being from outer space, probably would make him become scared and see some menace in what he could not classify. But in the case of the ritual of boundaries the factors are very different. To initiate boys into men, or young men into warriors, or maidens into marriage, is the sort of thing that happens all the time. (op. cit: 45-46, emphasis mine)

As regards Lom incision it has hopefully already been demonstrated that the initiates (the very word has certain overtones implying a measure of transcendence I should hold is entirely absent from the Lom conception of the rite) do not view the rite itself as dangerous. One might, of course, argue that the very thought of genital manipulation would be frightening to the Lom neophyte, but Douglas' contention is not related to circumcision/incision as an assault on the body. At any rate this line of reasoning would take us well into the realm of castration complexes and the like, something Douglas, as one of Durkheim's intellectual heirs, would be the first to warn against. In the same work she states that "psychological explanations cannot of their nature account for what is culturally distinctive" (121).

There can be no doubt about what is Douglas' chief point: the transition from one category to the next is what is inherently dangerous, and it is in order to demonstrate, as it were, to the individual that s/he is not alone that society, by way of ritual, intervenes and resolves the unbearable situation which has arisen for the individual who is between states, passing from one status to another. The individual experiences society as benevolent (after all) and society — having collectively enacted a benevolent and necessary ritual — thus reasserts itself as well.

Alternatively, one might argue that if not incision itself, then roaming about in the forest in search of fresh buds — the liminal phase — is fraught with danger: "Not only is transition itself dangerous, but also the rituals of segregation are the most dangerous phase of the rites" (op. cit.: 96). Bearing in mind that the Lom, unlike the jungle-dwelling hunters and gatherers of Southeast Asia, do not 'breathe a sigh of relief' as soon as they have left civilisation behind them there could have been some merit to this argument were the neophytes obliged to roam the depths of primary forest — barred from regular communication with other members of society. But such is not the case. They find ample amounts of the requisite buds in the secondary forest surrounding the swiddens and settlements and their contact with friends and kindred is in no way restricted. The only truly compulsory aspect of the liminal phase is that adolescents must procure their getah (sap) themselves. This brings us back to Douglas' suggestion that "all precaution against danger must come from others. He [the marginal being] cannot help his abnormal situation" (op. cit: 97).

The Lom here present us with a diametrically opposite situation: 'Others' do nothing for the novices, society at large plays no part in what is going on. Insofar as society at large is involved at all it is in that 'it' inflicts wounds; in order to recuperate and re-enter society as full productive members, on the other hand, the novices must rely exclusively on their own resources. If anything is stressed here about the relationship between individual and society — or even just between individuals - it is that individuals are alone and that cooperation and support are not intrinsic aspects of society that emerge in times of need. And if anything is implied it is that growing up means fending for oneself.

While I think this interpretation is plausible it could be argued that it is too strongly put. On the basis of the material there may be, as I have suggested earlier, reason to believe that the Lom do not read quite so much into the rite. It could be argued that, had they done so, other rites would have stressed and implied similar notions, which they do not: We have already seen that the birth rites express and emphasise cooperation within households, imply associations of individuals of different households, and are almost public affairs; and in chapter seven we shall discover that the mortuary rites, far from stressing a Lom equivalent of the idea that 'every man is an island' imply the inherently social nature of individual human beings. Indeed — anticipating a conclusion in chapter seven — the funeral speech may be interpreted to convey the essentially dialectical idea of humans as individual carvers of social structure.

The solution, I think, is to view the rite itself separately from the message it conveys. My suggestion is thus that the incision rite is, somewhat paradoxically stated, both important and unimportant. By this I mean that the rite itself, as an event, is unimportant to the Lom. However, it is necessary, it 'has to be done': Incision is a prerequisite for marriage, the institution for procreation and social reproduction. The rite itself — as an event — is, as Needham suggests, the proper way to do the sort of thing that happens all the time. But the message implicitly conveyed by the 'roaming period' — that individuals cannot depend on society at large for solace — is precisely a message befitting traditional Lom productive enterprises which are largely carried out individually (cf. the next chapter). If the birth rites stress the inherently social and cooperative aspects of human relationships, as I noted in the previous paragraph, then this suits the chronology, so to speak, very well: a new-born child needs constant care. A bachelor, however, embodies the opposite values: He may soon set up his own household and in that respect cannot depend on others. Although incision is a prerequisite neither for economic activities — nor even for the establishment of an individual household — it is so for marriage; the conventional institution for social reproduction. But before I turn to that topic (in chapter eight) I shall discuss a number of other issues; first among them Lom productive activities.

Chapter six — Economy

The present chapter deals primarily, and rather extensively, with the productive efforts of the Lom. To put it the simplest possible way: how they go about securing food and money. If this sounds crude it is not meant to be; it merely reflects how the Lom themselves are concerned about it. How to obtain food — and if not by wresting it from nature, how to get money to buy it — is a perennial theme. In section 1. I outline the basic physical parameters and note the chief opportunities for wage labour. I go on to discuss the organisation of productive labour within and between households, and explore the relationship between this organisation and Lom society in general. This is followed by a rather lengthy exposition of cultivation and animal husbandry. In sections 2. and 3. I discuss the pertinent points on hunting and fishing, i.e. not only their organisation and economic impact but also certain implications of the categorisation of the foodstuffs involved. In section 4., drawing on material introduced in the previous sections, I analyse Lom conceptions of exchange and discuss whether the Lom economy can be said to be a multicentric one (I think it can). I then return to the question of the significance of dreams (introduced in chapter four) before I address the rather novel concept, among the Lom, of land as a commodity. The subject of the last part of this section is the role played by middlemen.

1. Agriculture

1.1. Introductory remarks and basic parameters

Agricultural activities constitute the very basis of the Lom economy. The tropical climate with temperatures in the diurnal range of 21-33 degrees Celsius, rainfall at +-2.300 millimetres,⁽¹¹³⁾ and high (although not measured) humidity provides three basic parameters for the cultivators, soil-conditions constitute the fourth. Most of the Lom homeland has a sandy, very acid soil (pH 4-5) registering low to very low values of basic plant nutrients (NPK). Whitten et al. quote Hardon (1937), who found pH to vary between 2.7 and 6.1 in the white-sand soil typically found on Bangka, and go on to describe white-sand soils as "probably among the most nutrient-poor soils in the world" (Whitten et al. 1984: 341). The results of my own simple soil tests are shown in Table 6.1. It would appear that soil quality is the major permanent physical limiting factor of Lom agriculture, and while agricultural output, obviously, is determined as well by the amounts of sunshine and precipitation, these factors vary considerably from one year to the next.

A range of hills reaching some 200 metres above sea level separates the two major Lom settlements, Air Abik and Pejam (it takes some four or five hours to walk from one to the other). These hills are covered with primary and secondary forest providing breeding and feeding ground for a variety of game. As the hills taper off northwards and southwards they sustain rice-fields and gardens of fruit and vegetable. An extensive sandy plain⁽¹¹⁴⁾ separates the northern shore-settlement (Pejam) from the undulating terrain partly under cultivation, whereas Air Abik is situated in an area of low hills rolling southwards from the central range.

The Lom practise swidden agriculture and horticulture, supplementing their vegetal produce to a varying degree by hunting and fishing. Money, when made, comes from the sale of horticultural products such as pepper and pineapple — some households rely heavily on cash cropping — or of game such as mousedeer and monkey. With the locally reported depletion of game resources, however, hunting appears to have become increasingly onerous and hence to have lost some of its attraction. Another source of income is the sale of wood; either as timber (there are four wood-mills in the area) or as fuel. Although the income from the sale of wood is comparatively small it is vital to many households — notably those of senior villagers who find it too strenuous to clear swiddens.

Few individuals have steady, paid employment. Some work at the wood-mills as loggers or operators of the mechanical equipment, some as tin-miners in the government-run UPTB or in one of the small, privately owned mines run by ethnic Chinese, and some as contractual labourers as far away as Koba, a full day's journey to the south. All are male except a woman in her mid-seventies who works part-time tidying the church premises. Most of the employed men from Air Abik are young bachelors, while those from Pejam are married men of varying age.

The cash flow of individual households varies greatly. Some claim to make do with Rp 1000 per month, others make Rp 50.000 per month and I suspect that some households may have an even larger income. The word most frequently repeated by the Lom when I talked to them about economic matters was susah (difficult).

1.2. Organisation of productive labour

The basic residential unit is the nuclear family. While multi-generational co-residency is uncommon it does occur: when a young married couple have yet to build their own house and they remain with his or her parents for a year or two; when the parent(s) of a woman or her husband are old and sickly and are taken into the conjugal family of one of their children; when an unmarried man prefers the company of his brother and his wife and children to living alone; when a woman returns to her parents after her divorce, bringing her children with her. Although the examples are real they are not, except from the temporary character of the first arrangement, typical, but nobody thinks them unnatural. One case deserves special mention: It involved a couple and their children co-cohabiting with the wife's parents over a number of years. The reason for this prolonged arrangement was that the wife was (probably) epileptic. Her daily, multiple fits necessitated almost constant surveillance; it had happened several times that she had fallen unconscious while bathing her small children. The practical solution to the problem was that the wife and her mother were almost constantly together, while their respective husbands were freed to tend their gardens. I recorded no instances of nuclear family co-habitation (when this is understood as different sets of parents and children under the same roof).

The nuclear family is also the basic productive and household unit. As a rule the entire household takes part in the yearly clearing of swiddens during the relatively dry weather in June and July. Households very rarely cooperate when felling and slashing — this holds true even for households of next of kin. But rice planting is often informally organised as a cooperative reciprocal effort comprising two or three households. The basic harvesting unit is again the household, but any number of people — including townsfolk — may partake and thus be rewarded one third of the amount each one has collected.⁽¹¹⁵⁾

Within the household

As I stated above, the basic productive unit is the household. Husband, wife, and children above eight or ten years of age all participate in agricultural work — except during the periods while the household contains unweaned children and/or heavily pregnant women when the husband does most of the agricultural work alone. This is especially true if the fields/gardens are located some distance from the dwelling, as they frequently are after the establishment of the proyék. The most crucial impact of these government built villages can be stated very briefly: The majority of the households now have at least two permanent dwellings between which they must divide their attention. Children of either sex, as a matter of course, accompany their parents to the swiddens and partake not only in comparatively easy and light tasks (such as collecting cleared brush or sowing rice), but are often given the responsibility of planting the subsidiary crops: cassava, yam, and other tubers; banana, and pineapple, to name but a few. These plants do not reach maturity until after the rice has been harvested. The rice-stalks are left to rot so that over the next couple of months they add nutrients to the poor soil.

Women take care of all household chores and most jobs in the vicinity of the house; tend animals, collect coconuts and grate them, gather fallen palm-leaves (to be burned under the house to keep mosquitoes away), care for small children, clean and wash, sweep and weed the yard, collect fuel-wood and pandanus leaves (used for straw mats), and cook. Men (the men say) do the heavy jobs (kerja berberat). They build and maintain houses, clear acres of forest for swiddens, carry rice home after the harvest, carry pigs and coconut oil to the middlemen arriving on their basket-equipped motorcycles.

There are no gender taboos governing agricultural labour. If a household does not include able men then women do 'men's work'. Indeed I observed women at least six months pregnant carrying home huge cassava-filled baskets from their fields (a trip of several kilometres), each weighing 25 — 30 kg. To my knowledge no women were, as were a number of men, singly responsible for a swidden, and of course a gender-based cultural (read: male) repugnance against women in such control may account for this. I do not think so, however. Firstly, daintiness is in no way part of the male Lom ideal of a woman. Rather she should be strong and able. If she is not, then much of the labour she is expected to do will inevitably fall on him. That men are supposed to do the 'heavy work' is partly a male relativisation; it would be a mistake to interpret women's work as light and I do not think that Lom males do so. Women's work is lighter, perhaps, than men's, but one must keep in mind that this is a society based on subsistence swidden agriculture. Secondly, bachelors and widowers living alone cook, mend clothes, and generally keep house; fathers take care of small children — with no scorn from other men. If women in any way were tabooed from doing men's work one would expect something approaching a reverse attitude to men doing women's. Thirdly, few women live alone — and when they do it is after a divorce or their husband's death and usually for a fairly brief period until they remarry. In the meantime, however, a divorcee or widow is more likely than is a man in a similar situation to take up residence with parents.

Towards the end of the developmental cycle of the household its productivity dwindles: A senior couple (or a widow(er), as the case may be) whose children have married and established their own household cannot expect to benefit from the labour of their children. This is a crucial point because one of the consequences of the reduced capacity for heavy labour coinciding with old age is that the plot one chooses for a swidden must not contain too many large trees, it can neither be a primary forest plot, nor one in an old secondary forest. Put more technically: the biomass contained in a plot to be cultivated by a senior couple is likely to be a lot less than that of a plot chosen by a young one. This, for the kind of swidden agriculture the Lom practise, means that the amount of nutrients made available to the crops after the brush has been burned is inversely proportional to the age of the cultivator. Stated more plainly: the more senior the cultivator, the less fertile his field, and consequently, the more diminishing his returns. The plot of the swidden of a typical senior Lom (a widower in his sixties), for instance, was an eight years old belukar (or 'young secondary forest') that he cleared together with his unmarried daughter. The swidden of his married son, as a contrast, was a plot which had lain fallow for 20 years; delés (or 'old secondary forest').⁽¹¹⁶⁾

Having said this I should add that I am not implying that the Lom care little for their ageing or ill parents. They do, but in ways which are, as it were, less transparent: If the parents are unable to clear and plant their own fields they cannot expect their children to do it for them and they are then forced to seek their means of livelihood as sellers of forest produce such as fuel-wood or rattans (considered somewhat disgracing for a man because it is a predominantly feminine activity during most of the household's developmental cycle);⁽¹¹⁷⁾ or as wage labourers, if this is at all possible, i.e. if they have the strength for it and there are job-opportunities. They may further live off their coconut grove, if they possess one, or, finally, if too feeble, disabled, or acutely ill to care for themselves they may be fed by their children — in which case they usually reside, more or less temporarily, as house-guests in their children's homes. That this may give rise to inter-household competition, and even enmity, was demonstrated when Almut's mother-in-law, Ilun, spent a few days at his house because she was ill. When she subsequently moved to the house of Yapa (her son), he went around saying that his mother hadn't been given enough to eat while she had been staying with Almut and that he, Yapa, would give his mother anything she desired — even if that happened to be kerbau (water buffalo; very costly) meat he would rush to the market in Belinyu to get it for her. Almut was feeling hurt (sakit hati) about this but he also ridiculed Yapa by saying that if curing was only a matter of getting enough kerbau the hospitals of the island would soon be empty. He himself would rather spend money on medication, he said — all the more so since whatever Ilun tried to ingest while she was in his house she would expel, even plain water.

Between households

The forms of cooperative labour described below relate mainly to agricultural, or land-based production. Thus they do not comprise cooperative fishing, which I shall discuss separately.

The Lom stated almost unanimously that besao (mutual help) was more common in former times. Up to ten people used to gather for besao and thus made it possible for senior cultivators to have fields yielding greater produce. This change is clearly due mainly to the increasing impact of the money economy. The Lom say that recently people are less inclined to initiate cooperation because they will feel obliged to pay for such services in cash. (According to one individual, however, gotong royong was habitually paid for already thirty years ago.) People are likely to consider their time more valuable than they were just a few years ago (even rather young Lom agreed on this) and might — even after having consented to 'help' fellow villagers — charge them for the time spent helping them. This was linked directly to the arrival of the proyék; formerly there were indeed fewer items to buy, people had less money (cash-cropping was less common), and at any rate they had to go all the way to Paret 4 or to Belinyu to purchase commodities. Today there are stores both in Air Abik and Pejam. Now, I was told, money is what everybody thinks about because one's neighbours buy things. Other explanations for the decline of the besao arrangement were that people are either at sea, or they sleep half the day. At any rate, without outside assistance senior villagers, as I explained above, are forced to clear their swiddens in the young secondary forest that is less fertile.⁽¹¹⁸⁾

Another form of cooperative labour is beganjél (possibly cognate with the SM/I word ganjal meaning among other things: 'prop', 'support'), or begerujuk (possibly cognate with the SM/I word rujuk meaning among other things: 'return').⁽¹¹⁹⁾ These are two terms for essentially the same arrangement, viz. that household heads decide to pool their own labour (or that of their entire household) and work together, from morning until noon, in the field belonging to one of them (or on another individual/ household project, as the case may be). This is not reciprocally organised, however; the man in whose field they work supplies his fellow workers with food and drink — and that is it. When they leave in the afternoon he owes them nothing. While this arrangement in theory is open to exploitation in a fashion similar to that of the entrepreneurial Darfur 'tomato-man'⁽¹²⁰⁾ I think there are at least two reasons why it will never be so. Firstly, the cooperative labour arrangement termed beganjél is losing, not gaining ground. Not only were the Lom practically unanimous on this point, but during more than one year of fieldwork I observed only one incident that can be labelled beganjél and this was to do with a villager who, for supernatural reasons, felt obliged to have his house moved. Secondly, the facts a) that villagers increasingly clearly value their own time in cash terms, and b) that many of them have experience as wage labourers bear witness to a degree of monetisation rendering it unlikely that one person's smartness will pass undetected by others. I am not suggesting, however, that no entrepreneurial activity takes place among the Lom. It does, but not through work parties.

One reason why cooperative labour was more common formerly, I was told, is that people used to be generally more takut (timid, fearful). Venturing into the forest alone was considered a risk — though with respect to what exactly people were vague. My own speculation is that the pervading fear of the Lom is a combination of on the one hand a fear of natural and supernatural beings and on the other a timidity towards strangers; a timidity at times, and within living memory of a number of villagers, transformed into real fear as during the Japanese invasion during the latter part of World War II. Thus, at the time when the Lom lived more or less scattered in small forest hamlets a man would ask a friend to come along if he had reason to enter the jungle (to go hunting, wood-cutting etc.). This was a kind of favour that could easily be reciprocated at a later time. But nowadays the clearing of a swidden is usually undertaken by the individual cultivator without any outside assistance as hunting (belapun) for small game is also commonly a solitary endeavour. Planting and sowing, however, is often carried out jointly by several households and hunting for larger game like babi (wild pig), kecakal (bearded pig) and berok (macaque), as well as the construction of larger traps like pejato (turtle-traps) and kilong (monkey-traps with live bait, usually a young monkey) still — sometimes, at least — involves the cooperation of several persons.

I stated above that the terms denoting cooperative labour were related in the main to agricultural activities. An exception to note has to do with the concept 'gotong royong' which apparently may denote efforts such as building turtle-traps and major, more truly public, enterprises such as the construction of bridges. More importantly, gotong royong denotes communal labour. It is not an indigenous word, however (in the words of one Lom it is an istilah baru, or 'new term').⁽¹²¹⁾ Villagers' conception of gotong royong is that it is 'gawi terpaksa', or 'forced labour' (as they mutter under their breath), rather than 'mutual aid in the spirit of solidarity' which is the standard definition of the term as it was invoked in the Soekarno days. It is easy to understand why this has come to be so when it is realised that every other or so Saturday morning villagers are summoned by the headman to 'clean up' the public areas of the village. Mainly this consists in the repeat slashing down of the ever-encroaching Imperata and futile attempts at turning every public area with greenery on it into off-white sandy plains.

Let me conclude this exposition of the organisation of agricultural labour by making clear how the Lom do not do it. There being neither clans nor lineages to belong to and oblige nor ancestors to please and be grateful to there is of course no such thing as collectively owned land. Hence there are no kin-based corporations. In fact there are no corporations at all. Cultivation of subsistence and cash crops is an individually organised enterprise. Informally formed task groups, as far as they exist, are established on the basis of friendship and congeniality; they dissolve when the task is completed. No group is permanent. There is, in short, no group to be a member of over time, except the nuclear family one is born into and that which one creates by marrying.

1.3. Cultigens and domestic animals

Tubers

The generic term for 'tuber' in the Lom vernacular is isi't, which also, incidentally, means 'flesh'. Great quantities of tubers are usually planted in a swidden where rice is either maturing or has already been harvested. One cultivator estimated that the number of cassava sticks he and his family were going to plant in 1984 was in the vicinity of 30.000. After the plants are mature they can be harvested when need arises over a long period of time.

Tubers are eaten boiled, fried, and are used in sweetmeats — the latter often referred to, tongue-in-cheek, as kué utan (forest cakes). They are a staple food but, importantly, are so only when rice is unavailable — as we shall soon see dry rice is the paramount crop.

When going to the Belinyu market prices fall as soon as the vendors are presented with a sack-full of produce. It is much smarter, one Lom producer had found out, to store the sack for an hour or two in a friend's house, bring a sample to the market and ask for an advance price. Then one might be able to obtain some Rp 400 per kg instead of perhaps only Rp 250.

The Lom grow at least 9 species of tubers, comprising 43 different varieties (prices quoted for 1984):

11 named varieties of cassava, or mengalo (Manihot utilissima, Indonesian: ubi kayu), of which three varieties are preferred: tiga bulan, selangor, and batin. The leaves of all varieties are eaten as well as the tubers, except the variety karét that does not produce (edible) tubers. The three preferred varieties need some 3-4 months to mature, the remaining ones about a year. I was told that under excellent conditions (reference was made to World War II when swiddens were cleared in primary forest in order to avoid raids) the tubers from one stem of mengalo mentega (a yellow-fleshed variety) grew to 50 kg, each tuber as much as 10 kg, and the stem (or trunk, perhaps, in this case) of the plant were sometimes as thick as a man's calf. But regularly, under more normal conditions, the tubers from one cassava plant in an old belukar/delés (fallow field) may weigh as much as 10 kg, while from a plant in a field which has lain fallow only for seven or eight years, the output may be a mere kg or kg and a half per stem. Cassava, when marketed, fetches some Rp 50 per kg.

10 named varieties of sweet potato, or bijur (Ipomea batatas), of which two varieties are preferred: siong and kelintang iret. The leaves of all varieties are eaten as well as the tubers. All varieties mature in some four to six months; the tubers of each stem have then grown to some 300-400 grams. Sweet potato, when marketed, fetches some Rp 250 per kg.

11 named varieties of taro, or keladi (Colocasia antiquorum), of which two varieties are preferred: rakét and susang. The leaves of keladi are not considered edible, but the stem of the susang variety is eaten. All varieties need about a year to mature, after which the tubers of each stem have grown to weigh anywhere between 1 and 5 kg, depending on soil quality and precipitation. Keladi, at the market, fetches some Rp 150 per kg.

5 named varieties of yam, or ubi't (Dioscorea), of which one variety is preferred: kentang. The leaves are not considered edible. All varieties need about a year to mature (except the lilét/angét variety requiring some six to eight months) after which, in fertile soil, the tubers have grown to about 5 kg (the kentang variety to some 10 kg) per stem. In more meagre soil the tubers rarely weigh more than 2 kg. None of the varieties of ubi't are marketed.

2 named varieties of kemili't, of which the preferred one, putih, has a diameter of some 2 cm, the other, cacong, a diameter of some 5 cm. The leaves are not considered edible. Both varieties need about a year to mature. When marketed, these tubers fetch some Rp 350 per kg.

Kemarong, (either Dioscorea esculenta or Coleus tuberosus), the flesh of which is yellowish, should be cleaned carefully and soaked in water for at least twelve hours before consumption in order to get rid of the toxins (it was eaten in quantity during the Japanese occupation, but much more rarely after World War II). The leaves are not considered edible. The tubers of each plant, after a year's growth, weigh about 1 kg. It is never marketed.

Belengo, (unidentified). The leaves are not considered edible. After about a year's growth the tubers of each plant weigh 1-2 kg. It is never marketed.

Saguk raguk, or arrowroot (Maranta arundinacea). The leaves are not considered edible. After about a year's growth the tubers of each plant weigh some 2 kg. It is never marketed.

Ganyol, (Canna edulis, Ker.) The leaves are not considered edible. After a year's growth the tubers of each plant have grown to 1-2 kg. It is never marketed.

Pepper, pineapples, rubber

Neither pineapple and pepper cultivation nor rubber tapping are novel occupations among the Lom. Pineapples — just like tubers, pepper, and other cash crops are planted in disused swiddens. They may be harvested twice a year and, together with the sale of fuel-wood and pepper, is the most important source of cash income for many cultivators. Pepper needs only about a year to mature. Harvesting is light work and is usually done by all members of the household above the age of six or seven; the smallest children picking only the lowest growing fruits. A full sack is stitched together and placed in a pond to soak for some ten days, after which the pepper is rinsed and spread out on plaited straw mats to dry in the sun. This takes at least two days. Income from pepper is steady, if irregular. White pepper sells for Rp 1000-1100 per kg and a week's produce may amount to 5-20 kg depending on the weather. Black pepper fetches only Rp 100 per kg, and one producer used to let his children get all the income from this. The price in Belinyu is determined by (Chinese) middlemen who adjust their offers to the world market prices that are radio broadcasted from Singapore daily.

If dried in the sun once or twice annually pepper may be stored without any perceptible loss of quality for ten, perhaps twenty years. While this fact has slight direct interest to the Lom (being producers)  —  because they exchange it for money within a short time of having harvested it — it is important to buyers and indirectly to the producers: A buyer may clinch a deal when prices are low (Rp 600 per kg after a good crop) and just wait until a bad year forces the price to rise (to some Rp 2000 per kg, it was suggested to me). One must be patient, but within, say, five years this is bound to happen, according to a Belinyu Chinese who is reasonably well informed. By then one's initial outlay has brought an interest of more than 66 % p.a.:

((2000 : 600) x 100) : 5 = 66,66

Rubber trees need some ten years before their latex may be tapped. The price of rubber is determined the same way as that of pepper, i.e. Chinese buyers monitor the world market prices broadcasted from Singapore. Presently there are only about five households in Air Abik (and none in Pejam) with any income from rubber production. But several Air Abik households have planted trees — expecting yield in the years to come. The price of rubber fluctuates almost as much as that of pepper: At one time during my fieldwork latex sheets fetched Rp 500 per kg while a couple of months earlier the price had been down to Rp 200. The buyers visit the villages in the area once a week with a truck to buy latex sheets. They must show some caution; fraud, by mixing tapioca into the rubber once caused one ton to 'disappear' from a five ton load on its way from the producer to the island's chief harbour.

Several decades ago there were five hundred rubber trees in Tengkalat, planted by the father of an elderly man. The trees were never replaced because leaves and young plants were regularly ravaged by lutung (macaques). This particular Lom saw man's productive efforts as self-destructive in the long term: "You cut a part of the jungle down, you burn it, you plant, and the lutung emerge from the jungle to eat whatever you have planted."

Coconuts and animal husbandry

Coconut growing⁽¹²²⁾ and animal husbandry go together. The following statement by a coconut grower summarises the role of coconuts in the economy of the Pejam (strand) population and probably requires no further comment:

"Coconuts are 'number one'. You plant them when you are young, they give produce the rest of your life and you pass them on to your grandchildren's children. After you go to bed at night you hear them falling: Thump! The first one. Thump! Another. That's money falling down! It's your old-age pension, too, when you are orang petani (a farmer). Even when you are an old man and your days in the swidden are over you can say to orang Cén⁽¹²³⁾ who has come to buy coconuts, 'yes, I have some' — and wallop! that's money in your pocket. Rubber trees? They die after twenty years — or at least they produce but little latex by then. Pepper? Three or four years only, then they wither from the top downwards. You need a lot of pepper plants to have a secure life, perhaps a thousand or more."

The next statement describes accurately and succinctly the interdependence of pig husbandry and coconut production:

"Babi cangkul, babi pupuk. Dan bisa dijual juga." "Pigs hoe, pigs fertilise. And can be sold, too."

The salient point here is that while the pigs do not exactly hoe they weed and work the soil over — and thus relieve the cultivators from an onerous task. That the droppings are left on the ground to fertilise the poor soil means that the cultivators do not have to spend hard-earned cash on chemical fertilisers.

Coconut cultivation in Pejam and environs (i.e. Mendulang and Tengkalat)⁽¹²⁴⁾ developed slowly during the first half of the twentieth century and only began to reach its present prominence after World War II when permanent settlement enabled pig husbandry to become a common component.

Coconuts are either sold unprocessed or they are grated and pressed for their oil, which is boiled and sold to middlemen or, in a few instances, brought to Belinyu by the producers themselves. The gratings, subsequent to the extraction of oil, are fed to pigs and poultry whose diet (particularly that of the pigs) is heavily supplemented with boiled cassava and other vegetal matter the pigs will readily eat; chopped and steamed banana stems, for example, which is not used for anything else.

Although a household may keep up to some 30 pigs, the optimal amount is generally considered to be some 10 beasts. The reason given is that it takes too much labour to grate sufficient amounts of coconuts and boil enough cassava, and indeed one finds that a larger-than-optimum pig-herd is co-variant with combustion engine grating equipment.

Lom households raising pigs usually have somewhere between 5 and 15 beasts. It is common to sell piglets by the time they are weaned. 2-3 are kept and raised. They must be fed twice or three times a day. After six or seven months they will have grown to perhaps sixty or seventy kg fetching about Rp 1000 per kg.

If pigs feed only on coconuts one should figure five nuts per pig per day. If one figures five nuts per palm per month one gets:

1 pig x (5 nuts x 30 days) = 150 nuts per pig per month
In order to feed ten pigs 150 nuts each per month one needs:
10 : 1500 : 5 (daily produce) = 300 palms (a rough estimate).

But no pigs, to my knowledge, subsist entirely on coconut gratings and it is my impression, as I stated above, from several pig-raising villagers that the upward limit on pig husbandry is set by the increasing labour associated with cooking cassava for the beasts. I was assured that the large amount of pigs raised in the ethnic Chinese settlement of Pesaren (from where, incidentally, the impetus to raise pigs originated) is based on kuli or 'paid labour'. One Pesaren household may have up to 200 pigs, something that requires ten paid hands.

Both pigs and poultry have but peripheral impact as regular supply of faunal protein. They are reared almost exclusively for the market and the Lom find it generally too extravagant to slaughter a pig or hen unless it is for a wedding or some other socially salient event.

Young and middle-aged male coconut palm owners will, as a rule, pick their own nuts. While I never heard it said that coconut climbing is unfit for females, I never saw anyone but males in the tops of the palms. Old men, widows, and the very few absentee owners (who reside no farther away than in the other chief Lom settlement, Air Abik, anyway) depend on others to do the picking for them. As far as I was able to ascertain there is only one Lom thus occupied. He works coconut palms from, in the west, Pesaren to, in the southeast, Tengkalat (the most remote Lom beach settlement at the mouth of the river by the same name).

He said himself that he is paid either in cash or in kind: maximum cash wage is Rp 200 for each palm climbed. He can manage up to 30, perhaps 35 palms per day — a daily wage of Rp 7000, or Rp 140.000 for 20 days' work. At the time of fieldwork this was more than four times a teacher's monthly wage (about Rp 30.000) — a great amount of money to most Indonesians and a phenomenal amount to most Lom. When he is paid in kind he receives 3 nuts for every 10 he brings down.⁽¹²⁵⁾ The cash payment is sometimes delayed, however, until the owner of the grove has sold the nuts or the oil pressed from their gratings.

The main reason for a certain reluctance on the part of Pejam villagers to move to the proyék is closely tied to the economic structure of the beach community, which is centred on coconuts and pigs.

Oil is extracted from the nuts (primarily the work of women) and the pressed nutmeat, as I said, is fed to pigs and chickens. The oil, pigs and chickens are subsequently sold to middlemen who arrive regularly by motorcycle (the only motorised vehicle by which the beach settlement may be reached since the 'home-made' bridge across Sungai Pejam cannot accommodate cars). The longevity and disease-resistance of the coconut palm and the stable demand for both vegetal and animal produce provide a linked and sound economic basis for the household. This is somewhat contrasted by the situation in Air Abik where the cash crops (primarily pepper and pineapple) involve more risk; they are simultaneously more susceptible to disease and more vulnerable to drought — and they are more labour intensive.

A problem facing the beach-dwellers, however, is that the land recognised as suitable for kebun kelapa (coconut groves) is of finite size. Even more so since the adat rules of inheritance are, in contrast to those of the Malay Muslims, egalitarian — in the double sense that offspring of either sex inherit equal shares. As a result of population growth and because of the inheritance rules many of the old groves have been divided and subdivided into a number of small plots. Thus, since the Pejam groves are 60-80 years old and each grove, when planted, consisted of some 300-400 palms, a number of the lots currently inherited contain only 25-30 palms. The returns from these are insufficient to constitute what the Lom consider to be a secure economic foundation. (That, villagers estimate, would take at least 300 palms).⁽¹²⁶⁾ The problem of diminishing groves is solved by selling plots until a buyer's grove is of a reasonable size (an implicit corollary of which is that lots may be located at great distance from each other). This in turn creates the problem of finding a new location — and means of livelihood — for the household having exchanged its land for money. Over the last 10-15 years this has led to the establishment of a few new groves further inland where soil conditions are viewed as less favourable.

The advent of the proyék can be of some impact here, too, (this time in a positive sense) because the in part virgin beach area north of the proyék (Labu) is easily accessible from the settlement site: even the farthest part of this beach is nearer to the proyék than is most of the Pejam beach. It is therefore reasonable to expect that villagers — at least those with some cash to pay for it — are going to invest in land there.

It is interesting to note that the attitude of the Lom towards further coconut planting is the opposite of what Fraser states for the Rusembilan villagers:

"There is very little interest in starting new plantations, although many villagers have land which is suitable for coconuts but not for rice. The reason given for this is that, whereas a tree will bear fruit in three years, a saleable yield cannot be obtained for many years. A few far-sighted villagers, however, have since 1945 started extensive plantations for the benefit of their children." (Fraser 1960: 65)

There are several factors that could contribute to this difference in attitude. Firstly, there may, in Rusembilan, simply be a (relative) shortage of land suitable for coconut cultivation and an abundance of land suitable for rubber production. Because Fraser fails to include considerations of soil quality this must, however, remain an idle speculation.

Secondly, the Rusembilan villagers are traditionally wet rice agriculturalists. They had been "entirely self-sufficient in terms of its rice production and in some years had had a marketable surplus" (op. cit.: 59) in the period ending about six years prior to Fraser's fieldwork, and, for extraneous reasons, ceased to be so.⁽¹²⁷⁾ By this time they were already deeply enmeshed in commercial fishing, they were actively participating in the town (Pattani) market and in order to procure the cash necessary to secure 'adequate' amounts of rice one would surmise that they looked for the optimal way to do so. According to Fraser "... more and more (villagers) are investing what capital they can in tracts of jungle land suitable for growing rubber" (op. cit.: 67). But since rubber, in Fraser's own words, "require seven years to mature before it is ready for tapping" this means that cash begins to flow to the producers after an even longer interval than if they were to plant coconuts. Thus, while it cannot be contested that it is the villagers' conception of reality that determines the direction of their productive efforts, Fraser neither demonstrates nor questions the validity of the logic of the producers. Moreover, one should keep in mind that rubber tapping is both more labour intensive and more time-binding than is coconut production: Rubber trees require frequent and regular tapping and it is symptomatic that rubber production is generally talked about in terms of daily output, whereas coconut production is usually talked about in terms of output per month. What I wish to call attention to here is that from the point of view of the producer there is more day-to-day autonomy to be gained from investing in coconut palms than in rubber trees; an autonomy that one would imagine would be appreciated by the cultivators.

Thirdly, shifting our gaze now to the Lom coconut producers it is clear that to them coconuts are both an end and a means: Oil and fodder. Oil for sale, and fodder (primarily) for pigs which, as I have stated, are also sold. I am not sure if there exists a proper comparative analysis of coconut production with pig husbandry and such production without it, but it is unquestionable that to the Lom strand population coconut cultivation is superior to rubber tapping in almost all regards, particularly in terms of economic output in relation to labour input. While not even coconut can be produced without the cultivators having to do some work the Lom insisted again and again that by far the easiest way to make money is to grow coconuts. Thus, I submit that the question of why the Rusembilan and the Lom differ in their assessment of coconut grove expansion must be answered in terms of the fact that Rusembilan villagers are Muslims to whom, needless to say, pig husbandry is unthinkable.⁽¹²⁸⁾

Rice

The primary staple food of the Lom is rice. Cassava and other tubers, a wide variety of fruit, fish, game etc. are all considered fully fit for human consumption and necessary for a varied diet, but not to eat rice twice a day is both regrettable and pitiable: However full your belly may be, the Lom say, if you haven't filled it with rice you haven't eaten. As we shall see there is much cause for regret and pity in the Lom world.

Some people reportedly died from hunger during World War II and several individuals sufficiently senior to remember the Japanese occupation recalled that those who stayed alive did so with bloated bellies. Villagers attribute the cause for these deplorable conditions to the suspension of rice imports. This meant not only that the Lom were unable to buy rice but it propelled townsfolk to the forest where they raided the swiddens. At one point there had been no rice for sale in Belinyu for three months, the fish market was closed, and all the pork and beef was consumed by the Japanese. Hooks, lines and nets for fishing were also unavailable, even salt. Many townsfolk actually took to the forest in desperation and tore up tubers planted a couple of months earlier; far too early for them to have fully developed. And not only townsfolk; the cash-croppers, too, had nothing to eat ("you can't eat pepper and you can't eat cloves", as one cultivator put it). When rice and other items of food were again for sale the prices were extortionate and the Lom sold first pigs, then bowls and plates in order to pay for something to eat.

In the distant past, naturally, the Lom rarely partook of other rice than that which they grew themselves. The gradually increasing penetration of money has changed this. Today there is always white rice (often imported from Thailand) for sale in the simple shops in Air Abik and Pejam, and most households, when there is cash to pay for it, cook white rice regularly.

Yearly productive cycle

Lom cultivators are restrained not only by the basic parameters (outlined at the outset of this chapter) of soil, climate, labour availability etc. A further regulation on agricultural production is represented by specified dates on which certain processes must have begun and ended. As far as I was able to ascertain this precise temporal structuring has validity only for the growing of rice. The following is an account of the yearly productive cycle (commencing with the rice harvest) as it was given to me by the Lom. Dates and months are according to the Chinese calendar which they adhere to, a practice they share with the majority of the cultivators on Bangka. (See appendix I for a brief exposition of how the Chinese calendrical system works.) I have not tailored the account to specific stages in the household's developmental cycle, nor have I added daily chores.

The period between sowing the rice and harvesting is called nunggudn padi't ('waiting for the rice'). But this does not imply idleness. Firstly, there are always several regular productive activities such as feeding poultry and pigs; collecting, grating, and pressing coconuts (though many households do not own coconut palms); fetching fuel-wood; foraging for various grasses and rattans for household products such as baskets and straw mats (some of which are exchanged for money, too); digging up and carrying home huge basketfuls of cassava and other tubers; hunting; fishing; foraging for vegetal and animal foods (lacustrine, fluvial, and marine); and weeding. Secondly, this is the period when accumulated maintenance, repair, and construction is carried out both on the individual and collective level. Pillars under the house may need replacement, the atap roof may have to be changed, animal enclosures do not last forever, and the two bridges across Sungai Pejam and Sungai Tengkalat (connecting the three indigenous Pejam settlements) need to be reconstructed every two or three years.

Further, the Lom have observed that for six months of the year (from the beginning of the second to and including the seventh), the tide is high at night and low during the day; the other half of the year it is the other way round. The first of these periods, therefore, is a favoured time to search for a variety of molluscs and snails, e.g. lukan, kerang, and siput; the so-called wak-wak (or sa cin) and small crustaceans.⁽¹²⁹⁾ Before I discuss what impact the temporal structuring of agricultural activities may have, a mention must be made of the chief crop, rice.

Production of rice

There are probably more than a thousand varieties and mutants of the rice plant and it has been suggested that "there are 300-400 distinct races in Malaya" (Burkill 1966: 1621). In spite of the documented abundance of varieties the Lom grow only five, two of which are recognised to have two races each. These are all, of course, dry (or hill, or upland; writers' terminology differs) varieties:

Dry rice, the Lom say, should never be washed before cooking; there are no impurities in it since it is hand-picked and the distinctive colour will fade when the grains are rinsed.

A salient difference between wet and dry rice is that dry rice is very sensitive to climatic conditions. Precisely because dry-rice cultivation hinges not on irrigation facilities but on atmospheric ambience, changes in humidity and precipitation drastically effects the crop:

"Though it is customary to speak of dry-land rices, it must be remembered that they require a humid atmosphere and endure no desiccation. As a result of their demand for moisture, the area of the whole world in which dry-rice cultivation is practised is limited. They demand an assured rainfall over 3 to 4 months,⁽¹³⁰⁾ and this greatly limits their cultivation." (Burkill 1966: 1622-23, emphasis mine.)

To over-simplify: the physical facts about Lom rice cultivation are the following: Forest (the denser, the better) must be a) slashed and b) dried before it is c) burned in order to supply nutrients to the crop which needs d) a maturation period of 4 to 5 months until it is e) harvested and f) dried. Inasmuch as stages a)—f) have climatic requirements these have to do with humidity vs. aridity (because temperature is fairly stable we may safely exclude it as a variable here), and since the relative humidity of the air is quite constant this can, for practical purposes, be translated as rain vs. dry weather.

Now, a) can be performed almost regardless of climatic conditions. b) needs a dry spell of at least a month, sometimes two. c) requires a few days of dry weather prior to its performance (in case there has been a heavy rainfall after the brush has successfully dried) and also while it is performed. d) needs the right combination of sunshine, humidity, and — above all — rain. e) requires dry weather and f) requires sunshine. How do these requirements tally with the seasons?

The Lom recognise four seasons (numerals again refer to the months according to the Chinese calendar):

As we saw under the heading 'Yearly productive cycle' stages a) — f) are to take place at certain times. a) (slashing), which entails no specific climatic prerequisite, must be completed during the three months of the wet musim selatan — or, at the very latest, within the first fortnight of the ensuing dry musim timur. b) (drying) and c) (burning, which follows) must be completed within the date of sowing which is the two weeks before the second wet season (the 'monsoon', or musim barat) sets in. Thus, in theory (because sowing is light labour and quickly done), when the seeds have been in the soil for a week or two the rains arrive in earnest and hopefully stay for the three first months of d) (the maturation period). Thereafter the dry musim wataré is expected, during the first stages of which e) and f) are permitted, but rarely performed this early (cf. the length of the maturation period).

But this temporal ordering of the stages of Lom swidden agriculture is a cultural arrangement which only partly concords with the climatic realities it ideally is to mirror: The seasons cannot be plotted with complete reliability. Although I lack comparative data for Bangka I think the following statement (on the climate on the east coast of Malaysia) holds generally true:

"... the most marked seasonal rhythm is that of the north-east monsoon, [musim barat, OHS] which usually breaks towards the end of November, and with frequent high winds and torrential rain, lasts approximately till the end of January, or even later. This is succeeded by a period of light, variable winds, often from the south or south-east, and this in turn gradually merges into a long period of steady alternate sea and land breezes. These changes in the period from February to November, however, are not at all regular, and even the monsoon itself is apt to vary from year to year in its onset, its duration, and its intensity." (Raymond Firth 1966: 84, emphasis mine.)

I did not monitor precipitation during my fieldwork, nor was I able to obtain data on the climate prior to my arrival. I do not, therefore, know if agriculturalists' laments over the weather reflect actual conditions or if they are exaggerated one way or the other: According to the Lom the rains failed to arrive when they should in 1982 and the rice crop of -82/-83 was a total disaster. Cultivators reported that from a one-hectare field only some 10-25 kg of padi't were harvested.

What this means is obvious: Not only does the household have little to eat save tubers, there is also no seed-rice for next year's planting and cultivators have to go around borrowing and buying seeds from friends and neighbours who have some to spare. If conditions are normal some 250 kg (ten times the actual amount harvested) may be expected. The most upsetting factor in later years has been the rain. It arrives when it is not supposed to (something which made it impossible for several villagers to burn their swiddens in 1984) and fails to come when it is expected to. The first point to note in Table 6.2 (a and b) is that almost half of the households in the sample grow no rice at all. Further, it is clear that the number of households that did not grow rice was greater in 1983 than in 1984. The reason for both facts most certainly lies in the emergence of the proyék. Many households were busy moving into their new homes — particularly in 1983 — and, importantly, each household which accepted government housing were given 380 kg rice.