Being Dusun

Mom finally taught me this little chant. (Mom is well-known among the family members and some neighbours to be the person to see when they choke on stuffs like fish-bones)It is supposed to be used to remove the thing that one chokes on. And being me, I definitely treasure this:

Pongidu do lugon (To remove a 'choke')
(repeat 7 times)

adik adik ka di lintang
adik di tandarakai
tandarakai di lugu
lugu di tondolugon
ka dit tumbuk lugon
idu tonggoi.

This little chant remains untranslatable. Yours truly hasn't mastered the language to do that yet. But with faith, it works.

(I think it works because when one is chanting something repeatedly, one gets into a very focussed mode and one's energy will work as intended. Just like a prayer)

After a few days of cleaning up and de-junking, I came across an old plastic bag that contained something that looked like charcoals on the top shelf of the kitchen cabinet. I looked at the 'things' for a long time, asked hubby if he knew what they were, and he said they looked like charcoals, affirming what I thought. He said charcoals can get rid of bad smells so I decided to put the bag in the cabinet underneath the sink, where I keep my kitchen bins.

I've forgotten all about it when hubby suddenly asked if it was possible that those 'things' were 'tohun' and I jumped off my chair because I suddenly remembered! Yes, they are 'tohun', which are pieces of burnt firewoods that have been sort of 'chanted on' and have special purposes. And these particular ones are the last 'tohun' my late grandmother ritualized in 2006 before she passed away a year later. The first thing that came to mind was, 'tohun' can't be stepped over. Thankful that I haven't broken that rule, I quickly recovered the bag and put the 'tohun' in this jar:



I sat for a while and reminisced. And decided to write all my late grandmother's instructions on the jar to be a lasting memory. Grandmother's words came back loud and clear:

1. Tohuns are to be used to get rid of bad energy from a young child's body, the one that makes a child sick or cranky.
2. Use it before leaving the house for a journey, or even at home when necessary.
3. Take a piece of it, move it around the child's body starting from the navel and stopping at the navel too and throw away the used one on the ground where the energy would dissolved.
4. DO NOT ever step over unused tohuns!

Guiltily, I tried to remember if I ever did use it as she instructed. I might have, once before I left for Perth again after my fieldwork. I wish I could use it again but now that the children are all big, I don't think I should. Plus I have forgotten exactly how to do it and when in doubt, one shouldn't act, I think.

Anyhow, in memory of grandmother, I am preserving them for the future generations. Once, this was our practice. It is still our culture albeit a disappearing one. It will always hold a special place in my heart.

My paternal aunt and her husband celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary yesterday. It was such a beautiful celebration, what with her children (I think there must be about a dozen of them), who are all grown up, and her grandchildren/great grandchildren were all gathered up. And the place, Bundu Tuhan, is such a bonus. Fresh air, nice temperature, just like spring in Perth, it made for a beautiful party setting.

My kids were reintroduced to another aspect of Dusun culture, the Dusuns' sense of time. Very true to what my friends always say: "where there are two or three Dusuns gathered together, they can sit and talk for hours on end". The lunch reception started at 1pm. The kids asked me how long were we going to be there, to which I answered, "an hour". We arrived at about 1.30pm, when the party was just starting. As usual there were so much party food, catered to feed the whole village population and some.

Meeting long lost cousins was definitely exciting. After food, the merry making begun. (Since the Dusuns are well known for their hedonism, it would never do not to have some music in a party; at least a karaoke set). Yours truly got carried away too, that she agreed to sing two songs (duet with a sister-in-law of course because yours truly isn't a professional singer!) and danced a few dances. The best part of course was having the first dance with the uncle who's the 'groom'. He is well-known to be a serious person, but surprisingly agreed to have that dance! What a wonderful feeling :-)

Anyway, the kids were watching the clock all the time, waiting for that 'one hour' to come. (Thankfully they got to know some cousins who were too fascinating not to pay attention to in the end). Needless to say, the one hour dragged on that we only managed to get away from the party at about 5.30pm. (Well I wouldn't have minded staying till the end if it wasn't raining and the road condition was a bit better though). My eldest came to this conclusion- "if mom says "an hour" to attend a Dusun party, it would probably mean 3 or 4 hours". Well done, daughter. You have been successfully reintroduced into the culture :-)

It's strange how a simple conversation can trigger a thought. Last night, as I was enjoying BBQ with my dear friends for the last time before my family moves back to KK tomorrow (and breaking the rule of no heavy food for dinner *sigh*), the topic of family gathering came up. One of the friends is going home for the christmas holiday and is looking forward to her family reunion. As she describes the activities of their family reunion which have started this month, I was impressed to know that her extended family can actually form teams for sport matches etc. I said to her that in the olden day, her family would have formed a Dusun clan which was entitled to have a 'village'. Awesome.

In the olden days, clans are formed most of all from family members. They would have lived in some sort of long house that continued to grow longer as more members of the family got married. One immediate family occupied one hall of the house, with its own kitchen. During a ritual which always involved eating though, the family that conducted the ritual was obliged to cook for the whole long house members. If they had any members who lived in another longhouse because of a marriage, these people must also be sent some of the food. I'd imagined that it must really have been time-consuming to count all the family members within a walking distance (even if that would mean a half hour walk or so) to be sent food to.

Each clan normally identified themselves by naming the place their house is located in. And those places would be named based on the geographical features, direction or based on a natural landmark like a river, a tree etc. For example, a place located uphill of the village would be called 'sokid' (upper part), and a place on the foot of a hill would be 'siba'.

And so my friend's family would have been one of these clans in the olden days.