The heritage language learning session...

It hadn't been easy to find the time to teach the kids their heritage language. But my eldest, after finishing her national year 6 exam, UPSR, insisted that I really should make time on the weekend. Encouraged by her determination to be able to speak Dusun again (once when she was a little girl, she used to speak Dusun with her Dusun nanny), I struggled to find the time. The sessions turned out to be good...when only the daughters participated.

Last week, the 6 going 7 year old son decided to join in. All because among the three of them he was the one who could memorize all the colour terms (and he thought he was the greatest of them all!). So we started our session with a revision on the past lessons. Then the daughters requested to learn more words. Eldest daughter had her own ideas of how a language should be learned. "Do it in topics, mom", she kept insisting. Second daughter was contented to listen and repeat. But the boy was another story. "Mom, what's "bum" in Dusun?", was his first question. Thinking that if I ignore him he would come up with more such questions, I gave him the answer. To my horror, he went on and on asking, "what's nose-hair,...what's ear-hair..., what's armpit hair...what's poop...what's urine...?" And the girls had had enough that they sent him out of the "classroom". Being the cheeky boy that he is, he said "but I know how to say "private" in Dusun...it's "tontolou" (man's private part), resulting in the girls shrieking disgustedly at him.

Oh my! I have no idea whether his interest in those things is due to him being a 6 year old boy or simply due to him being a male. But undeniably my "classroom" progressed better without the boy.

The last of the bobolians-tingolig (village protection)

I wouldn't have met her if it wasn't for my colleague who needed somebody to translate for him. He's researching something on the Dusun communities and has been dying to ask further questions on some hypotheses he's been playing with. So I went with him to meet this ancient lady of wisdom and I'm glad I did.

She is 97 years old and bedridden. And yet her memory is still as sharp as I imagine it must have been when she was a practising bobolian (healer, protecter, spiritual messenger, for lost of exact translation). My friend wanted to know about tingolig (protection of the village and of the household) so he asked me to ask her who she invoked when she was performing the ritual...and what she asked for.

So she told me all about tingolig and more...She said she would invoke Kinorohingan (the Creator), to ask him to give some 'power' to the stick, stone and water that she brought, so that they would serve as the protection for the village. I asked her "where is Kinorohingan?", to which she answered, high above. To go there, she said, she had to follow a kondiu (an eagle). She stressed that she wouldn't physically transcend, but rather her words would until she reached him. She would then asked him to empower the stick, the stone and the water, and went back to the earth. She would then bury those three items at the edge of the village, slaughtered 7 chickens as a symbol of gratefulness. Three years later, a goat will be slaughtered at the same spot to renew the protection, and a year after, the same ritual would be repeated. This year she said, she didn't have the physical strength to perform the ritualfor her village, so she requested her komburongoh (the thing in the pic), a sacred object that every bobolian has to have to do the job, sent the komburongoh through somebody to complete the ritual.

She lamented about the forgotten tradition, about the days when the ways of the bobolians were still practised. She had tears in her eyes when she reminisced about the good old days...and I felt a great guilt for reasons I couldn't understand...maybe for being a pseudo-dusun when it comes to traditional beliefs.

Selamat Hari Raya- unity in diversity

After many years of not being able to celebrate Hari Raya (eid-ul-fitr) with my Muslim side of the family, I finally got the chance this year. My mom's cousins, the uncle and aunties, have aged well and they could hardly recognize me. Well, the last time I saw all of them was when I was about 10 yrs old. Living away from home somehow has distanced me from them.

It was a pleasure to be with them once again. Indeed, blood is thicker than water. One of the aunts asked me whether my brother the priest has safely come home. She said when she saw the wars at other countries on tv she kept thinking and worrying of relatives who were far away. And her face lighted up when I told her that my brother is safe and sound, serving at one of the churches in KK. The conversation might seem weird to people who are of not a diverse-belief background, but to us it is natural. My muslim aunt is proud to have a nephew who is a priest because she's hoping for him to do good to humanity.

The uncle emphasized on the importance of being tolerant and be united for the sake of our safety in this country. These simple folks might never have been away from their homeland, but they've seen enough war reports in the media to appreciate their peaceful home. Uncle said, "when you pray, pray for the safety of our country. May we always live in peace". And then he went on to say, " it is my ritual to advise the young people of my staff members to pray, always for safety, if you are a muslim, pray the muslim way, if you are a christian, pray the christian way, and if you are a traditional dusun, when you momurinait (praying), make sure you ask the Minamangun (Creator) to keep our land safe".

I'm glad I have managed to get to know the extended family once more. I remember before Hari Raya, my late grandmother came to me in a dream and told me to find the Muslim side of the family. I realize that on my grandmother's side, the dominant religion embraced by the family members is Islam. It looks like I have a bit of a research to do, and a lot of unknown family members to find...

Kitimbok Tinggur Bulawan

Hubby accidently came across this song in youtube today. As I have listened to it a few times on air, I asked him to look for the lyric and the singer for me. The lyric, to someone who had had the chance of knowing a very Dusun grandmother and her cohort, is very beautiful. It revolves around the Dusun's olden day rice-planting culture- about a man who stands on a log, and from a distance sees his sweetheart standing out from the crowd because of the timbok tinggur bulawan (Malay- Cucuk Sanggul "traditional hairpin") that she wears. I guess in the olden days that's how they identified 'the one'. Now I've never actually known what 'tinggur bulawan' means, except that it means a special type of hairpin that once upon a time was precious to a Dusun woman.



When I listened to the song further, I found that not only the lyric praises the beauty of a woman, but it also relates how the sunlight helps the rice to grow well, and the singer's plea for the rice to produce a bounty harvest because rice is his (the people's) source of strength. My grandmother and her friends used to say riddles and traditional poems using the same kind of wordings whenever they were having a mitatabang (helping each other in the farm) session.

Originally I thought the beautiful voice belonged to a lady, but actually it belonged to a boy. As hubby and I read the comments left by viewers of the song, we realized that the singer lost his life to thalassemia last year. May his soul rest in peace. He might no longer be here in this world, but he left a beautiful legacy to the Dusuns. Sakril Sidik, rest in peace.