Heading Home After School

Dayak boy walks home after school through the tembawang surrounding the village of Tae (see Jungle Gym)  in West Kalimantan, Indonesia.  

Cutting Shakes

Using a wooden stave as a mallet and his parang, or bush knife, as a froe, this Dayak villager from West Kalimantan cuts roofing shakes out of a downed Dipterocarpus trunk. Same resin infused (and extremely resistant) hardwood as recorded in the village of Ensibau (see Shingle Maker). Neither craftsman is wearing shoes as he chops away. [NOTE: It takes a forester to notice this, but the fellow in the upper right background of the image is wrapping a d-tape around a tree to measure it's diameter. Apparently, we were running transects when we passed the shake cutter].

Longhouse

One of the few remaining Dayak longhouse in the Sanggau District of West Kalimantan, Indonesia. The kids sitting out front spent a large part of their day helping me collect illipe nuts (see Illipe Nut and Dayak Kids II). [NOTE: Image was scanned from an old slide and looks a lot like an Instagram picture from an iPhone. In this case, however, the "vintage" effect is not an effect]. 

Tempat Obat

Two Dayak medicine containers ("tempat obat") that we got in West Kalimantan (see Kalimantan Woodcarver, Illipe Nut, Field Crews) many years ago. The container on the left is carved out of bone and has a calendar for indicating when to take your medicine; the stopper is carved out of wood. The larger container on the right is bamboo with very ornate inscriptions.  Unclear what is on the heads of the little guys on the stoppers. Both are beautiful examples of ethnic art being incorporated into daily life. 

Dayak Kids II

This group of Dayak kids was out on the porch in front of their longhouse in Sanggau waiting to catch a glimpse of the funny foreigner, and I convinced them to let me take a photograph. Can't remember the name of the village, but I know that I was there to look for illipe nuts (see Illipe Nut and Illipe Nut II). 

Dayak Kids

These kids were sitting in the doorway of their house in Bagak Sawah, West Kalimantan (see Bapaks from Bagak) early one morning when I walked by.  I was going out with Pak Afong to run transects in local tembawang (see Tembawang). Glad I pulled out my camera, because I really like this image.

Field Crews

In the early 1990's, I was involved with some extensive forest inventories in the northern part of Sanggau in West Kalimantan, Indonesia.  The sample area was kind of remote and hard to get to, and once you arrived, it was best to just camp out and finish the work.  Which is what three crews of local Dayaks, two cooks,  and I did for eight days. It only rained once. [NOTE: I remember one exceptional day we ran two kilometers of line through mixed Dipterocarp forest on terrain as flat as a football field.  The area, apparently, had never been logged and we didn't record a single stump.]  

Basketmaker

Nice Dayak lady from a small village in the Sanggau district of West Kalimantan sitting on the front porch of her house with an assortment of rattan baskets.  She was getting ready to go work in her rice field, which prompted me to comment on how stylishly she was dressed.  She agreed to let me take a picture after I said that. [NOTE: The red tinge on her lips is betel nut (Areca catechu), not lipstick.]