Living Outside Your Avatar

On Chinese Valentine’s Day, celebrated on the last day of the seemingly never-ending two-week party of Chink New Years, Tiff and I watched Avatar. It was a simple and familiar story (i.e. greedy companies tearing down habitats of local villagers in-touch with the land), but the movie stuck with me.

Blame it on its immersive 3D-ness or maybe the soft spot I’ve had in my heart for blue chicks ever since Smurfette.  The injustices of the indigenous aliens  in the film was so obvious to me. Yeah, I would hijack a helicopter, ride a dragon-thingy and put my own life at risk to fight for what I believed in.

Or would I?

The American-inspired Malaysian flag coupled with Sarawak, one of the two states of East Malaysia, outside a courthouse.

Soon after walking out of the theater in Kuala Lumpur, I booked a flight to Borneo, the third largest island in the world and split up between Indonesia, that crazy rich dude of Brunei and Malaysia. Y’see, in Sarawak the same blatant inequalities of Avatar are happening; that is, the oldest rainforest on our blue planet is getting demolished by money-blind corporations and destroying the homes of indigenous people who thrive on the land. Slap ‘em blue and pin a tail on the Iban people and you’ll get a true 3-dimensional experience of Avatar‘s Nav’i. Whatever the reason, I found myself feeling that I, like the film’s protagonist, was a world-apart from problems like this, even on my own planet.

Yes, life ain’t the movies. But it isn’t acceptance of the world’s misery that leads me away from activism; it’s detachment.

So I ask you to crank up your imagination one more time. Put on the glasses, hook in, wear it, breathe it and live it.

This is your world:

Nicholas Mujah and his beat up Isuzu Trooper.

The Trooper

You are five-foot-three, but you are a giant to your people. You haven’t slept in three days. You’re driving to Sri Aman, a market town in south central Sarawak and you’re tired. But you’ll never admit it. How can you? There are people that are worse off and need your help. Your people. You must be strong. Your Isuzu Trooper rattles and shows all the signs of its 30-plus years and turns into a gas station. You’re halfway there; there’s two more hours of driving until Sri Aman — and countless hours of paperwork waiting for you.

You’re 100% Iban, the warring tribe who once ruled Sarawak, and you’re proud of that fact but those days are over. You tell the gas attendant in Iban to fill up the tank, handing over 50 Malaysian ringgits. You got enough cash in your wallet, thanks to your wife who runs a retail store. You might be the president of SADIA (Sarawak Dayak Iban Association) and lead a staff of five people and have the help of a few lawyers but you’re a volunteer.

Mujah is covering 210 cases of Ibans fighting for their rights.

You stare into the distance and wonder how the widow is holding up; one of the villagers from this Sri Aman case who had their land demolished. You can’t help but be haunted by her grief-stricken face that she continues to wear ever since she came back home to find her rubber plantation wiped out, her means of survival gone. You tell yourself that you should be used to it by now but every time you get to the scene of a crime, the freshly chainsawed trees and bulldozered homes, you still have to fight: Fight the tears, fight the emotions, fight the hopelessness of it all.

500 villages. 15,000 Iban. And the complaints keep coming in. Villagers making their way to your office, calling…And the cries of help aren’t all you hear. You get the rare death threat.

You open the door of the Trooper, remembering how this junk car saved your life.  It was late at night and you were on your way home. You joke that the car is more recognizable than you across Sarawak in Iban communities. Nobody can drive this car and get it going. But you couldn’t drive ahead when those gangsters pulled you over. You were behind the wheel powerless. It was only a matter of luck that local Ibans saw the trooper and knew what was happening, grabbing a crowbar and saving your life. You’re the driving force, but the people help you in return. You can’t let them down.

It looks like it’s going to rain. You turn the key in the ignition and the car wheezes and stutters. Nothing.

But there are limitations. You’re 50. You have a law degree but you can’t practice and never step foot in a courtroom. You prepare affidavits and debrief witnesses. The police harass them daily to move from their land. They’re scared. You understand this. You were more than worried when the local cops jailed you up for two weeks without legal reason. You don’t want to blame the government; it’s the corporations. But your people are unprotected. Nobody is saving them. How do you fight all that power and money?

The Iban waiting for justice outside a courtroom.

You turn the key again and your car goes into seizures. Nothing. Again.

Population-wise, the Iban are the majority. This is a war. They’re scared and the companies count on that. The only way to get defend your land is to sue them, but cases, with all the appeals, is a lengthy process. On average it takes six years. In the meantime, your people are homeless and lost. People who don’t have the luxuries of citylife and are content with basic means of survival. To take that away is downright inhumane.

You close your eyes. You turn the key again and the car finally starts up with a cough, as if the trooper was fueled on hope alone.

Village chief Augustine Akuli.

The Headhunter

You’re Augustine Akuli and 68 years old. And you have to start from scratch. You are Tuai Rumah, or village chief, but that means nothing if there’s no village. You have spent the past 30 years cultivating 20 acres of rubber. The rainforest is considered a preserved area owned by the government. But who did all the preserving? You, the Iban, took care of the land.  And it was yours, with a specific land title to prove it. But one day Indonesian immigrant workers came with chainsaws and severed our way of life.

What happened to Pulau Galau? In Iban it means the islet of forest, the land promised by the government. And it’s all forgotten.

The indisputable evidence: the land title of the Iban in Sri Aman.

Sure, they offer to pay 500 ringgits per acre — and it’s a lot of money. But what about your children and your children’s children? In total four generations are uprooted by this. Loggers used to compensate but not anymore. You hear stories. Payment isn’t guaranteed.

Playing ball: The crowd that hopes for compensation and has already given up hope.

You’re frustrated and you find comfort in anger. Anything, as long as it doesn’t dip into despair. You’re outside of the courtroom, a familiar place as your case has been going for several years. As usual, there are two groups collected outside the courtrooms: the defeated ones that are hopeful for at least some money in return and the ones who will fight against all odds to reclaim your right.

What can you do? The rubber plantation is replaced with corporate palm oil trees, guarded by ex-cop and ex-military men. You can’t work there. Getting paid 10-15 ringgits a day? It’s work for the immigrant workers. You can barely survive on that; you live in Malaysia where 10 kilos of the cheapest rice costs 24 ringgits in the supermarket. You must fight.

You smile at the notion of going back to headhunting. Your forefathers were a feared group who partake in a long-forgotten practice of bringing back the heads of your enemies as trophies. No, some traditions are lost for a reason. But you wouldn’t imagine that you would have to continue to hunt, to hunt for something you didn’t think you had to: a land of your own.

The Writer

You’re a journalist. But not anymore. You decided after a 12-month tour through Asia that you’re done with it. You were honest with yourself: You wanted fame; you wanted the world to know you and, instead, you got something better: you got to know the world. You’re done writing. But you have one last story to tell — and this time it’s not about the money, it’s not about the byline, it’s about a belief.  You find an untold story that needs to be told. And you spend time with the Iban and you scribble hard in your notebook like your pen is running out of ink.

And you can’t help but have the journalist-part of you flood with questions, but this time they’re all directed at yourself.

You stand in the fire and keep asking yourself, “What can I do? What can I do? What the Hell can I do?”

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And now it’s time. Time to click a new web link, time to turn the page — time to detach.