Peaceful Societies

The two Ladakhi districts have passed separate resolutions demanding that the state of Jammu and Kashmir create a separate division for them. A news story in the Indian Express on December 8 indicated that feelings are strong throughout Ladakh for the proposed separation.

The Shanti Stupa in Leh (Photo by Christopher John SSF in Flickr, Creative Commons license)

On December 1, the Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Council, Leh, unanimously passed a resolution demanding the separation; a comparable body, the LAHDC, Kargil, passed a similar resolution on December 6. On Friday December 7, Jamyang Tsering Namgial, the Chief Executive Councilor of the LAHDC, Leh, emphasized to the news service that his organization is demanding “complete administrative autonomy from Kashmir.”

He went on to argue that they are demanding separate status because Ladakh has been neglected repeatedly by the state government. Furthermore, it is basically an impossible administrative arrangement—Leh is 400 kilometers from Srinagar, the summer capital of the state. Namgial further maintained that the state has three distinct regions—Jammu, Kashmir, and Ladakh, but “Ladakh has to constantly fight for resources from Kashmir.”

A pashmina goat nurses her kid in Ladakh (Photo by Rahul Ajmera in Wikimedia, Creative Commons license)

He pointed out that the central government of India last year approved Rs 50 crore (almost U.S. $7,000,000) for pashmina development, but Ladakh has not as yet seen any of that funding. The LAHDC, Leh, also passed a resolution condemning what it termed as the backwardness of the district in terms of development and education. “The problems of the region have never been addressed,” according to that resolution.

Members of the two councils had separate meetings with the governor of the State, Satya Pal Malik and some of his staff in the city of Jammu to press their demands.

The article in the Indian Express does not mention a fact that would be well known to readers in India—that the two different districts of Ladakh, Leh and Kargil, have very distinct cultures and recent histories. To simplify, the people of Leh are primarily Tibetan Buddhists with a minority of Muslim residents, while the Kargil District is primarily Muslim with a minority of Buddhists. It appears as if they are united in terms of having strained relations with the state.

A group of 86 students from a pharmaceutical technology program recently visited three different Orang Asli communities in Tapah, Perak state, Malaysia. The communities consist mostly of Temiar and Semai people. According to a news report last week, the government of Perak state in Malaysia plus the Royal College of Medicine of the University of Kuala Lumpur sponsored the visit.

An Orang Asli child, probably Semai, in the Cameron Highlands of Pahang state (Photo by Phalinn Ooi on Flickr, Creative Commons license)

The purpose of the visit was to develop a better understanding of the lifestyles and cultures of the villages—Kampung Batu 5, Kampung Sg Chedun and Kampung Sungai Odak. The project manager, Nur Izzat Nazmi Ismail, said that the visits represented the first time many of the students had gotten to meet any Orang Asli people. The Tok Batin, the chief, from each village gave a welcoming speech to the students. The students were impressed that the villages were equipped with clinics, libraries, and multipurpose halls. The three villages were well-maintained and clean.

Pavitra Ramanaidu, one of the students, admitted she had been nervous about the impending visit since she had been raised in the city and didn’t know what to expect. She was surprised that the Orang Asli lived in houses much like city people do. She said, “I thought they still lived in remote places and hardly met people and still hunted for food.”

A Semai man in Tapah — Semai man in Tapah, Perak, (Photo by Malekhanif in Wikimedia, Creative Commons license)

Ibrahim Ahmad, a lecturer in general studies, said that the visit to the three Orang Asli villages in Tapah was meaningful for the students. He said that they were able to interact with the villagers “and observe the lifestyle and culture of the Semai tribe.” He was grateful that the Department of Orang Asli Development had made the arrangements for the meetings at the three villages. A different Malaysian news source quoted the lecturer as saying the students at the college are excited to learn about the history and lives of the Orang Asli.

In the words of a Google translation, he said, “This program has … changed the perceptions of students who previously thought the Orang Asli community was still backward.”

Several NGOs in the Rukwa Region of Tanzania have been campaigning recently for their society to promote more gender equality. They are particularly focused on women having better guarantees to the lands they help farm. Several of the villages mentioned last week in a news report about the situation are located in the traditional Fipa territory of the Rukwa Region.

Tanzanian women farmers (Photo by USAID in Wikipedia, in the public domain)

According to the news story, activists from ActionAid Tanzania and from Lawyer’s Environmental Action Team called on the rural people to give more land rights to women. They emphasized that theme during a training program related to natural resource conservation, land rights issues, gender equality, and land use planning held in the village of Ilemba, which is in the rural part of the Sumbawanga District, in the Rukwa Region.

The training, supported by the WWF – Netherlands and the IUCN National Committee of the Netherlands, was offered free of charge to the villagers. The goals of the sponsoring organizations were to help the people realize their rights, which should lead them to provide lands to their wives and daughters. The training session, the sponsors hope, will encourage women to demand their rights and encourage them to seek legal help when they face discrimination in land-related disputes.

Two Sumbawanga women in the regional hospital (Photo by The White Ribbon Alliance on Flickr, Creative Commons license)

Haki Ardhi, from ActionAid Tanzania, urged the women in the Rukwa Region and the neighboring Katavi Region to join groups that will allow them to demand their rights more effectively. He said that by uniting, the women would strengthen their advocacy and lobbying. He emphasized the importance of valuing land ownership from both the husband’s and the wife’s perspectives, which will help prevent conflicts from developing that might cloud future family relationships.

This latest report continues a pattern of actions and news reporting from southwestern Tanzania about gender relations, particularly gender-discrimination and occasional acts of violence. Updating studies by anthropologists such as Willis (1989b) and Smythe (2006) about the traditional patterns of gender equality among the Fipa, the news reports over the past six years show an increasing concern for the issue—and the ways the Fipa villagers are handling them.

First ladies Salma Kikete of Tanzania, center, and Laura Bush, U.S., right (Photo by the Embassy of the U.S. in Wikimedia, in the public domain)

In early March 2013 a news story reported that the woman who was then Tanzania’s First Lady, Salma Kikwete, went to Sumbawanga and spoke to more than 1,000 kids at a girl’s school about the importance of women getting an education. She urged the girls to make other choices than getting pregnant and dropping out of school.

A review of the news stories shows that the women in that section of Tanzania have been getting more assertive as the years have passed. In April 2017, a village man was severely punished by the village women for the crime, in their eyes, of publicly abusing his mother. For publicly insulting and shaming his mom, according to a news story, the village women tied the man, pushed him into a pit filled with cow dung, made him parade around the village nearly naked, and so on. They punished him for much of the day. Later in 2017, another news story reported on the fact that Fipa men are complaining to the police that the women are beating them.

We can’t be sure but it might appear from the scattering of news reports that the Fipa and the rest of Tanzanian society are trying to improve the local gender relationships. However, Hamsi Mathias Machangu, the author of a recent journal article on the killing of old women accused of witchcraft among the Fipa, came to very different conclusions. The pattern of violence against elderly women seems to be increasing.

Machangu blames the growing gender violence on a variety of reasons such as increasing rural poverty, government policies that have promoted male domination over females, the denial of education to girls, and the concentration of rural people into more heavily settled communities. There are clearly a variety of factors impinging on the gender relationships of the rural Fipa people.

Mining for iron ore is destroying the Saranda Forest in the southern part of India’s Jharkhand state and causing serious health problems for the Birhor living in it. An article in the environmental news website Mongabay.com last week describes the growing destruction of the Sal trees, which dominate the forest. It is considered to be the largest sal forest in Asia.

Sal trees (Shorea robusta) such as this one are large, dominant forest giants in India (Photo by Pankaj Oudhia in Wikipedia, Creative Commons license)

The journalist, Gurvinder Singh, interviews a 22-year old Birhor man named Krishna Birhor who complains that pollution from the mining causes him and numerous other Bihor people in his village, Tatiba, in the West Singhbhum District of the state, to have bouts of fever and vomiting. He gathers herbs from the nearby sal forest to help cure his illnesses but he realizes that it is only a matter of time before the trees are all cut down.

Krishna adds that the mining companies refuse to hire the young tribal people like him because they are not qualified for the jobs.He has been selling herbs that he gathers in the forest, “but the mining has been destroying everything,” he says. “Thousands of trees have been chopped off for mining while our plight has been ignored.” He says that the Birhor die silently every day and nobody cares. All that matters are the truckloads of iron ore going out of the iron mines in the forest.

A Birhor man (Screen capture from the video “Birhor—a Tribe Displaced for Nothing” by Video Volunteers on YouTube, Creative Commons license)

Tatiba village has about 200 Birhor, many of whom also complain of pollution-related illnesses. The remoteness of the village and the bad roads combine to make nearby health service providers almost inaccessible. The water is so badly polluted that the people have to rely on water from tanker trucks provided by the mining companies. An article from March 2017 also described the dire poverty of Tatiba and the requests by the Birhor living there for a decent cemetery so they could bury their dead.

The bulk of last week’s Mongabay article focuses on the natural wonders of the Saranda Forest, which are rapidly being lost to the mines. With a total area of 82,000 hectares, an estimated 17.6 percent of it, 14,410 hectares, is now destroyed by the mining. Wildlife in the forest has suffered as well as the human inhabitants. An elephant census in the forest in 2010 sighted 253 elephants while a research study done by the Wildlife Institute of India in 2015-16 failed to find even one.

The forests of Jharkhand (Photo by Kaurun in Wikimedia, Creative Commons license)

The research team found that the biodiversity in the forest has diminished also. The researchers found only 19 species of mammals compared to earlier studies that had found 30. The number of bird species has also diminished from 148 found earlier to only 116 species more recently.

The lengthy Mongabay piece mentions the various commissions that have investigated the situation without resolving the major issue: the forest sits atop a huge treasure trove of iron ore, one of the largest in the world at over 2,000 million tons of ore, off of which many agencies and corporate actors have made and will continue to make huge fortunes.

School children threatened by constant truck traffic on the roads: that’s their problem. A river that has mostly gone dry due to the absence of forest cover: but so what. Villagers who have to bathe in and drink from polluted streams: who cares? It is not a hopeful story about a tropical forest or its inhabitants.

Some Amish farmers have been raising camels and selling their milk to a Saudi entrepreneur who then sells it to people who are allergic to cow’s milk. CNN published an article last week about the businessman, a Muslim raised in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, and his Amish and Mennonite suppliers.

A nursing camel in Saudi Arabia (Photo on Pixabay, Creative Commons license)

Walid Abdul-Wahab had drunk camel’s milk on occasion as a kid in Saudi Arabia but he got the idea for establishing a business of marketing camel’s milk while he was studying at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles in 2008. He was struck by the health consciousness of the people in that state and it occurred to him that camel’s milk could become the next health food craze. He remembered the luxury of camel’s milk from home and wondered if he could form a business based on a positive, beneficial product that he knew about from his own country.

He knew that the Bedouin tribes throughout the Middle East had been drinking camel’s milk for eons, but wondered if Americans could learn to consume it also. It is sweeter and slightly more salty than cow’s milk, and it may be healthier. The problem, he realized, was where could he obtain camel’s milk? He quickly learned that the few sources inthe U.S. were from some Amish and Mennonite farmers in Colorado, Missouri, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.

A bottle of camel milk from Desert Farms (Photo by David Eickhoff on Flickr, Creative Commons license)

He set up his new business, Desert Farms, which sells camel’s milk through the company’s website plus supermarkets and health food shops. Abdul-Wahab argues that the other products available as substitutes for cow’s milk, such as soy, almond, coconut and rice milks, are not ideal. They either do not taste as good or they are less nutritious, he believes.

He contacted Amish and Mennonite farmers who were raising camels and selling them for $25,000 and more or leasing them to churches (for nativity scenes) or to zoos. When he began his business in 2014, no one in the U.S. was selling camel’s milk. He had a lot of work to do to persuade the Plain People that there might be a market for the product. But he persisted, convinced seven farmers to become suppliers, and in 2015 Desert Farms became the first company to get a USDA license to sell camel’s milk.

An Amish woman using her cell phone at the Reading Terminal Market in Philadelphia (Photo by Vilseskogen on Flickr, Creative Commons license)

He found that working with the Amish and Mennonites presented some special challenges. Some do not have cell phones—they make phone calls from telephone booths that serve entire Amish communities. Most do not have access to the internet. In two farms that would allow it, he was able to install fax machines that connected to phone lines so he could send things like labels and orders. Since the farmers were already equipped to handle milking cows, they could easily use the same equipment to milk camels.

He soon discovered that his suppliers did not like to sign contracts. Their culture, much like that of Saudi Arabia, is founded on relationships built upon trust. Those relationships extend well beyond the bounds of business: he has been invited to attend numerous weddings and funerals. He also observed that the Amish, much like the Muslims in Saudi Arabia, do not depict sacred people or objects in their homes. He feels that their lack of crosses is very similar to the way Islam is practiced in his country.

As his business has grown, Abdul-Wahab has found that working with the small, independent Amish farmers, and particularly the difficulty of communicating with them, has raised insurmountable problems. So he has consolidated his source of supply at a single, large Amish farm in Missouri. That farmer uses cell phones and electricity and rents other camels as needed from nearby farms. The centralization has allowed Desert Farms to sell standardized-tasting camel’s milk.

However, it is not cheap—one pint sells for $18. In contrast, eight-times as much organic cow’s milk, one gallon, costs around $6 – $7. But to judge by his comments, it is worth it.

The Ju/’hoansi San had another good year harvesting, curing and selling devil’s claw tubers from the surrounding Kalahari Desert. About 800 residents of the Nyae Nyae Conservancy and their closely-related neighbors to the west, the !Kung of the N#a Jaqna Conservancy, harvested about 32 tons of the desert plant roots this year, earning them nearly N$2 million (US$145,000).

A devil’s claw (Harpagophytum procumbens) plant growing in a desert of southern Africa (Photo from Wikimedia, © CITES Secretariat)

The information is quite similar to earlier reports about the wild desert plants, their medicinal uses, and the growing business for the San people. The figures revealed in a news story last week about the 2018 harvest results, compared with similar reports from 2012, 2016 and 2017, show how the harvesting of the roots from the desert plants continues to grow. When the Ju/’hoansi and the !Kung gather the tubers, they are careful to meet the requirements of international certification to show that the products have been sustainably harvested. That certification has been an essential component of the continuing success of the devil’s claw business in the international health medicine market.

This year’s article reports on the social implications of the harvesting. Lara Diez of the Nyae Nyae Development Foundation indicates that the devil’s claw harvesting represents a significant source of income in an area where there is little other employment. She adds that the harvesting empowers the members of the conservancies, especially the women. Furthermore, it demonstrates that marginalized communities can produce for themselves once they have the means—they don’t need hand-outs to live.

Chopped up and dried roots of the devil’s claw, Harpagophytum procumbens — Chopped up and dried roots of the devil’s claw (Photo by H. Zell in Wikimedia, Creative Commons license)

Xoa//an /Ai!ae, the Chair of the Nyae Nyae Conservancy, said that the harvesting directly benefits the individuals, particularly the women, doing the work. The collectors will decide for themselves where to use the money. The reporter spoke with two women, N/haokxa Kaqece and Xoan Kxam/oo. They said that properly harvesting the devil’s claw tubers is important—if they are careless in their work, the plants could die, which would diminish the harvest the following year. They also expressed appreciation for the training they have received on how to process the devil’s claw products because “it is a medicine and we want to produce a good quality.”

The women went on to describe how the money they earn allows them to buy things they need such as clothes and food. They explained that otherwise they would suffer since they don’t have the opportunities that the Ju/’hoansi men have to earn money from doing small jobs.

The Buddhist monks in rural Thailand have a serious problem: they are gaining too much weight. According to a news report by AFP on November 22, the problem is that they are gifted with too much fatty and sugary foods by well-meaning Rural Thai. Their weight, and their health, are suffering.

Some of the monks are noticeably overweight at the Temple of the Reclining Buddha in Bangkok (Photo by Aaron T. Goodman on Flickr, Creative Commons license)

The journalist writing for Agence France-Presse interviewed Pipit Sarakitwinon, a monk who says he is trying to do better. His weight was up to 180 kg (almost 400 lb.) but he has been trying to eat less and exercise more. He walks around his temple and does arm exercises every day in response to a health campaign that Buddhist leaders have encouraged their clergy to embrace. He has lost 30 kg. (66 lb.) so far this year since he started eating smaller portions and watching his weight. At the time he embarked on his diet, the 63-year-old monk said he could barely walk 100 meters before getting tired.

The Thai people, seeking to gain merit by giving alms to the clergy, often shower them with foods that are unhealthy—sodas, sugary sweets, heavy curries. They may earn merit with their gifts, but their generosity endangers the health of the recipients. The monks are suffering from knee problems from their weight, plus they face such dangers as hypertension and diabetes.

The Thai have high rates of obesity—among the highest in Asia—and the monks are at the peak of the curve. According to a study done in 2016 by members of the Allied Health Sciences faculty at Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, 48 percent of Thai monks are obese and 42 percent suffer from high blood pressure.

While Buddhist leaders are quite aware of the problem and have issued guidelines to their clergy to try and get them to make healthy diet and exercise choices—in order to effectively deliver Buddha’s teachings—the monks do face a fundamental problem. They have a hard time refusing the food offerings from devoted Thai.

Phra Rajvoramuni, an official at a temple in Bangkok, urges monks to exercise by doing such things as sweeping the temple grounds every morning, doing walking meditations, and cleaning the temple. He also recommends that they get regular, basic medical check-ups. He doesn’t deny the problem of not accepting gifts from the faithful. “According to Lord Buddha’s teaching, whatever they offer, we have to accept. We can’t deny, we can’t reject,” he says.

The Wat Pho Chai in Nong Khai, Thailand (Photo by Ronan Crowley on Flickr, Creative Commons license)

The abbot of the Wat Pho Chai temple in Nong Khai Province of Rural Thailand, Phra Bhavana Dhamakosit, told the reporter that the temple began doing medical check-ups of their monks three years ago. One of the problems officials face is that the monks often move about from one temple to another, so it is hard to get them to persist in getting their check-ups.

Although the guidelines suggest that the monks should make healthy choices, the abbot also admitted the difficulty of putting too much pressure on the faithful. It is better to suggest to the monks that they abstain from eating unhealthy foods.

A Botswana newspaper published an interesting piece last week about the dances enjoyed by the G/wi and the changes they are making in their traditions. The article updates the information provided by the standard ethnography of the people, George B. Silberbauer’s 1981 book Hunter & Habitat in the Central Kalahari Desert.

A San man, probably G/wi, dancing around a fire and clapping women in Ghanzi, Botswana (Photo by Petr Kosina on Flickr, Creative Commons license)

In order to understand the context of the current article, it is necessary to first review Silberbauer’s description of the G/wi healing dances. The anthropologist writes that the G/wi perform exorcising dances to try and dissipate tensions and to restrain the spread of conflicts. They believe that one of their gods, G//awama, a mean-spirited deity, sometimes throws down tiny slivers of wooden arrows which infect the people with evil.

When a band fills with dissensions and tempers become short, the people may decide to hold a dance that night. The dances usually take a lot of time, perhaps the entire night, so not everyone will be enthusiastic. But the initiative may start with men or women, young or old, and if enough people are convinced that they need the healing provided by a dance, they will start one. The rest of the band normally joins in.

San women, probably G/wi, clapping and singing around a fire in Ghanzi, Botswana (Photo by Petr Kosina on Flickr, Creative Commons license)

The dance begins with the women and girls sitting around a small fire clapping in complex rhythms and singing shrill songs. The men dance in a circle around them. The evil that the god has rained down on them has lodged in the women; as the men dance around the women, they touch their shoulders and draw it out. No one blames the women—it is just the way the god has arranged life. The male dancers sense the evil passing up into their bodies and soon the men doing the exorcising will start collapsing into cataleptic trances.

According to Silberbauer, the G/wi perform two different exorcising dances, the Iron Dance and the Gemsbok Dance. The former is distinguished from the latter by the fact that it is often used as a prelude to “surgery,” during which foreign objects may be removed from the bodies of the “patients.” During these performances, the men exhibit tremendous energy as they dance vigorously and stamp enthusiastically, the rattles around their ankles echoing loudly. The women sing and clap with equal vigor. Everyone exhibits a lot of emotional involvement as well as physical exertion during the dancing.

A San mother and her child, probably G/wi, in Ghanzi (Photo by Petr Kosina on Flickr, Creative Commons license)

When the dancing is finished, the participants are not only physically worn down, they are also emotionally drained. Silberbauer adds, however, that they are also “markedly more relaxed, cheerful, and confidant (p.177).” The dancing has worked its healing magic. It has served to reinforce their dominant values, which are, he writes, cooperation, egalitarianism, and harmony.

According to the writer last week, this tradition of holding healing dances persists, despite the disruptions in the G/wi society, but they have added new dances to their repertoire. The journalist writing the story, Ricardo Kanono, bases his report on information provided by Kuela Kiema, a G/wi man who was born in Old Xade. Kiema studied music at the Molepolole College of Education and went on to get a bachelor’s degree from the University of Namibia. The first G/wi person to earn a college degree, he wrote a book entitled Tears for My Land.

According to Kiema, all G/wi (the writer uses an alternate name, “Khwe”) are either singers or dancers—no one is a spectator when they perform their dances and music. They have a large repertoire of poly-rhythmic dances and music, including numerous musical instruments and objects that produce sounds. They perform at many social functions.

A group of Gemsbok in the Kalahari Desert (Photo by Chris Eason on Flickr, Creative Commons license)

Kiema lists what he argues are three different traditional G/wi dances: the cqoo (gemsbok) dance and the qanu (iron) dance, the same healing trance dances described by Silberbauer in 1981. Kiema also mentions a third healing dance called the kh’oba. He describes the three not so much as healing but rather as religious dances that establish unity with the gods.

He describes some of the other G/wi dances that are not involved with their religious beliefs nor with healing. One, wokhuri cee, is purely designed as entertainment rather than for spiritual purposes. It focuses on telling a story, such as a young man who is courting a woman. The performances by the dancers depict their romantic encounters, his advances, her coquetry in response, and their adventures together. Other story lines followed by the wokhuri cee might involve gathering wild berries, a female ostrich protecting her offspring, or a giraffe preparing to flee when it sees a party of hunters approaching.

A Botswana man performs the tsutsube dance (Photo by Mompati Dikunwane in Wikimedia, Creative Commons license)

One of the wokhuri cee dances, popularized beginning in the late 1950s and early 1960s, was called a tsutsube, the title of a dance developed by people returning from the mines in South Africa who ventured into Molepolole and nearby villages. The word tsutsube has incorrectly become associated with a dance, and even with a healing dance, when the term should correctly be applied to the song that was sung by the returning mine workers. Kiema re-emphasizes that a tsutsube is not a healing dance.

Physical comedy becomes an art form in these dances—for instance, wokhuri means play and cee means song. While the words used in the three healing dances are limited to exclamations, a wokhuri cee uses a much larger vocabulary. Each dance is handed down from elders to younger people. Clueless about these traditions and conventions, unfortunately, dance troupes today often tend to corrupt both the conventions of the religious dances and of the wokhuri cee. Performances of supposedly traditional dances on President’s Day may incorporate aspects of the trance dances into what are, in essence, the wokhuri cee. The ancient religious traditions preserved by the dances may be presented as entertainment.

Keikabile Mogodu, who heads the Khwedom Council, laments this type of corruption and misrepresentation of G/wi traditions. In one President’s Day competition, for instance, a dancer totally misrepresented their culture by using the skin of a python. According to Mr. Mogodu, this was a totally inappropriate prop since the G/wi have never used snakes in their healing rituals.

While the news story does not say so directly, it suggests that the G/wi still cherish their healing ritual dances and perhaps, at least by implication, they may still accept the need to preserve harmony and peacefulness in their traditional ways.

A news report from Montana last week examines how well a new manufacturing venture at the Golden Valley Hutterite Colony in Ryegate, Montana, is doing. Golden Valley started fabricating steel roofs and steel siding for the new buildings construction industry a year ago. The news story last week indicates that the new firm, Valley Steel, is making adjustments in some of its ways and doing some things differently from other manufacturers, but otherwise it seems to be doing well.

Young Hutterite women hanging out on a Winnipeg street (Photo by Dave Shaver on Flickr, Creative Commons license)

One of the adjustments the colony has had to make is to provide access to the internet, which previously it had avoided. Colony leaders realized a year ago that the business world operates electronically—placing orders, obtaining supplies, relating to customers—so Golden Valley had to install access to the internet at their colony as well. The colony has a long tradition of maintaining careful control over contacts by its members with the outside world. They solved the issue last year by installing a computer in the main business office of the new manufacturing building and keeping the room securely locked most of the time.

However, the updating report last week said that the colony has changed its mind and has decided to make a computer available to all of its members. The leaders of the colony, in order to insure accountability, placed it in a room with a door that has no lock and some windows. The colony placed filters on the machine to strictly limit what members could access; the leaders also monitor the uses that the people make of the machine.

A group of boys and girls at the Milford Hutterite Colony in Montana (Photo by Roger W on Flickr, Creative Commons license)

For its telephone contacts with the outside world, the colony has relied on a satellite phone but unfortunately it sometimes goes down due to bad weather. To solve that issue, managers are bringing a fiber cable into the colony. A successful business must have reliable communications with its suppliers and its customers.

Managers of the business have had to learn a lot quickly. They learned that it is often difficult to anticipate demands for products, and the effective responses of Valley Steel to the needs of its customers depends on them having more inventory of steel on hand than they had anticipated. Sometimes the steel, which is shipped as long sheets in giant spools, arrives damaged, requiring the operation to adjust its production schedules.

During its first year of operation, the company has overcome its many difficulties and built up a group of firms that enthusiastically buys its products. The recent news report quoted Jeff Davis from the Jeff Davis Construction business in Billings. Mr. Davis admits to the reporter that he’s a fan of Valley Steel. He finds that their prices are competitive, they almost always fill his orders quickly, and they are willing to work with him despite the size of his construction company. “They’re not too big for their britches, like other companies I won’t name,” he says.

A group of birders and photographers gathers around the young Batek widow hoping for a close-up view of the wreathed hornbill she’s raised. Doubtless attracted by news stories in August about the huge bird and its human protector, the visitors to Kampung Aur, located in Malaysia’s Taman Negara National Park, try to lure the bird down out of the trees but he ignores their calls. But then Umi, the Batek lady, calls and the bird, which she has named To’ek, flies down immediately to eat some rice out of her hand.

A wreathed hornbill juvenile male at a zoo in Rotterdam (Photo by JarOd on Wikimedia, Creative Commons license)

Rashvinjeet S. Bedi suggests in a Malaysian news source on November 15 that the woman’s caring relationship with the hornbill is symptomatic of the strong connections between the Batek and nature, particularly with the flora and fauna of Taman Negara.

He quotes a local tour guide named Abdul Jalil who has been conducting tours along the Tembeling River in Taman Negara for nearly 25 years and who knows the Batek very well. Jalil says that the Batek know the park area intimately. They assist the park by reporting illegal poaching activities to the Wildlife Department. Furthermore, he says they are becoming more involved with tourists—some work as tour guides, others work as boatmen.

Four Batek people relax in their village (Photo by Cleffairy on the blog “Over a Cuppa Tea,” Creative Commons license)

Except for their village leaders, the reporter says that the Batek tend to be shy of visitors. There are about 2,000 Batek living in the park and its environs. He describes their homes as made of bamboo and palm leaves and quite adequate to protect the people from the heavy rainfall. He sees their homes as “just simple huts with pots and kettles.” They lack computers, televisions, and refrigerators, though a recent project installed solar panels and LED lamps in the homes.

According to a man named Manderu, the leader of the village, they supplement their diet of canned foods, rice, fruits and yams with wild meat from monkeys, squirrels, and birds that they hunt with their blowpipes. They also sell rattan, sandalwood and honey that they gather in the forest. Most of the adults are illiterate, according to the writer, but the community is trying to see that their children are getting a basic education in Kuala Tahan.

A Batek boy (Photo by Cleffairy from his blog “Over a Cuppa Tea,” Creative Commons license)

Kampung Aur has 12 Batek families who have been living there for 18 years, though Manderu says that they still consider themselves to be nomadic. They will typically move their community when food sources become scarce or when a death occurs. He tells the writer that at times they move deeper in the forest for a few weeks to gather herbs and then return to the village. Eight families from another Batek village recently moved into Kampung Aur because a panther had mauled one of their men while he was out in the forest.

Bedi asks Manderu if they would ever consider moving into town. He replies that it would be impossible: they belong in the forest. “This is our home and we have to take care of it. We need one another,” he said. He expresses sadness at the logging that is going on nearby. However, the journalist writes, the forests are a major draw for the international tourist trade, which may help to preserve them.

A house in Kampung Dedari, surrounded by the forest of Taman Negara National Park. — A house in Kampung Dedari, surrounded by the forest of Taman Negara National Park (Photo by Cleffairy on the blog “Over a Cuppa Tea,” Creative Commons license)

The author also talks with the Sena, the Batek leader at Kampung Dedari, a village which has become known recently for opening a basic tourist facility. Sena feels that the project of hosting visitors has been working well. It has gained the villagers some extra income; it has allowed tourists to see them demonstrate their traditional skills such as using their blowpipes and fire making. Beyond that, Sena believes that demonstrating their skills to the tourists gives the Batek a good reason to cherish their traditional customs.

Abdul Jalil says that the long-term goal of the bird group that is helping the Batek of Kampung Dedari develop and manage their tourism business is for the villagers to take charge themselves. Andrew Sebastian, founder of the Ecotourism & Conservation Society of Malaysia, admits that the facilities at the village for tourists are basic but the location and the experience the tourists will get are astounding. Other communities are interested in offering the experience as well.

Sebastian offers the thought that the Batek “have a special and unique role to play in Taman Negara. Let’s not forget that they were here way before the existence of the National Park.” He urges managers to integrate the Batek into the ecotourism planning for the park. Experiencing the Batek could become one of the strongest selling points for the park to international visitors.

Peaceful Societies

Peaceful Societies

Political Unrest in Ladakh

Visitors to Orang Asli Villages

Developing Gender Equality among the Fipa

Mining in the Saranda Forest

Saudi and Amish Business Selling Camel’s Milk

Devil’s Claw Harvesting Helps Ju/’hoansi Women

Thai Monks Are Too Fat

Healing Dances of the G/wi

Manufacturing Plant at a Hutterite Colony

The Batek Love the Forests

Subscribe to our weekly digest

Subject Listing

Previous News and Reviews