My Life with the Headhunters

The first two thirds of this book details the expedition that Wyn Sargent undertook with her 12 year old son Jmy (what is this name?) to the interior of Indonesian Borneo, visiting many Dyak villages in 1968. Sargent, a photo-journalist was in Borneo to do a story, but had little intention of visiting the interior. A local journalist who understood the plight of the native villages managed to have the local press run headlines about her impending trip (without her acceptance) and it grew momentum she couldn't resist.

In itself, this journey was a massive undertaking, and dangerous not because of the headhunters but because of the risks to the health of the travellers (hepatitus and malaria were the main risks, but malnutrition was a big factor) and the danger of the environment - be that snakes, floods, or general risk of injury in the jungles and rivers.

What Sargent learned, as well as a massive amount of anthropological information about the life and death of the Dyak peoples was that they were at serious risk of dying out - that the Dyak people were exposed to the same sickness risks as the travellers, they were unable to sustain food cropping, their hunting grounds were becoming more and more barren and as a people they were on a slippery slope to extinction. This is not the expectation for the isolated tribes of the world, who we generally expect are getting on better with out the contact of the great white saviours, but was very much the fact. While not an anthropologist, Sargent does a good job of describing what she saw and what she was told by interpreters and guides.

In the time Sargent spent in the jungles she attended a great many traditional funerals, festivals and general tribal customs, all described in detail. She had a lot of interaction with tribal witch doctors, village chiefs and the day to day people.

The last third of the book describes how, after meeting with the Indonesian government Minister responsible, who basically told her the government couldn't help the Dyak people, set up an American charity to bring medicine, food, hospitals and schools to the jungle. This was a massive undertaking, and Sargent herself was directly approaching company CEOs to solicit donations of goods and services to assist. Sargent was adamant her charity would be non-religious and non-political - so rare and perhaps why this was such a success.

Published in 1974, the two letdowns in the book were the lack of maps and the poor quality photographs - a surprise for a photo journalist!

3.5 stars, rounded down.

A couple of quotes:

P41

"It was six feet long, weighed five pounds and it was stretched across my chest.

'It's a snake,' whispered Jmy.

'Don' move, it's looking around,' Sjam said.

Suddenly the snake bolted and was gone.

Panggul stood looking into the canoe. 'No worry! Snake only little python. Not squeeze much. See in tree? He have many brothers and sisters there.' I looked into that palm tree that sheltered our canoe during the night. It was beset with crawling baby pythons..."

P64

"Flying ants, as large as horseflies, had invaded the area, and he first thick cloud of the swarming insects flew up the river and int the canoes head-on. They stung us with their bodies ad left us scrambling to put our arms over our faces for protection. But Panggul threw out his hands and grabbed as many as he could hold in his fist then smashed them into his mouth! 'Makan, makan,' he yelled. 'Very good for eat.'

The second onslaught of ants sailed into the canoes from starboard. We squinted our eyes against their huge batting wings then clapped them up as fast as we could and shoved the handfuls into our mouths.

If one is hungry, anything is likely to be good to eat, and the flying ants were delicious. Since then, however, I have been able to get along without them."