Nine Dayak Nights

WR Geddes, who spent two years living with the Dayak people in the village of Mentu Tapak in Sarawak (Malaysian Borneo), fairly close to the Indonesian Borneo border, follow a fairly unique outline for this book. It is slightly longer than its 144 numbered pages, due to the 32 page introduction. IT was published in 1957.

Geddes uses his introduction to set the scene - he has been living in the village for two years and Raseh, the village medicine man offers to tell Geddes a story, but wants $10 for the effort. Geddes goes on to explain why it would not be right (anthropologically speaking) to pay for this, as it would undermine all those other things people had told him for free. Anyway, Raseh says he will tell him the story, and at the end he can decide what it was worth. The story is told late at night when the majority of people have retired to sleep, and is told over nine consecutive nights - the Nine Dayak nights of the title, of course.

Before Geddes tells us the story, he sets out all the details of Dayak life in eight shortish chapters. Even in these Geddes shows his skills in writing for the layman as well as providing many academic details. The first chapter, titled The Land Dayaks (I should say here he continually refers to these people as Land Dayaks to distinguish them from the Sea Dayaks in other parts of Sarawak) gives the broad principles of Dayak life. The second chapter, titled The Countryside and the Jungle focusses in a little more. The third The Village the fourth The Longhouse all close in more and more laying on the details of Dayak life. The remaining chapters are The Household, The Headhouse, Beyond the Headhouse, and a Conclusion. Here Geddes does well to avoid much repetition, only when it is used to reinforce a point more clearly.

The third section of the book, is of course, the story. It is a Dayak folk tale, it contains a hero, a beautiful girl (and her sister!), giants with three heads, giants with seven heads, a dragon, an underwater land, lots of magic and much more.

I thought this was a little dry at first, but the format was very good in explaining everything needed to understand the goings on in the story while teasing the story the whole way through. Geddes is a thoughtful writer - he shares his thoughts and is not shy of looping back to explain why they were wrong. He covers a lot of ground in this short book.

Don't give up at the introduction!

4 stars