Adventures of a Young Naturalist by David Attenborough

Author:David Attenborough
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: BIO023000 Biography & Autobiography / Adventurers & Explorers, SCI070000 Science / Life Sciences / Zoology / General
Publisher: Quercus
Published: 2018-05-01T04:00:00+00:00

Recording in the Dyak longhouse

The next morning the festivities continued. Now it was the turn of the men. They danced to the music of drums and a gambus, a three-stringed guitar-like instrument. Most of them wore only the long traditional loincloths and carrying shields and swords they pranced in slow motion in front of the longhouse, occasionally leaping in the air with wild cries. Among them moved an even more impressive figure, cloaked from head to foot in palm leaves and wearing a long-nosed wooden mask painted white, with flaring nostrils, long fangs and two circular mirrors for eyes.

My worries that we had inexcusably invaded the villagers’ privacy were perhaps misplaced for the Dyaks themselves were as curious and prying about our doings as we were about theirs. Every evening they came down to the ship and sat on board watching our strange method of eating with knives and forks and staring fascinated at our equipment. Stripping the inside of the recorder was the highlight of one evening, and a certain success was a demonstration of flashlight photography.

In turn we ourselves became emboldened to wander into the private rooms in the back of the longhouse. A few of them contained low beds hung with filthy torn mosquito nets, but most of the people ate, sat and slept on mats of split rattan on the floor. This lack of furniture seemed to be no loss to anyone except to the small babies, and the Dyak mothers solved this problem by binding the infants in long loops of cloth and hanging them from the ceiling. The children slept in this upright position and when they cried their mothers merely pushed them so that they pendulumed gently to and fro.

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