Monkey See, Monkey Do (Not)
Eyes closed, not because I was told to have my eyes closed, but because of the pain.
I deeply desired to get better- and I didn’t care how. Eyes closed, I’d let the healer do to me whatever he must.
I had been sick for a week now. Nothing was making my stomach better. Air bubbles would fill my stomach, and I’d bloat like Harry Potter’s Aunt in the Prisoner of Azkaban.
I just wanted to be better.
*In December 2022, I was in Borneo, Indonesia, visiting my Dayak family and planning a future TracingThought film. And that is where this story starts.
Dessy (my Dayak sister) and my Dayak Mom, didn’t know what to do with me anymore. I DIDN’T know what to do with myself anymore. Being sick for this long in the jungle can become a problem. I was developing Masuk Angin. This condition is known across Indonesia for when your body can’t balance its temperature with the humidity around it. You constantly sweat, feel like you want to cry, and want air but need a blanket.
I was seriously trying to act like everything was okay because you never want to be an inconvenience.
Just a few days prior, I was in a village only two hours away with vastly different cultural norms and traditions than my adopted families in Tahak.
Why are these villages so different? I will cover this in another blog.
I was visiting my close friend Timo, (he was essential in getting my documentary on illegal gold mining filmed) and his wife and newborn.
The excitement was was infectious throughout the whole village. I, a white, re-headed woman from America was coming to this remote village, and for Timo and me, it was a reunion of close friends, brother and sister meeting once again.
To add to the excitement, Arsen, Timo’s newborn, and my God Son had many ceremonies and celebrations in his honor as the newest addition to the village.
His ceremony is talked about in detail on the TT’s Instagram.
What comes with celebration? Hugs, laughs, stories, drinks, and of course…
Food.
Fast forward. We are now back in Tahak with Dessy, my Dayak sister, and I am in immense visceral pain.
“Ashlei why?” said Dessy
“It is like if you were to eat another human,” said Mom.
“It is like if you were to eat another human,” said Mom.
The guilt set in.
Different tribes with different traditions, thoughts, and etiquettes, just two hours from each other in Borneo can be a world of different ideas and values.
But damnit, I ate monkey, and I shouldn’t have.
My family was shocked that I did, shocked that it was being served to begin with. I didn’t want to be rude to the community I was with. My friend, my brother.
They suggested I go to a Western medical doctor in the city, but I begrudgingly said, “Uhg, I hate doctors.”
I think it’s something I’m still regurgitating from my childhood. My Mom said that a lot when I was growing up. We never saw doctors. There was nothing that chicken noodle soup, crackers, and Sprite couldn’t fix. So, with that stubborn childhood-ism and mixed feelings about supporting Western medicine in a traditional indigenous lifestyle, I felt stuck and uneasy.
I always do this, I will always take the traditional route of overcoming a sickness based on where I am. Though let’s face it, my body and immune system are not the same as those native to where I am.
Still, I am stubborn.
So here I am,
In front of the Babaling healer. His name is Kek Kcuh. He is one of the last remainingBabaling Healers in Borneo. When I asked why more people weren’t learning the craft, Dessy told me “the craft can not be taught. The forest and our God’s gift to people with this knowledge. But the jungle and the strength of nature is dwindling, and people don’t feel this power spiritually anymore.”
Q: Eye’s closed.
I sat cross-legged in front of the medicine man, as he sat cross-legged in front of me. My shirt was up, so my bloated stomach was exposed.
He spits into his hand, waves it above me, then lightly spits onto my stomach. More of a puffed cheek blowing air out of pursed lips kind of way.
This was when I opened my eyes. (Obviously)
He spoke with an incredible desire and conviction as you would if you were trying to coax a butterfly to stay near you. He was waving his hands slightly around in the air.
Both of his hands were empty, holding nothing but a little spit.
He put his hands on my stomach, spoke a few soft murmured words (if only I knew what he said), and then, it happened.
His two bare hands, empty and flat against my bloated stomach, he dug his pointer finger and thumb into my belly button.
Like magic, he pulled a 1/2 dime size piece of dried blood from my belly button.
Dessy gasped. I stared. My stomach collapsed. Instant relief.
My assumptions about how my Dayak family felt about doctors was completely wrong. The truth is, I’m Western, so they believed the best way to fix me would be to visit a Western-trained and schooled doctor. Not the village medicine man. But I didn’t want them to feel like I was disrespectful of the traditional medicine.
You’re may be asking yourself, why was eating a monkey so extreme and taboo to people who live and thrive from the jungle?
As previously mentioned, “it’s like eating a human.”
In Tahak (Dessy’s village), it is believed and revered that monkeys do not possess the cleanest souls. Like that of humans, they have lust, greed, gluttony, and ulterior motives, and will kill their own kind…and eat them from time to time as well.
Their consumption means you are essentially ingesting the darkness of their souls, making the consumer violently sick. It is like a transgression, a sin, a major no-no. This was an extremely thought-provoking and reflective time during my sickness.
The healing process with the village healer could be akin to that of an exorcism.
And to be honest, I believe it. It was all real.
Grandma, Nek Sontek, was also a healer and she visited me three times making natural medications from the forest and massaging my stomach.
Though I am not happy with the experience or how it came to be, I can only look at the positives that came out of it. That being- that our connectedness with the ground we walk on and the creatures with share that ground with is beyond our current assumptions. It only reinforced the notion that energy is just as palpable as that of a hand on your shoulder.
It took me about 3 weeks to really get over this sickness. It lasted all through my journey coming back to the states.
Just some food for thought.
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