Island in the Clouds
Daily life in Borneo’s states of Sarawak, Sabah, and Kalimantan
Nothing inspires the imagination of vast jungles and unexplored tropical forests more than Borneo. The words ‘Borneo jungle’ bring to mind visions of undiscovered headhunting tribes with blowpipes and wild proboscis monkeys swaying in the treetop coverings, and yet nothing dismisses those perceptions as quickly as a trip through Borneo’s verdant canopies.
Borneo claims one of the largest, most bio-diverse and species-rich equatorial rainforests in the world — a few small facts that get lost on most visitors as they come face to face with one of the planet’s most astonishing natural gardens.
But it’s far from perfect.
Logging continues to erode Malaysian Borneo’s natural resources. Some researchers estimate 80 percent of the rainforests in Malaysian Borneo have been seriously affected by logging. Meanwhile, officials there continue to battle the illegal wildlife trade.
Borneo — the third largest non-continental island in the world — is split up into three parts: Sabah and Sarawak which are in the Malaysian part of the island, then Kalimantan on the Indonesian side of Borneo. The sovereign state of Brunei is a separate country that sits in between Sabah and Sarawak.
During a recent visit, I trained my lens on the people of Borneo, their everyday activities, work, leisure and their community bonds. Here, I include a few telling statements they shared. I thank them for welcoming me and my camera.
“The younger kids go to the universities to study, but after graduating they end up finding jobs elsewhere and not come back to Bario. Many of them are even forgetting how to speak our Kelabit dialect.”
“My mother, when she had the money, she would buy beads. They were important to Kelabit women. It was their way of showing wealth.”
