You Want It, You Go Get It

Sitting by the banks of the River Tutor, Sara tells us a series of jokes holding a unique insight into Penan subsistence. Penan communities are known as being the last nomads of South East Asia. And though Sara and the vast majority of Penan communities have been settled in government villages, she remembers and still practices nomadic ways of subsistence through hunting and gathering. This series of jokes she tells are all about how to collect food. And every time these jokes are told in the villages, they are accompanied by roars of laughter.

“You want to eat boar meat — go hunt for it.”

“You want to eat fish — go net fishing.”

“You want to eat fruit — go last the seed of a fruit tree.”

But like all aspects of culture that change, even the jokes have adapted to include the new modes of subsistence. Including horticultural / agricultural, and even consumerism.

“You want to eat rice — go pick it from the farm.”

“You want to eat Maggi Noodles — go to work.”

Unlike all the other examples, the jokes about items purchased are accompanied by the need to “go to work”. In Eastern Penan language, there is no word for “work”. There is no concept of paid labour, and as a result the Malay Bahasa term of “kerjia” is employed.

When collaborating researcher Blake Kendall first connected with Sara and other Penan villagers, he was mesmerised by all the Penan cuisine. Fresh produce — literally picked, collected or hunted that day, from the forest to the plate. But the most distinct aspect was that he saw the whole process of what we call food. Growing up in a consumerist Sydney (Australia), Blake says :

“I was completely unaware of the invisible processes of food. I grew up indoctrinated into buying everything from a supermarket. Buying commodities with no concept of where it came from, the conditions of growth or who was involved in the process. But spending time living and working with Mutang and Penan communities holds an embodied knowledge and appreciation of seeing food in situ as an extension of the earth. If “you are what you eat”, seems many of us don’t know who we are or where we come from. If we want to nourish our bodies, we have to nourish our earth. Sadly, for those who eat blindly, the act of buying commodities has erased the stories of sustenance.”

Comedy often carries a deep wisdom. And in this Planetary Emergency, if we did not laugh, we’d probably cry.