Healing hands still a Dayak tradition

Markus Mardius, Contributor, Ketapang, West Kalimantan

This country is well-known for its alternative health treatments, which include employing traditional herbs and mantras to cure a disease or protect a person's well-being.

For the Dayak Simpang Hulu people living in the western part of Ketapang regency, the health treatment of choice is the unique baboretn.

It is a healing method whereby a boretn (a healer or shaman) walks around a taman (a bamboo post decorated with banyan tree and areca leaves and other "magic" decorations) to enter a trance and gain the so-called divine healing power.

Despite the fact that Christian missions have existed in the area for years, the Dayak Simpang Hulu people still have faith in the effectiveness of the animist baboretn.

Moreover, baboretn is more affordable than going to a doctor or physician, who are in short supply here because of the reluctance of health professionals to serve in the remote area. The muddy road leading to the regency presents another obstacle.

"It takes days or even weeks to take sick people to the hospital in Ketapang. Therefore, the only alternative is baboretn," said Laurensius Arif, believed to be a prospective boretn.

Patients brought to a baboretn are usually seriously ill.

Some preliminaries must be gone through prior to the treatment. The family of the patient must send one of its members to deal with the boretn on the day of the treatment and meet various other requirements. But most boretn will give their approval swiftly.

During negotiations, the family and their neighbors must prepare all the requirements for baboretn, such as a long piece of bamboo which will be used as the taman, areca flowers and leaves, boiled chicken, banyan tree, betel leaves, incense and other scents as offerings to the gods. A pig and a few chickens are also provided.

The boretn is always accompanied by an assistant, called pabayu. The latter sings the so-called magical songs while the boretn walks around the taman throughout the night.

The taman is placed in the middle of a living room. It is adorned with pleated bamboo, filled with offerings such as wax, a large boiled chicken, areca nuts, pop rice flakes, incense and other items.

The ceremony may take one to two nights, depending on the severity of the patient's illness.

Before the boretn begins circling the taman, a preliminary ritual should be held in front of the house.

The host must prepare offerings including the pig, arrack (sticky rice wine) and a large jar of sticky, fermented rice. The pig should be measured with a rope to determine whether the boretn can find the disease in the patient's body.

The assistant drinks the arrack and chews betel while singing mantras near the pig. He also beats a drum, while another person plays a gamelan. A bunch of stones believed to radiate magical powers are kept inside a bowl near the pig.

An hour after the initial rite, the pig is butchered using a poisoned traditional knife.

Then the boretn, his assistant and some of the guests, such as the elders, take a break while they wait for dinner.

Nightfall is the signal for the boretn to start the baboretn. The pabayu continues singing as the boretn reads out a variety of magic spells. He then drinks the arrack and chews areca nuts.

Sometimes he sings along with his assistant. He is given a cigarette and wears traditional shawls and hats.

All night long, the boretn and pabayu sing and call to the spirit of the dead. He mentions the names of the dead and asks them to help heal the patient. The patient lies on the bed waiting for the boretn to experience a revelation about the patient's illness.

During a particular song, the boretn enters the patient's room to locate the source of the illness. He observes the body as if X-raying the illness with his eyes. He touches the body and symbolically removes the illness by lifting his hand and showing the disease in the physical form of a nail or hook.

The boretn then spreads pikng tawar (water which has had a magic spell cast over it) around the patient's body. He often puts his mouth on the patient's body to extract more of the illness.

Throughout the night, the boretn drinks a lot of arrack, smokes and chews the areca nuts provided by his assistant. The more he drinks the more often he circles the taman.

After entering a trance he collapses for a few minutes. The Pabayu taps him with an areca flower and the boretn wakes up. He continues circling the taman while singing until morning.

While removing the illness from the patient, locally known as balikng, he also advises the people surrounding the patient that someone might have attacked him or her.

"Maybe the patient himself has a conflict with other people that caused depression or hatred," the boretn explained while showing some items between his fingers.

The items could be in the form of a nail, hook or horn. They were assumed to be the essence of the disease.

"The patient has been (metaphysically) attacked by other people. Maybe the patient had bickered with others about money. Hence the rival attacked the patient through a magic formula -- black magic," said the boretn.

As a transcendent form of knowledge, baboretn can produce people with a certain level of mastery, known as rasi boretn (a person who has proven his healing skills). Kedowai, 65, is one of them. He is often invited to perform baboretn by people with a family member suffering from a serious illness.

He said he had been a boretn since he was 28-years old. In the year preceding his baptism as a boretn, he spent his time learning magic formulas with dukun or boretn.

Kedowai's popularity is not only limited to his village but has fanned out to Pontianak, Ketapang and many other regencies.

As the saying goes, man proposes but God disposes. Whether the patient can recover depends on God and how grave the disease is. To speed up the recovery process, the patient must abstain from certain meals prescribed by the boretn, such as the flesh of four-legged animals, catfish and other fish for some time.