The Dyak Pilgrim's Progress
'WAN DANGIE was born in a Dyak
longhouse of the usual type erected on tottering stilts with floors
of split bamboo. The grand staircase leading up to the community
verandah was the usual notched pole greased with the muddy feet
of scores of children, chickens and churlish dogs.
Dangie's village was only five miles from Bengkayang, a mountain
market town two "suns" journey from the port of Singkawang
but his world was a very small circle around "Gunong Bawang",
or Onion Mountain, which is, of course, the only high mountain
in the whole world.
On the community verandahs the different families cooked their
rice and fern shoots in tubes of green bamboo spluttering and
smoking against the burning embers or roasted their tapioca tubers
in the hot ashes whenever a single individual felt the call of
hunger.
Back of the thatched verandah each family had its own private
room, cut off with checked bark tied in cross poles with rattan
thongs. In this room were the fine floor mats used as beds, a
few coconut shells filled with river washings used as legal tender
because of the particles of gold dust they contained, and a few
large earthen jars supposed to contain the spirits of their ancestors
(although a peep into these only reveals moths, crickets, cockroaches
and ants).
Hanging on the wall is a loosely
woven basket with a few pieces of badly chipped and greasy looking
china ware used on special occasions and in this same basket or
casket are the family charms: bears' teeth and boars' tusks …
festival cakes dried under the tropical sun … potent leaves
of the deadly ipoh tree, scorpion pincers and miniature sampans
made to convey to other parts some dire disease that may have
invaded the place in other days.
But strangest of all was a little green book in this magic basket
printed in Romanised Malay with the words Markus on the cover.
Dangie had learned how to spell out a few words on government
notices and he was curious to know what this book said, but his
relatives who had bought it from a colporteur for a penny were
afraid to destroy it and equally afraid to have it read.
He at last met the Batak guru from Sumatra who was glad to teach
him how to read it and he went to stay with the guru, sleeping
under the projecting thatch of the roof outside the bamboo cottage.
Months later, he met the missionary and moved down the coast to
study more about this and other books of the same family.
We can hear him yet reading out the "Cherita Orang Yang Chari
Slamat" story of a man seeking peace - Pilgrim's Progress
- late into the night in his little room on the river bank. He
became a very happy disciple and at last presented himself at
the altar for the symbolic cleansing and we called him Markus.
He was soon going to the other longhouses with Gospels and picture
cards telling them about the wonderful healer of men.
Ten years have passed and now instead of one Dyak Methodist in
the West of Borneo, there are more than three hundred in, or getting
ready to go into, the church. We were glad to learn this week
that Dangie is now the head of a Dyak school and that his work
has been so acceptable to government that they are giving him
a subsidy for this mission school from this year
At last, Markus has consented to take to himself a wife from Java,
although he modestly fears she will be more "pintar"
(capable) than he.' - Malaysia Message, April 1926, p.15, slightly
edited.
Earnest Lau, the Associate Editor of Methodist Message, is
also the Archivist of The Methodist Church in Singapore.
QUOTE:
'Ten years have passed and now instead of one Dyak Methodist in the West of Borneo, there are more than three hundred in, or getting ready to go into, the church.'
-- The Rev F. H. Sullivan (above), referring to Wan Dangie, a Dyak native who became the first Methodist convert in the wild country of West Borneo.