HEADHUNTER AND KILT

New Zealand Listener, Volume 36, Issue 924, 26 April 1957, Page 12

HEADHUNTER AND KILT

BORNEO PEOPLE, by Malcolm MacDonald; Jonathan Cape, English price 32/6. ‘THE distinguished representative of His Majesty King George VI (in ceremonial costume) was bringing some-

thing of the culture of his homeland to the hill natives of Borneo. What was he doing? Why, dressed in his kilt (after all, it was his tribal costume, too), he was having an hilarious time teaching the Iban tribesmen of Sarawak in the Great Hall of their Long House how to play-blind man’s bluff! It became their favourite sport. Malcolm MacDonald has a reputation as an administrator of Malaya and Sarawak, and in this book he describes the people of Sarawak not as a cultural group, or indeed as anything so impersonal, but as individuals whom he came to know intimately, and indeed to love. The change in their lives as westernised culture comes to separate father and child over such apparently trivial things

as styles of hair and clothing he takes very seriously, and tells us how they affect one family who are his personal friends. He takes part wholeheartedly in all the ceremonies of the _ native people he visits, and one of the heartening things about the book is that nowhere is there any trace whatever of a feeling that in any way he is a superior being to the natives of Sarawak. He may give us a little more detail of longdrawn ceremonies than we want, and his prose, especially in the brief introduction about the history of Sarawak, is a little too lush, but we do feel a sense of sympathy with him in his noble efforts to last out the long night of drinking which is part of most of the ceremonies he takes part in. We smile at his frank appreciation of the beauty of the maidens who waited on him, but his photographs bear him out. We learn a lot about the tribes of Sarawak, but even more about the author.

D.

W.McKenzie