The Land Below The Wind

The Land Below The Wind

Many who have already been acquaintances or friends of mine for more than 25 years know nothing or little about The Land Below The Wind (Sabah) – where I was born and raised. Still less, have they heard of Agnes Keith, who had spent considerable time, during the Japanese Occupation, in this part of the world, in what was then known as North Borneo. She was an American journalist born in Illinois. An author is best known for her three autobiographical accounts of a life spent before, during, and after World War II. Agnes wrote three books: Land Below The Wind, Three Came Home, and White Man Return. She was married to an Englishman, Henry G. Keith, known as “Harry Keith.” Henry Keith was the Conservator of Forests and Director of Agriculture for North Borneo’s government under the Chartered Company. But this is not the story about Agnes Keith. This is also not an autobiography of life spent in the land below the wind. As the name suggests, North Borneo is situated on the northern portion of Borneo, the third-largest island in the world. It sits, below the Typhoon belt, bordering Sarawak’s state to the southwest and the Kalimantan region of Indonesia to the south. It is watched over by the highest mountain in South East Asia, Mount Kinabalu, a world heritage site, where plants have high levels of endemism, of which the orchids are the best-known example with over 800 species.

Mount Kinabalu

Orchids overlooking Gaya Bay

For many Westerners, the word Borneo conjures up images of White explorers with “Jungle Jim” hats and machetes in hand, slashing their way through the wild jungle teeming with ferocious animals, exotic plants, and roaming head-hunters.

The Land Below The Wind was kind to me. Someone once kindly mentioned to me that I was probably the youngest Attorney-General ever appointed at the time of appointment at 33. I was also told that with a handicap of 2, I had the lowest golf handicap for a sitting Executive chairman of a bank and simultaneously as a President of a Golf and Country club. I count my blessings. I was baptized in the Christian faith with Protestant Persuasion and raised in the second half of the twentieth century. In this modern age and time, I am aware of Rudolf Bultmann’s famous quote: “It is impossible to use electrical light and the wireless and to avail ourselves of modern medical and surgical discoveries, and the same time to believe in the New Testament world of spirits and miracles …to do so is to make the Christian faith unintelligible and unacceptable to the modern world” …To me, Science and Christianity complement each other. There is no reason for a Christian to fear good science. There is no need to fear Truth. Understanding the way God constructed our universe helps us humans appreciate the wonder of creation. Our knowledge helps us to combat disease, ignorance, misunderstanding, and bigotry. However, danger comes when we have a mindset to hold our faith in human knowledge (including scientific theories and suppositions) above the faith in our Creator.

Where is Home?

Returning to The Land Below The Wind will always be (for me) a journey down memory lane. I have always enjoyed going down memory lane, even though I know things do change with the passage of time. Several months ago, I met a fellow passenger on a Panama Canal cruise from Fort Lauderdale to San Diego. She was a former Malaysian of Chinese heritage, and her husband a Caucasian from the State of Washington. For some reason, they came and joined May and me at the Lido Restaurant on the Holland America Oosterdam. As was customary for me to get to know someone, I asked her: “Where is home?”. With that opener, the ice was broken, and after that we were engaged in conversation for quite a while. She was a retired registered nurse trained in England, but she had worked in a hospital in Seattle, Washington, for her entire life. As I had just written my article “Journey Back In Time,” I brought up the subject of going down memory lane in England, a country where she had spent some time in her younger days. In her version, she mentioned that she went back to England several years ago for her class reunion and was deeply disappointed because things had changed so much. She told me that she wished she had not gone there and had kept the memory of her good old days. I understood her and believed that her home is now in Seattle, where her heart is.

When writing this article, TripAdvisor informed me that I had travelled 1,633,351 miles and been to 74 countries but have only covered 56% of the world. I do not know nor understand how TripAdvisor did the calculation. However, I do realize, through all these wanderings and globetrotting as a pilgrim (ref: www.freepilgrim.com), that there really is no ideal place in this world on which to live, and yet anywhere is ideal if it is “home.” But I am just a descendant of the wandering Chinese Hakkas! So, where is “home” for me?

A Jewel in Asia
On the day before the rainy Canadian Astronomical Spring (before the Sun crosses the celestial equator on the twentieth day of March 2018), I took a long transpacific flight “home” to Sabah to revisit the place in which I had spent more than half of my earthly life. Where I had, on countless occasions, heard the waves lapping on the golden sand and on which I have traversed thousands of miles on her golf courses.

Tanjong Aru Beach Kota Kinabalu

Sabah Golf and Country Club

Gaya Bay

Sutera Harbour Golf Club

Guyana Eco Resort

Steamed Shrimps

Steamed Garupa

Even though I had travelled to Sabah for the umpteenth time, I still felt that I arrived “where I had started and known the place for the first time”! I disembarked at the gleaming Kota Kinabalu airport in March 2018 with a mixing of memories and desire – stirring my root in the hot tropical sun with the intense craving for the famous seafood of Sabah and the delicious delicacies such as the famous Ice Kajang (ABC) at the Sabah Golf and Country and the Pisang Goreng (battered bananas deep-fried). Some Pisang Goreng is presented with cheese or chocolate, or jam. I am given to understand that most people who had migrated overseas from Sabah still harbour the same desire for the taste of her varied cuisines.

Fish and Tofu soup

Ice Kajang

Pisang Goreng

Sabah and the rest of Borneo island were connected to mainland Asia about 20,000 years ago in a Sundaland landmass. Subsequent climate change and deglaciation caused the global sea levels to rise, resulting in the Sundaland being submerged, separating Borneo from Asia.

Batu Sapi-An icon that still stands in Sandakan

A Murut warrior with the Blowpipe

Stone tools and artefacts found in Madai caves and the archaeological site in Lake Tingkayu near the district of Kunak in Sabah have been estimated to date back from 28,000–17,000 years ago. The tools found there were considered advanced for its period. Head-hunters roamed within the borders of the island of Borneo in years past. The term can still strike fear among many in the western world.

Centuries ago, the Bornean indigenous natives’ head-hunting was very much a part of life in this savage world on this remote island in the darkest heart of exotic Asia. These are not legends or native folklore. The ancestors of every North Bornean native tribe were head-hunters. I went to the Monsopiad Cultural Village Penampang, not far from Kota Kinabalu (the Capital of Sabah), and saw a human skull collection. Pictures taken of such human skulls showed that these things were very real. It is believed that these skills form part of the collection of a well-known warrior and head-hunter by the name of Monsopiad. Some of the information provided may require collaboration. However, the elders who may have some knowledge about Monsopiad had already passed on. Head-hunting stopped soon after the British and Christian missionaries arrived. Today the Monsopiad Cultural Village is a popular tourist destination.

Display of natives arts at Imago Shopping Mall

Human skulls are believed to be a collection of well-known warriors and head-hunter Monsopiad.

During my recent visit, I witnessed the proud heritage of the natives in Sabah on grand display for tourists and visitors alike. Perhaps the natives have never felt (and I certainly have not heard about) victimization by the British or the Christian missionaries. Maybe there were abuses by some we know not, but the good of so many have not been interred with their bones as they have in North America. In the West (particularly in North America), we hear nothing but “victimization.” Whether it is on the subject of colour, race, creed, sex, or sexuality, however, Clarence Thomas, the second African American Supreme Court judge, said during an on-stage interview at the Library of Congress in Washington: “At some point, we’re going to be fatigued with everybody being the victim.” He went on to say: “My grandfather would not let us wallow in that.” Thomas added that he considers his grandfather “my hero and the single greatest human being I’ve ever met… With nine months of education. But he never saw himself as a victim”. Clarence Thomas, born in 1948, was raised in Georgia coastal lowlands and spent his childhood working on his grandfather’s farm. I wonder how many of us can relate to him.

St Joseph Catholic church at kokol menggatal Sabah

Roman Catholicism and Anglicanism arrived in North Borneo around The North Borneo Chartered Company (also known as the British North Borneo Company), formed on 1 November 1881 to administer and exploit the resources of North Borneo. The Mill Hill missionary movement of the Roman Catholic Church focused mainly on indigenous communities, such as the Kadazan-Dusun people. Migration was also an essential factor in the spread of Christianity. The Basel Mission also worked in North Borneo in 1882 among the migrant Hakka Chinese, many of whom were Christians who escaped after the Taiping Civil War. From that time on, missionary works have been carried out mainly by the majority denominations of Catholic, Anglican, Basel Christian Church of Malaysia (BCCM), Sidang Sijil Borneo (SIB), and Seventh Day Adventist (SDA). Today there are dozens of Christian “denominations, independent churches or missions” in Sabah. Active ongoing church activities strengthened by missionary works and pastoral care are why many independent churches are so attractive to both young and old alike.

Glory Christian Centre Kota Kinabalu Sabah

Research and discussions have revealed the significant roles played by Christian missionaries in the progress of education in Sabah-“Christianization in Sabah and the development of the indigenous communities,” A historical study by Mat Zin Bin Mat Kib published in Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society Vol. 77, No. 1 (286) (2004), pp. 53-65.

Six Chief ministers of Sabah have studied at mission schools- The late Haji Mustapha (St. James Kudat), The late Donald Stephens (Sacred Heart), Joseph Parin and Peter Lo (St. Mary), Bernard Dompok (La Salleh), Chong Ka Kiat and Musa Aman (All Saints).

At the material time, the Sabah Foundation Building housed the Chief Minister’s offices, the State Secretary, and the State Attorney-General Chambers.

During the Second World War, I was born in North Borneo, grounded, raised, and received early education at Sung Siew (a Basel Mission School) in Sandakan. Life was hard during the War. We practically survived on cassava- better known to the West as tapioca which (according to Time Magazine publication) is one of the ten most dangerous food. The crop, if prepared incorrectly, can have deadly consequences. Our family had taken a very long journey from the Middle Kingdom before ending up in Sandakan with Basel Mission which they were very actively involved. My great paternal grandfather had left China at the end of the Taiping Civil War and indentured labourers for British Guyana to work in sugar cane plantations. Slavery had already ended by then. My paternal grandfather was later born there. After many years, they made their way back to China. Eventually, they settled in Borneo, where my father and I were born. I (blessed with the opportunity for which I am thankful) went on to become a Barrister-at-law of The Honourable Society of The Inner Temple England…That is another story (ref: Journey Back In Time) …

What is it that we see in people we come across in our lives? Have they crossed paths with us for a reason? Should we draw a lesson from these encounters and choose to broaden our horizons with these God-given opportunities, perhaps? I (usually surrounded by polite and brilliant people at social gatherings) am always perturbed that it can be a colossal mistake to mention to someone I just met that I was trained as a “lawyer.” I use the generic term “lawyer” as some do not know the difference between an English Barrister and an American attorney. My conversations with someone at a social gathering would end abruptly if I mentioned the profession. A priest once told me that he had the same experience and reaction if he said he was a priest. I don’t understand why. On another occasion, I was having a wonderful conversation with a very charming lady on a Royal Caribbean transatlantic cruise. Still, my conversation with her ended abruptly when I told her (with my pretentious and poorly faked British accent) that I was born in Borneo. I also wondered why… Be that as it may… For the present, my journey continues from The Land Below The Wind to the Land of the Rising Sun…

Just a thought:

Perhaps life is all about perceptions, how we see things…more about this thought later on…