This information comes from Hew Cheng Sim and Flora Kedit's "The Batang Ai Dam, Resettlement and Rural Iban Women", in Noeleen Heyzer's Women Farmers and Rural Change in Asia, Asian Pacific and Development Centre, 1987.
"Money is everything now. If it rains I can't work; that means we can't earn any money for that day! Everything has to be purchased here, not like in the ulu. Everything and everywhere we go, we need money."
The speakers are women — Iban women in Sarawak, who together with 3,000 other Iban were resettled out of the jungle longhouses to make way for the Batang Ai Dam.
Resettlement is the Sarawak government's answer to the development needs of Sarawak's native communities. Accessible communities, provided with modern facilities, working at cash crop farming for the world market seems to be government's ideal.
Batang Ai is a showpiece resettlement, 3,000 Iban from 21 longhouses received a total of M$50 million in compensation when they were forced to move in 1982 and 1984. This was paid out in cash as down-payment on new longhouses.
They also became share-holders in a rubber and cocoa plantation managed by SALCRA, a state agency, and each family received two acres of dusun.
But in spite of the cost, a recent study of the resettled women shows a high level of unhappiness with the results of the move. Most women thought they were worse off now than if they had been left alone on their traditional lands.
In Iban society, the year circles around padi cultivation, the basic food. Before resettlement 90% of the families owned more than 10 acres of padi land. Now they have none. They must buy all their basic food with cash. This cash they earn from SALCRA, working on the plantation, for M$8 or less a day, when there is work.
The researchers found 60% of the resettled families living below poverty line in 1985.
The deepest fear of the women interviewed was about the scarcity of land and the desperate scratching for cash to buy their daily food.
"There is no land for our children, unlike the old place where land can be shared equally. Here all the land belongs to the government except for a small piece of dusun which is not even enough for our own survival.
"Last time, if I had to stay home to look after the kids and could not work at the farm, we could still survive. Now, no work means no pay and everything costs money. I'm worried that I cannot make ends meet."
The insecurity of having no padi land is deeply felt.
"If we can farm, we don't need to spend money on rice.
"We work very hard, rain or shine; but still we don't earn enough to eat. We can't grow vegetables here because of the stony soil. We have to walk for two hours to find paku and then we still have to ask for permission from others."
Although M$8,000 of the compensation went as down payment on a bilik in a new longhouse, each family must still pay monthly for their home. One bilik costs M$25,000 to M$27,000.
Cash Gone
In Iban society, the padi land belongs equally to husband and wife, and most of the padi farming is the responsibility of the women. But the cash compensation was given by the State government to the "head of the household", i.e. the man.
And a great deal of its seems to have been squandered.
"My husband took all the compensation (M $50,000) and married another," one woman, left with young children, said bitterly.
"They (the men) cock-fight every week-end and they bet M$300-500 each. Only the old will bet M$5-$10. The younger men think it is malu to bet with such small sums. After the cock-fighting ends, the men start to fight.
The researchers found a third of the households were now headed by women, since many men have gone elsewhere to look for better paying jobs. But women get the most menial and lowest paid jobs offered by SALCRA, and they have no voice on the development committee. Their equal say on the longhouse ruai has been undermined by a one-eyed government view of ownership rights.
The transition from the ancestral longhouses to the resettlement area is bound to be tough and negative attitudes are to be expected.
But the chorus of well-based discontent uncovered by these researchers should give government planners second thoughts.
These families are poorer in food supply and their lives are a daily struggle for cash income. They have less land than before and little security. and the position of women and the stability of the family has been eroded by the way the compensation was paid. And in spite of all the money spent every household still owes the government on their bilik and they still have 15 years to repay SALCRA for their shareholding in the plantation.
"The one acre of land for fruit is nothing as we had lots of land in the ulu. We gave it all to the government in exchange for what we have now, which is nothing.
"This is not resettlement in the true sense of the world. It should be land for land , house for house . We have no padi land and we have to pay our own houses . We are not included in decision-making like in old times".
bilik - family apartment within longhouses
dusun - orchard; a small plot of land usually for vegetable or fruit farm
ulu - upper reaches of a river
paku - edible wild fern
malu - embarass
kuli - labourer
cock-fight - a local form of gambling which involves the use of cockerels
padi - sacred strain of rice
ruai - dialogue in the gallery of the longhouse
Source: Utusan Konsumer, Feb 1989, Published by Consumers Association of Penang 87 Cantonment Road 10250 Penang Malaysia
As I built this dam I bury my life.
The dawn breaks.
There is no flour in the grinding stone.
I collect yesterday's hask for today's meal.
The sun rises And my spirit sinks.
Hiding my baby under a basket. And hiding my tears.
I go to build the dam. The dam is ready it feeds their sugarcane fields
Making the crop lush and juicy. But I walk miles through forest.
In search of a drop of drinking water. I water the vegetation which drops of my sweat.
As dry leaves fall and fill my parched yard.
Source: Staying Alive