My Life 2

Pa' Umor was the place where I grew up untill I completed my Primary schooling.It was the place I learned all the Kelabit ways of life (all the skills and crafts that I now knows). As mentioned in my earlier blog, I learned must from my late father and grandfather. One particular trick (craft) I learned from my uncle Ngeruid Ayu (Lawai Iboh) was to trap the wild pigeons (meto), be it in their nest or at the water holes at the salt spring. I would be much like to pass all these knowledge to my son and grandson given the opportunity - which is sad to say will not come because of the way we live our lives nowadays.
Looking back now, I feel my father would have me grow faster than the normal children. Or was he a very reckless man! He would teach me all the tricks on how to trap wild animals and even let me shoot with his shot gun ! I remember the first time he let me shot a cock with him holding the gun and aiming while letting me press the trigger. Before he said ready I had press the trigger and off went the head of the cock. He said that was a very good shot,even he might have not done that good. I was only 5 years old.
The second time he let me shoot was about a year later. It was a deer. It was early one morning when he came running back to our farm hut to pick me piggy bach to the river side.
There across on the opposite side of the river bank was a deer with it majestic looking anthers.
He put me down and cocked the gun and asked me to fire. I fired the first shot only to hit it on the front legs and the second shot did the job. We kept the horns for many years and he prided himself by telling everybody it was shot by me - I was about 6 years old. This was in 1956.
Two thing that sadden me now as I reflect back on this deer horn are - In 1974 when I was a teacher in Lawas, I went to an old chinese dentist shop and recognised a deer horn hanging on the wall. I asked the tawkey where he got the horn and he told me he bought it from a Bario man my late uncle Tama Galang who was then working at the SIB headquarters in Lawas. I knew it then that was my deer horn! My late father was presuaded to trade it with a small tin of gun powder -priced at that time RM60. When I asked to buy it back from the tawkey he would not let me get it for RM300 my pay for a month at that time. Secondly as I go back to Bario as I did in May and saw the farm where I shot that deer is beeing used by somebody else to rear sheeps. I lost the momentous deer horn and the land.