ANTIDOTE "Four of us tua kampung (village chiefs) were flown over to Kuala Lumpur  for the Independence Day celebrations once," Jawa Nyipa, the wizened headman  of Long Ajeng, recalled. "That was the first time I'd ever been on an  aeroplane."

We were chatting over a cup of tea one night on the wooden floor of Jawa's house in Ulu Baram, in eastern Sarawak. The fluorescent tube was guttering like a candle, thanks to the unpredictable power supply from a small  generator, fuelled by a mixture of petrol and diesel.

The house was airy and comfortable, built on two floors, with rough-hewn  walls, and windows overlooking the river, and a wall of forest on the opposite riverbank.

The floor we sat cross-legged on was covered in intricately woven rattan mats, and sheets of cheap linoleum. These concealed uneven planks that had been adzed by hand, and had never been touched by a chainsaw.

I had travelled upriver by longboat to Long Ajeng for three hours, from the logging bridge at Long Selaan. The bridge was seven hours' drive, on dirt tracks, from the bright lights of the coastal oil town of Miri.

NONE Most of the time on the river, I had been carried by the wooden longboat: the boat had been carved, sealed with pitch, painted, and fitted with a rudimentary outboard motor by the villagers themselves.

For several stretches of the journey, though, in places where the water was low, my companions and I had carried the boat in turn, pushing and pulling it over the seemingly endless shoals.

We were delighted when we finally approached the small village of Long Aeng, our calves aching with cramp, and our underwear weighed down by river water. Plastic jugs of boiled river water, and weak coffee, prepared by the villagers, were sweeter than anything I had ever tasted, before, or since.

The 50 Penan families there live mostly on sago starch harvested from palms, jointly owned by the community under the ancient adat or custom of molong . To molong sago palm trees is to take only what is needed for the current generation, and no more.

Meat from deer or wild boar, hunted using blowpipe darts or shotgun pellets, are shared out among the villagers. Children fish, or collect ferns and tapioca leaves, to vary their diet.

The villagers also earn cash to buy petrol, salt, blue jeans, outboard motors and other useful goods, by collecting 'gaharu', a sweetly scented tree bark.

'Gaharu' is a raw material for joss sticks that fetches a handsome price from Chinese traders. The joss sticks are, indeed, the answer to the Penans' prayers, for the resources they need to put their children through school.

azlan But these pillars of their local economy - starch, protein and scented wood - have come under threat from loggers over the past three decades. Chainsaws are now as commonly heard as cicadas in the surrounding rainforests.

Worse still, logging company workers have taken advantage of the remoteness and lawlessness of Baram to rape local Penan schoolgirls, when some of them hitched rides on logging trucks to get to their distant boarding schools.

The loggers, unperturbed by the police in Miri, and contemptuous of the law, have also sexually abused women in Penan villages throughout Baram.

Jawa himself has been threatened by loggers: two years ago, he refused to sign a letter, dictated by the loggers, that exonerated logging companies of the reports of rape in Baram.

He defied the powerful logging company, and its backers in the state government, by exposing this threat in Malaysiakini and newspapers around the world, with the help of a Swiss NGO, the Bruno  Manser Foundation.

The Merdeka adventure

Tua Kampung Jawa could not recall the exact date of the Independence Day parade in Kuala Lumpur, but said the trip was organised by the Prime Minister's Department in 1994 or 1995.

The four village chiefs from rural Sarawak, and others from Sabah, were driven around in buses, he said, to the historic city of Malacca and around the Klang Valley.

He found little resonance in the carefully arranged photo opportunity at the National Monument, the towering bronze sculpture commemorating soldiers who had lost their lives in battle. The Penan have never been head-hunters or warriors.

Traditionally, they have preferred a peaceful nomadic lifestyle under the cool forest canopy, to the battles that would have been required to carve out swathes of farmland for themselves. Over the past half century, most Penans have become semi-nomadic, and have settled in small hamlets like Long Ajeng.

Penan guides, the best hunters and trackers in Borneo, did serve the British Army in the struggle against the Japanese in the early 1940s, and later in Soeharto's Confrontation in the early 1960s.

But even so, these Penan border scouts were striving to defend their communities, rather than an abstract concept of a nation. Nationalism, the fever that swept Europe in the 19th century, and then Europe's former colonies in the southern hemisphere in the 20th, still leaves the Penan cold.

Many modern men might convulse and froth at the mouth, to the nationalist tune of cracked drums; but the Penan remain somewhat perplexed by, and estranged from, Sarawak's recent experiment with the institution of the nation-state.

NONE Back in 1994 or 1995, Jawa was suitably impressed by the tall buildings in Kuala Lumpur. But he recalls being indifferent to the colourful parade, marching bands and giant flags of Independence Day itself.

Seated on the dais, together with various dignitaries in full regalia, he  watched ranks of soldiers and schoolchildren marching past with some bemusement.

"The part I enjoyed," he says with twinkling eyes, "was the jet planes flying overhead, leaving colourful smoke behind them."

Nearly twenty years later, Tua Kampung Jawa recounted the Independence Day parade like a strange dream.

And every year, when I experience again the familiar patriotic songs and festive buntings of Independence Day, and the strident national narrative of the fight against the Malayan Union, I am reminded of Jawa Nyipa's Merdeka adventure in Kuala Lumpur.

Peninsular Malaysia and the states of Sabah and Sarawak are separated, it seems, by a greater gulf than the mere expanse of the South China Sea.

KERUAH USIT is a human rights activist - ‘anak Sarawak, bangsa Malaysia’ . This weekly column is an effort to provide a voice for marginalised Malaysians. Keruah Usit can be contacted at keruah_usit@yahoo.com