New Weave: Mah Meri Design Springs From A Real Place

SOMETIME AROUND JULY, 2016, I picked up a strange thing in a craft shop in Pasar Seni. It was a thin, cuboid-shaped pouch woven from pandan leaves. It had a small sheath/lid, attached by an ornate tassel to the open-top body of the pouch, and was decorated with a pattern around the hems.

If you haven’t figured it out by now: to an eco-junkie, this is crack cocaine. A 100% natural hold-all for your money, smartphone or bits’n’bobs—it was stylish, and it was made from leaves. It could be thrown into the garbage with a conscience cleaner than Fiji water.

What intrigued me, however, was that this wasn’t the brain-child  of  a  hipster  laboratory  in  the  bohemian  part  of  town.  It was not the ‘latest’ in urban, ‘gender-fluid’, eco-wear, nor was it even boasting a logo. It was honest handicraft, ineffably ahead of our time, and one that’s probably been around since well be-fore hazes and Earth Days.

Last March, I was  invited  to  the  Ayik  Muyang  (Ancestor’s  Day) annual celebration of the indigenous Mah Meri community  on  Pulau  Carey.  There, I met Maznah  Anak  Unyan,  the  founder  of  the  local  weaving  collective,  Tompoq  Topoh.  As I prised my leaf-wallet  out  from  my  pocket,  to  my  surprise  she  said, “That’s one of ours. Look at the motif: it’s Mah Meri. We call it tampuk manggis.”

The mystery of the pouch, known in Mah Meri as a bujam lipo’, was solved.  Or was it?  Esquire goes back to  Kampung  Sungai Bumbun in search of the backstory.

Esquire: Before Tompoq Topoh, was there anyone selling these handicrafts?

Maznah  Anak  Unyan:  I  think  if  we’d  never  met  Reita  [Ra-him, a freelance craft researcher] we’d probably be out of work. Before this we didn’t have many options, we just sat around eat-ing betel nut. It’s true! Sometimes it was good to gather lidi and we’d sell brooms. Weaving is so much better. We’ve been able to meet all kinds of people, and we’ve made friends from all over the world. People know  about  us—we’re  on  YouTube. [continued on next page]

Maznah  Anak  Unyan: In the  past  we  would  weave  only  for  rituals  and  [day-to-day  usage.]  We’ve been weaving for generations, just never for sale. When I was 18 years old, I came across  an  article  about  Terengganu. People were weaving really beautiful things, and I became inspired. I went to a cousin of mine and said, “I want to learn.” My cousin said to me, “How can someone like you ever go far? You never learned anything, you didn’t go to school.” I was only 18, and I stopped the thought there and then. From a young age weaving  has  always  been  a  passion  of  mine,  and  I  would  still  weave,  and  think  to  myself:  Is  there  a  market  for  a  product  like  this?  Is it durable?  “You never got an education, you can’t do it,” my cousin said. But now, I can do it. It was after Reita came to do research. She asked if we had any female crafts left. My mother came out, and she said, ‘I still have them.’ We brought out mats, betel boxes, and what was re-ally special was the bujam lipo’. [continued on next page]

Maznah  Anak  Unyan: Only the men would use them, to carry their tobacco and lighters. In  the  small  workshop  outside  Maznah’s  wooden  home  is  a  small  army  of  products.  Colourful pots,  boxes,  mats,  bujam lipo’, and phalanxes of bookmarks fan out before the eyes of potential customers. All of them are made from the pandan plants in  the  garden.  About  200  of  these  plants  were  planted  in  the  village during a joint fundraising initiative to get Tompoq Topohon its feet in 2003. The dyes used are synthetic; after the forests on Pulau Carey went missing, the Mah Meri can no longer find nor afford natural dyes. The  workshop  is  a  repository  of  artisanal  accessories  by  women  from  the  five  Mah  Meri  villages  of  Pulau  Carey. [continued on next page]

Maznah  Anak  Unyan: Depending on  how  many  the  weaver  makes,  these  hand-crafted,  unbranded  products  can  yield  a  maximum  supplementary  in-come of RM300 (USD75) a month. Not much—but more than selling penyapu lidi, at around RM50 a month. As I wander around the village like a gimpy tourist, drinking a coconut, I speak to many young teenagers who avert their eyes and shy away from questions.

I meet an English-speaking girl, Diana Ross binti Diaman, one of very few Mah Meri studying at university in Shah Alam. Diana Ross is different to the rest; she’s feisty, and her face sometimes wields a hardened expression. She laments that her Mah Meri peers drop out of school because they are too “shy”. She  tells  stories  of  how  she  was  teased,  insulted,  and  had  to  shout her way out of fights. Her hardened expression was not because of the Fates—it was trained. In an article* by  Colin  Nicholas  of  the  Center  for  Orang  Asli  Concerns  in  2004  the  statistics  read  that  94%  of  indigenous children did not make it beyond secondary school. For the children in Kampung Sungai Bumbun, transitioning to Form 1 means leaving the village school to mix with the urban and urbanising population. Transitioning to Form 6 means leaving Pulau  Carey  altogether  (adequate  transportation  is  also  a  big  issue, I am told.)Intrigued by this new trail of breadcrumbs, Esquire travels to Chow Kit to visit the studio of Shaq Koyok, an English-speaking fine arts graduate of Temuan descent, who grew up in the town of Banting, just outside Pulau Carey.

Esquire: What do Malaysians think of Orang Asli culture?

Shaq Koyok: Mostly, they still are ignorant of us, especially because they hold these stereotypes: they will say things like, we’re not clean people. That’s why, to change the perception, I now live in KL (Kuala Lumpur), so people know who I am: just  a  regular  Malaysian.  Not  many  Orang  Asli  are  part  of  mainstream culture in the city – almost none.

Esquire: I spoke to this girl who’s studying at university. She said it’s been difficult for her because she’d come to school and kids would be like, “You’re Orang Asli, you don’t know anything.”

Shaq  Koyok: Absolutely.  I  had  the  same  when  I  studied  in  university, but I found a way to attack the problem by showing my strength: my art. And they respect you. People would say so many things: “Are you dirty? Did you take  a  shower?”  At  university!  Sometimes,  I’d  say  an  outrageous thing, like, “Yeah, I swam in the mud.” I got it in school too, the teasing. There’s nothing on indigenous people, even in [the university  library].  What  I  do  is  always  about  indigenous  people;  I  want to educate with my art. That’s the only way I can change the mindset of Malaysians [about indigenous people]

NOTE: *”The State of Orang Asli Education and Its Root Problems”, part of a longer consultancy report entitled “Orang Asli: Rights, Problems, Solutions” prepared in July 2006 for the Human Rights Commission of Malaysia (Suhakam). See also, Suhakam’s report, “Laporan Status Hak Pendidikan Kanak-kanak Orang Asli (2010).

IT  WAS  BRIGHT  BUT  STORMY  DAY.  Outside  Pasar  Seni  in Kuala Lumpur, where this story began, Esquire meets Reita  Rahim.  She  holds  a  diploma  in  graphic  design,  and  for  the  past  19  years  has  been  documenting  indigenous  handicrafts around Malaysia. She is one of very few consultants in the field. Today,  she  is  womanning  the  not-for-profit  Gerai  OA  stall,  which  she  formed  in  2004  to  sell  indigenous  crafts,  straight from the artisan. To the untrained eye, the products in  her  care  are  no  different  to  those  on  the  tables  of  other  stallholders at the one-off Craft Celebration event.

Esquire: How common is pandan weaving in Malaysia?

Reita Rahim: It’s not uncommon. As long as there’s pandan, there’s  somebody  weaving  it—whether  it’s  Malay,  whether  it’s  Orang  Asli,  or  whatever.  It’s  just  how  it  ended  up  as  a  bujam  lipo’,  as  a  product  that  people  can  sort  of  identify  as  Mah Meri. Malays  are  no  longer  making  these  kinds  of  fine  pieces.  They refuse to. We have friends who actually deal in pandan crafts—the  ladies  [in  the  stall]  next  to  me. [continued on next page]