Keeping our local knowledge alive

Posted by R. Jumin

Whenever I have difficulty sleeping, which is not very often, I will spent time surfing the net, and if I don’t have good internet connection, I will browse through the collection of pictures I have stored in my computer. This is how I stumbled across this long forgotten scanned picture above.

This is another very useful Bajau Laut heritage. I saw Damsek, our boatman, referring to this one morning in 2007 prior to our trip to the islands. Curious, I asked him what was it he was referring to. He showed me this very old paper with matrices of different figures and patterns. On the left margin is the number 1-7, while on the top row is the number 6-12 and repeated again from 1-5. Apparently, the left margin signify the days in the week, and the top row is the time in a day. I don’t know why it stops at 5, but I speculate that probably because the Bajau Laut do not travel much at night.

As it turn out, this is a very useful piece of paper. Damsek used this to decide when is a good time to leave port. For example, if we wanted to go out to the island the next day, he would tell us what time is a good time to leave. It can also tell when is a bad time to go out.

I won't go into the details of what's in the paper or what some of that pattern signify. Damsek will be able to tell you more about this. He told me he got it from a Bajau Laut and he reluctantly allowed me to scan it. I convinced him that it is for record purposes. Coincidently we were on trips out to the islands for community survey, mainly to gather local knowledge from the area. I would say this definitely fall into this category.

A good thing too that he allowed me to scan it. Some years later he asked me if I still have it as he has damaged his copy in the rain. Well that's the benefit of having records of our local knowledge. It hopefully keep the knowledge going and become useful to others too.