“We Take Care of Each Other”
Shortly before leaving Malaysia I was asked to meet with a visiting psychologist. He had been told to talk with me, he said. Perhaps I could explain something that baffled him.
He had been taken to see one of the two mental hospitals in Malaysia and had been told that there was not a single Malay patient. There were a large number of Chinese, a few Indians (from India, Pakistan, or Ceylon — but all of them were referred to as Indian at that time), perhaps even a few white people. But no Malays.
“When Malays make up half the population of this country,” he said with anger in his voice, “then it is impossible that there would be no mentally ill Malays. And what makes it all even more unacceptable,” he added, “is that in the other mental hospital it is the same: no Malays. What is going on?” he wanted to know.
From his manner I could tell that he was almost convinced there was some sort of conspiracy. From his point of view it was impossible, unthinkable, that a population of several million people did not have any crazy people, angry people, dangerous people who should be locked away in mental hospitals. I suggested we visit some Malay villages.
By that time I knew the country fairly well. I had visited many Malay villages and I knew where we would be welcomed, where we could easily talk with people. I doubt that there is any culture, anywhere, that does not have a certain amount of shyness about letting strangers in on their most frightening psychological conditions. Mental illness is not something you can discuss easily on a first visit. But I felt certain that the villagers I knew would be willing at least to talk with us.
The same driver who had taken me around many times before agreed to drive us. The visitor and I sat in the back, talking psychology. He said he had heard that I had made a “sort of study” of the Malays. Yes, but my study was really about dietary behavior, and my own interest was in healing systems, healers, and the many issues around what we call medical services. But I felt I knew the Malays fairly well — after all, I grew up a few hundred miles from here among other Malays in Indonesia. And yes, I was a psychologist.
We discussed at length what I thought were the central values of Malay culture. I remember trying to explain the words halus and kasar.
“Kasar means crude, rough, loud, insensitive –”
“And,” the driver added, “thick, curly, or kinky hair, the kind of hair that feels like steel wool.”
I continued: “Halus means soft, gentle, polite –”
Here the driver turned back again, and with a smile added, “It also means soft straight hair: Malay hair.”
“Halus,” I said, “is what the culture says all Malays are or should be. Kasar is what foreigners are — loud Chinese, ruthless white people, crude Indians.”
Once more the driver turned around. He asked me, “What about the Orang Asli, the aborigines? They sometimes have curly or even kinky hair. Are they kasar?”
“You know very well that they are the essence of halus,” I could not help saying.
“Yes,” he mused, “that is true. Maybe that means they are the old Malays. Do you think that is possible?”
There was indeed one group of aborigines whom anthropologists and government officials called proto-Malays, supposedly the stock from which Malays evolved. The Sng’oi, the only group aborigines I knew, had sometimes intermarried with Malays, but they had a different culture, although in this case they certainly had similar values.
It was true that Malays were told from earliest childhood that to be Malay is to be halus. Malays did not raise their voices, they —
The driver could not help another interruption. “Yes,” he said, “that is true in the kampong. But in the city it is getting very difficult to be Malay, when all around you there are kafirs (unbelievers) who are kasar.”
I hope the visitor could sort out our discussion, which was held in Malay with the driver and in English with the visitor.
We visited two villages that first day, spending time being introduced to the head of the village, to some of the elders, as the visitors called them — the older people who happened to be around. We walked here and there. We talked with children. We admired their rice fields. We were served sweet tea in the community shelter of one village, very sweet lemonade in the next.
The visitor asked some pointed questions, but no, nobody had ever heard of a person who had been crazy, or dangerous, or mentally ill.
The next day we visited three villages, the last one quite far away; we did a lot of driving that day. The second village, however, began to provide an answer to the question the visitor had asked.
It was the middle of the day, the time when nobody moves, let alone works, if it can be avoided. We stood around under a large tree, trying to catch a little breeze. Our discussion with the elders was leisurely and vague.
From the corner of my eye I saw someone flitting from one tree to another, obviously trying to hide. I looked again but did not see anything more. Then again I saw someone — a man, I thought — flitting from one hiding place to another.
The visitor, too, had noticed. We asked why anyone, at this time of day, would run from one hiding place to another. Whom was he hiding from?
“Oh,” someone said, quite nonchalantly, “that is our thief.”
We said, “Your thief?”
“Yes, he likes to steal things.”
“Did you call the police?”
“No, of course not. Why should we? He is one of us, he lives in this kampong.” And that was the end of the discussion.
A week later the visitor joined us again for a last trip to a village even farther away. This time as soon as we arrived we were dogged by an old woman, bent with age but spry and very active — almost hyperactive. She had strange mannerisms, she mumbled, and every now and then she would scream out what sounded like curses. Then she would shuffle closer to us and cackle like a madwoman.
Nobody in the village took much notice of her, except once, when she wanted to touch the visitor’s camera. One of the men called her by name, took her elbow, and said, “Come now, grandma, do not bother us, we are talking.”
She wandered away, mumbling, screeching every now and then, until she disappeared and we could not hear her anymore.
The visitor asked what was wrong with the woman. Oh, nothing, everyone assured us. That is just what she does. It does not bother anyone.
It would not occur to Malays to have this woman committed to a mental hospital. After all, she is part of the village: She is one of us.
Nor would it occur to Malays to have the police come to take the thief away: He too is one of us.
That was why there were no Malays in the two mental hospitals.
How about violent behavior? the visitor wanted to know. Are there not dangerous people in your kampong? No, no, everyone was quite sure that there were no dangerous people.
“How about that woman?” he persisted. “She yells and curses — does she not sometimes strike out at someone?”
It is difficult to phrase a conditional sentence in Malay, but even with a great deal of explaining, the people in this kampong were quite sure that this woman had never struck out at anyone.
“Not even a dog?” the visitor wanted to know.
No, not even a dog.
Driving back the visitor grumbled; he was sure they and we were hiding something. There must be violence, he said. Maybe not often, but sometimes.
I mentioned that the only cultural expression of violence in Malay culture is amok, a word that has become synonymous in many other languages with rage — even uncontrollable rage. Amok, however, is extremely rare.
Someone who goes amok loses control over his actions. He — usually a male, although not necessarily — takes whatever weapon comes to hand, often a parang, and blindly mows around him, slashing at people, houses, animals, trees — anything that is in his path.
Malays say he is blind (mata gelap, literally “eyes in darkness”), he cannot even see where he is going; he weaves like a drunk, sometimes he falls, he stumbles over pebbles.
What do people do with a person who has gone amok? the visitor wanted to know?
The driver turned to us again: “Oh, it is dangerous to come too close in the beginning of his amok, so people run away. Later on they always catch him.”
“And then?” the psychologist asked. “Do they punish him?”
No, they would not punish him. Why would they punish him for being blind? The driver added that he had not heard of an amok in many years. “But today,” he added, almost sadly, “the police would probably catch him and then he would go to jail.”
The psychologist wanted to know whether there were any programs to treat amok or other mental illnesses. “Or perhaps there is even prevention?”
No, not that we knew.
Malays kept their mentally ill to themselves — and they did not think of them as ill. Some people behave one way, others behave differently, but they are all people of our kampong.
Eberhard
