suitcase skeletons

you know how sometimes you find yourself witnessing a beautiful scene? Act of simple gestures, kind smiles and love. How you see everything a little too clearly, including dust particles floating mid air and shadows. There's that bonus too, when light seems to be on your side. How it falls so divinely over everything it touches, seamlessly melting into every nook and cranny, every crease and fold.







I was organizing my sleeping space, tired from the day's events. It was late afternoon and warm, my wet hair from the river laps before hand cooled me off a little. I was writing in my moleskine, doodling when Lep's son took it from me and studied it. He was fascinated at the rows of my tiny scrawls ( 0.35 pen! )across pages and pages in this journal I kept strictly for my wanderings.

Muli came and sat next to me, smiling. There's a language barrier between us, even though we've known each other longer than I've known any other Penan. I met her when she was still fairly a newlywed to Lep. Selai ( Lep's dad ) and his family can speak bahasa pretty well, but Muli couldn't. She did however understand whenever we spoke basic bahasa to her and her hands would gesture her answers. She's better at it now, knowing a few words and understanding full bahasa sentences. My command of the Penan language improved as well, and somehow she chose only to speak to me in that language. Whenever I didn't understand, she would explain its meaning, pointing to an object or ask Lep, her husband, to translate. I loved every bit of it because in some sense, I felt like she accepted me and gone was that barrier that kept us from learning more about each other. She was always amused with my pronunciations and wrong sentence structuring and I was always amazed at her strength and grace.

Anyway, as I was combing her hair I noticed a little scene unfold in front of me. John and his daughters were sitting at the end of the wooden house,covered in the remnants of afternoon light. Muli's brother handed them a photo album we brought with pictures of our previous trip. Lep handed them coffee sachets and cups of hot water.

I quickly took my camera out.