31/03/2002
Thanks for all your E-Mail telling me that Geocities.com shut down my site, I bear the petty, narrow minded, bureacrats at Yahoo Geocities no malice for closing my site down, but it would have been nice if they had forwarned me. A friend has relocated the site to marlowe.worldfriend.com , and here I am.
I have that nagging feeling that no-one is reading this now that my URL has been altered, so tell all your friends about my site and E-Mail me with any comment or questions.
To recap, I am living with some natives in a remote part of Borneo at the moment. I found a native woman giving birth and helped with the delivery, her tribe have welcomed me as one of their own, but unfortunately this seems to involve marrying the mother I helped and undergoing some ritual mutilation not dissimilar to circumcision. I am trying to make a discreet exit from the bosum of my newfound family, with little sucess so far.
30/03/2002
The sound of thirty natives singing "All you need is love" lulled me to sleep last night, it was the most beautiful thing I have ever heard.
29/03/2002
I have started wearing what the natives wear for my stay here, so I'm typing this with some neck beads, a loincloth and not much else. Its surprisingly comfortable.
Kinabalu (I call her Kinny now) seems very attached to me , and is sitting next to me now feeding junior. I feel priveliged to have helped her when she was giving birth, but I'm worried that the tribe feel I have a greater obligation to the mother and child. The older woman that knows a little English said to me "Marlowe marry Kinabalu. Marlowe marry Kinabalu soon come." earlier today. I tried to explain I just want to backpack the world as a lone adventurer, to taste the very extremes the planet has to offer, to solo traverse the inhospitable highway and brave the feared places, but she didn't seem to comprehend.
None of the men seem to know much English, one of them keeps saying "Coke, its the real thing" to me but he seems to have learned that parrot fashion, so I am teaching them to sing the Beatles song "All you need is love" to strike a balance.
I am comfortable here with these gentle people, and oddly it seems to rain less here, but the pressure on me to adhere more to Kinny may drive me away sooner than I would like.
28/03/2002
I can't use the laptop for long now, the men arrived a couple of days ago and were surprisingly friendly. They came up the river with tinned food, plastic toys and a dead orangutan. It seems they make a six day roundtrip to a more civilised part of Borneo to trade native crafts for Western junk. The food that they have been giving me, the orange/red sauce with beans in turns out to be made by Heinz and not an unusual Bornean native delicacy after all.
These natives seem hospitable, even the men seem to accept my presence, the big problem is, they seem to hold me responsible for little Marlowe, and want me to marry the mother (her name is "Kinabalu"). I have tried to explain that the child is obviously not mine, but don't want to press the issue as I am a stranger in a strange land and suspect the customary treatment for foreign men that impregnate locals and them do a runner is not good.
26/03/2002
The mother has taken little Marlowe and I am alone in the longhouse. Everyone left a few minutes ago, so I think the men are returning, I 'm leaving my stuff stashed under some bedding and leaves, and I'm going out to face them.
25/03/2002
The women seem to have accepted my presence this morning. They keep looking at me, and then pointing to the infant born in the jungle and smiling a lot. They have left little Marlowe with me, fortunately he is asleep. The mother (I still havn't managed to find out her name) came by in the night and cuddled up to me, I presume out of gratitude, I hope not out of any romantic presumtion, she kept pointing to little Marlowe and then to me as well.
Life here seems simple and good, despite the pollution of plastic containers, Coke T-Shirts and shellsuit bottoms that I have seen, the natives live a life close to the ecosystem of the rainforest and seem enviably happy with their lot. The children seem healthy, especially little Marlowe, I think he has my eyes.
I tried to ask the older woman who knows a little English - "Where are your men?" , and she replied "Soon come, Soon come" , which seemed promising, maybe one of them will speak better English and I can explain about the birth in the jungle and that I had nothing to do with the impregnantion.
I got to try some native cuisine too, the women brought me some sort of pulse or bean in an orange/red sauce, it is like nothing I have seen in the jungle, but it was delicious and the first hot meal I have had in a long while. I have not seen the others eating much, and I'm concerned that they might have given me their food. I tried to offer them some of my military rations but they would not accept.
Also, I found the river, the longhouse is just a few hundred yards from the bank, and the natives have dug-out canoes tied to a wooden jetty. Gotta go, little Marlowe has woken up.
BORNEO DIARY 
