Into the Heart of Borneo by Redmond O'Hanlon (Vintage Departures)

Two middle-aged British academics embarking upon a journey up a jungle river on the island of Borneo--what could possibly go wrong?  After all, Redmond O’Hanlon has a relative who once trained men in the art of jungle warfare and his chosen travel companion, the poet James Fenton, spent time in Cambodia, Vietnam, South Korea, and the Philippines as a journalist. Armed with an impressive library of natural history and poetry, a survival kit supplied by the British Special Air Services, and a rather terrifying amount of information given by the Major in Charge of SAS Training, Fenton and O’Hanlon fly off in search of the rare two-tusked Borneo rhinoceros, while carefully observing all avian wildlife that might come their way. 

“I want permission to go up the Baleh to its headwaters and then to climb Mount Tiban,” O’Hanlon announces to a skeptical Malaysian bureaucrat, “James Fenton and I wish to re-discover the Borneo rhinoceros.” Somehow they manage to gain the necessary permits and the guiding services of three Iban, members of a jungle tribe who were once famed for their skill in headhunting and who have never been to the area that they will help their charges to reach.

Spending their days in a boat and their nights in campsites on the riverbanks, O’Hanlon and Fenton swiftly learn that they are comic relief for their companions. The Englishmen come with flyfishing gear that is inferior to the harpoons of the Iban, they are rapidly laid low by the arak that their guides can drink by the quart with few ill effects, and are less than charmed by the steady diet of rice, bony river fish, and meat from an occasional turtle or lizard. Elephant ants and leeches are plentiful; every morning the novice explorers coat themselves with SAS anti-fungal powder, and Fenton comes close to drowning in the whirlpool of a waterfall. All of this provides rich amusement to the Iban, who are delighted to offer their new friends as entertainment to the jungle tribes they encounter along the way. Yet the exploration party all develop an understanding and respect for each other that ripens into true friendship.

Underpinning a wildly funny narrative of Oxford men struggling through Borneo is a stunning naturalist’s view of tropical wilderness and its fauna, with an underpinning of accounts from past explorers. Gibbons, langurs, kingfishers, and eagles are marvels that make up for the agonizing discomforts of jungle travel. And although the elusive Borneo rhinoceros never makes an appearance, O’Hanlon ends his quest by meeting one of the men who have caused that animal to become a rare and miraculous sight.

Not just a diverting travel narrative, Into the Heart of Borneo gives a poignant look at a way of life that is already beginning to vanish in 1983, as timber interests discover the jungle. O’Hanlon’s journey could never be replicated today. Below the wit and charm of his story lurks a bitter sadness that surfaces when it’s read in this century. The world he found and learned to love is rapidly disappearing, if not destroyed. ~Janet Brown

Divine Encounters: Sacred Rituals and Ceremonies in Asia by Hans Kemp (Visionary World)

Human beings, from those at the beginning of time to the inhabitants of today’s technology-ridden planet, are constantly driven by an overwhelming need to improve their luck, to establish connections with distant forces who can make this transformation take place. Many depend on the quaint ritual of casting votes into ballot boxes to choose new leaders who will help them. Others rely on an invisible agency--the world of the spirits and the chosen mortals who can muster supernatural help. Who’s to say which is more primitive and ineffective? 

Certainly not Hans Kemp, who has explored the latter option with deep respect and artistry. From the jungles of Papua New Guinea to the highly modernized nation of Japan, he has been allowed to witness holy ceremonies and has portrayed them carefully and beautifully in Divine Encounters: Sacred Rituals and Ceremonies in Asia.

This is not a book to place on the coffee table and skim through at leisured intervals. Whoever opens it will go on a journey that may well take several days, moving through different worlds and into the dark corners of the viewer’s own consciousness. In some ways, Kemp has created a visual version of a psychedelic experience, one that evokes fear, reverence, and new ways to look at life.

In Kerala oracles draped with wreaths of marigolds and clad in scarlet draw blood from their foreheads with special swords, leading vast numbers of pilgrims in “a riotous expression of divine unity,” at temples devoted to the Mother Goddess. In a ceremony that’s equally ancient, the Japanese city of Inazawa turns to Shinto exorcism by choosing one man who will absorb the ill fortune of his community as the lunar new year begins. Chased and grabbed for an entire day by thousands of men who are desperate to hand him their bad fortune, the Shin Otoku, is symbolically cast out, returning later as an honored God-man. Christians in the Philippines show their devotion on Good Friday by carrying crucifixes along the Via Crucis in the Stations of the Cross. Flagellants whip at open wounds that have been cut into their backs and there are men who become Kristos, volunteering to be nailed on a cross, where they remain for as long as fifteen minutes. 

These images are shocking at first view: the blood, the nails driven through flesh, the faces locked into ecstasy and frenzy. But through the lens of Kemp’s camera, it becomes clear that what’s being revealed is belief propelled by hope, a common thread that links all humans. When the young men of Papua New Guinea have their skin cut and abraded, with their scars taking on the appearance of crocodile scales, they are not only connecting themselves to the legendary power of that animal, they’re embarking upon an intensive six-week period of education that will usher them into manhood. Immediately thoughts of male circumcision come to mind, a process that has become so engrained in developed countries that male infants routinely undergo it, with few people questioning why. The young men along the banks of the Middle Sepik River know quite well why they are submitting to this ritual; it connects them to knowledge and power. 

Kemp ends his journey with words from P.D. Ouspensky’s In Search of the Miraculous: “But I had seen myself, that is, I had seen things in myself that I had never seen before.” Within Divine Encounters are myriad ways for us all to see ourselves, if we open our eyes and minds. ~Janet Brown

A War Away by Tess Johnston (Earnshaw Books)

During her seven years in Vietnam, Tess Johnston was both immersed in the war and removed from it. As a USAID employee, from her arrival in 1967 until she finally left in 1974, she worked as a secretary and lived in government-provided housing. She shopped at U.S. military commissaries and had a flourishing love life. When reading the opening pages of her memoir, it’s easy to dismiss it as an echo of Bridget Jones’s Diary, but that’s far from the truth. 

Johnston’s powers of observation and spirit of adventure take her miles away from chick-lit territory and into a corner of history that’s relatively unexplored: the life of a female office worker in a war-ravaged country.

Soon after arriving in Saigon, Johnston attends a lecture given by a man who would later be immortalized in Neil Sheehan’s classic A Bright and Shining Lie, John Paul Vann. 

Vann had come to Vietnam as a Lieutenant Colonel in the U.S. Army. By the time Johnston encounters him, he’s a high-ranking civilian military adviser, “either the most hated or the most respected man in Vietnam,” who’s famous for his knowledge and candor. When he tells the truth about the war, people listen, whether they agree with him or not. Johnston not only listens, she decides that she’s going to work for him. Soon she leaves the comforts of Saigon to live outside the village of Bin Hoa, close to Vann’s headquarters and near army and air force bases. This will be her home until Vann’s death in 1972.

Johnston’s description of her new home are vivid and captivating. “I marveled that any place could be so unlovely,” she remarks, while clearly reveling in the life and vitality of  Bien Hoa with its constant parade of GIs, bar girls, street vendors, and traffic that includes “the occasional oxcart,” looking “like a small and dirty Rio in carnival time.” 

It’s impossible not to speculate that her enthusiastic acceptance of her new home is influenced by Vann’s wholehearted embrace of the world he dominated. “He loved gutsy females” and when visiting dignitaries balk at accompanying him on a helicopter surveillance trip, he barks at them, “Hell, my secretaries go out with me all the time.” When Johnston is stranded on a locked-down air force base after an ill-fated party that ends with an attack during the Tet Offensive, she calls Vann to say she won’t make it to the office anytime soon, only to be told “get the hell back to work.” And she does, because he sends a military officer who has enough clout to breach the locked gates of the base and who brings her safely back to her responsibilities.

“I was later and often accused of having developed the “Intoxication with Cordite Syndrome,” when “you truly believe that you’re not going to die.” “After...that first night of Tet I was never seriously afraid again,” Johnston says, and backs up that assertion with stories of refusing to hunker down in a ditch under enemy fire because she doesn’t want to ruin a favorite dress. She’s blithe about the lengthy and potentially dangerous “commissary runs” that she makes to Saigon for food supplies; she’s as untroubled by driving “under random gunfire” as she is by attending a graphic striptease show. And she confesses that one of her favorite things to do is to direct Saigon newcomers to a Southern-style diner where the waitresses serve breakfast while clad only in skimpy aprons.

Johnston’s perspective is unique; the story she tells about her wartime life is tragic one minute, delightful the next, unfailingly irreverent, and, from beginning to end, well worth reading. ~Janet Brown