02. Kampung Batu 12, Gombak

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The second part illustrates a view of a secondary forest located in the periphery of Selangor, bordering the state of Pahang.

What appears to be a mundane place of dwelling barricaded by valleys and highways, Gombak holds a lot more history than we think. Built in 1915, the dwindling road of Jalan Gombak stretches from Kuala Lumpur to Karak and later replaced by the Kuala Lumpur-Karak Expressway in the 1970s. In 1957, a special hospital helmed by Dr. J. Malcolm Bolton was built for the Orang Asli — the Aborigines Hospital in Gombak to house more wards and to train more staff, many of which include the Orang Asli themselves. Settlements began sprouting up on the foothills of the valley, primarily by the Orang Asli communities from different states.

Raman, a Semai originally from Cameron Highlands, Pahang, is a vibrant personality in the community here in Batu 12. He made a home out of this place and always seeks refuge from the forest behind his village. A path leads to a forested nook where he plants most of his time farming, foraging and in isolation. He relies on his ancestral knowledge of plants to survive in the forest, brought down to him and his children through generational wisdom of living among the forest. The wisdom of nature goes hand in hand with the Orang Asli’s worldview, as they navigate their lives exposed to the unforgiving tropical climate, witnessing growth and decay, changes in the landscape — even the slightest — giving birth to a pool of precise adaptation of indigenous knowledge which some may even be still hidden from scientific discovery.