Bajan — also written Bajeuën — is the wood-cutting village of the onderafdeeling Langsa, situated on the Atjeh-tram nineteen kilometres from Langsa. The place, on a river of the same name, was formerly of somewhat greater importance, when a controleur was stationed there and a garrison lay. Now there is nothing but official and military silence and the saw of the wood-enterprise.
The Wood-Enterprise of the Deli-spoor
The work of wood-cutting at Bajan is run by the Deli-spoor, which took over the whole licence from a trading company (Bajeuën) that had originally received a permit of three to four thousand hectares for wood-cutting and had let the Deli-spoor participate. The management of the forests had however been wanting — one cut without following any particular system, now here, now there. The Deli-spoor, which wished to draw its sleepers from there, then took over the whole licence for its own account.
The workshop stands near the road; there the wood is sawn for the Deli-spoor’s own use and also for sale. In years of much house-building one could place the worked wood anywhere, and Bajan even supplied Japan. At present the Deli-spoor’s own use is by far the principal matter. The worked wood goes south by the Atjeh-tram under a special tariff. Sleepers and telephone-poles are worked on the spot, where Chinese are employed, while Atjehnese serve in the workshop. An iron track connects the saw-mill in the forest and the workshop, and daily the small locomotives with their long wood-wagons run through the fine forest, where marbau, damar laoet and meranti-sorts are cut.
The Labour-Form: Panglong
The labour-form at Bajan has traits of the panglong-enterprise, which the Chinese prefer on the afdeeling Bengkalis of the Oostkust van Sumatra. If the government issues licences for a fixed number of years for wood-cutting, with the obligation to pay a fixed rent or dues and to replant, the panglongs on the other hand can always work on and pay for each man monthly a certain sum (formerly f 2.50, now f 3.50). A panglong is a group of labourers, usually from Singapore, who work under a head, their taukeh (mandore), either for the cutting of beams or firewood, for the sawing of planks or for the burning of charcoal. On Bengkalis and the other islands near Siak, also in Siak itself, there are small ones with three and seven men, but the usual number is twenty-two. By St. 1909 No. 488 a panglong-regulation has been given, but on the islands, in the forests, supervision is difficult.
At Bajan, however, two groups work, each of about forty men, people from over the Strait and old contract-labourers of Deli. Each group has a head, called kepala; each labourer is assessed here for the payment of head-money, which for a year is at least f 7.20. Each group has a cook and a krani for the book-keeping of each man’s earnings. The European manager, who here naturally has a regular supervision so that irregularities do not escape notice, approves the work at delivery and pays the kepala according to fixed tariffs for sleepers, for beams of certain dimensions. The Chinese have their dwellings in the forest near the stacking-places; some have a Chinese wife, most have a Javanese. A labourer makes thirty to fifty guilders a month; the kepala earns much more.
The Forest
The forest is a fine piece of nature, but the terrain is difficult to work because it continually rises and then falls steeply. The tree-species are mixed, though groups of damar laoet occur. About 250 tons of wood are cut a month (one ton = 1¼ cubic metre), but the wealth is so great that for 25 years 700 tons a month could have been taken.
Significance
Bajan is the principal wood-cutting settlement of the eastern coast of Atjeh, and its labour-form — a modified panglong system under direct European supervision — is the model on which the colonial government hoped to regulate the wood-cutting of the flood-forests of the eastern coast generally. The dependence of the Deli-spoor on Bajan for its sleepers made the village an integral part of the railway-economy of northern Sumatra.
Permit and Land Conflicts
The permit granted in 1918 ran for thirty years for timber felling. On the same terrains, however, agricultural permits had also been granted to bodies other than the Deli-spoor — to VICO for part and to a Japanese company for another part. Should these bodies wish to use the ground they could proceed to clearing the forest. Broersma considered it improbable that they would do so soon, the terrain being so difficult and clearing such expensive reclamation, but regarded the government’s simultaneous issuance of conflicting rights over the same land as undesirable.
Leprosery
On the road to Peureula there is little of beauty. The landscape of Soengoe Raje offers nothing attractive: the pepper gardens have lost their freshness, withered by disease and neglect. Not far north of Bajan, beside the road, stands a small leproserie, an institution of the landschap such as many in Atjeh. Atjehnese had long shown an aversion to leprosy sufferers — Dr. Julius Jacobs, in het familie- en kampongleven op Groot-Atjeh (1894), records that sufferers in Groot-Atjeh were inexorably expelled and sent to a specific kampong with sulphurous hot springs, their real estate passing to their family and their spouse legally divorced from them. The leprosy kampong formed a small society of unfortunates, maintaining themselves as far as possible by fields, crafts, and fishery.
In Broersma’s time matters had changed. The Bajan leproserie had four small sheds — one for women — accommodating fifteen people. A government doctor came twice weekly to examine and treat patients with injections of Ecco, an oil containing camphor among other ingredients. The treatment was relatively new and the experiences still incomplete; doses were raised gradually, then omitted for a long period, then resumed with increasing doses over five rounds. Broersma reported good results and improved patient wellbeing. There was already a plan for a central leproserie for the gewest but execution had been dropped from the agenda for reasons of economy.
See Also
- Langsa
- Deli-spoor
- Atjeh-tram
- Panglong (labour-form)
- Houtaankap in Atjeh
- Verkenningen in Atjeh (1923)
- St. 1909 No. 488 (panglongreglement)
- Peureula
- Julius Jacobs
- Groot-Atjeh
Source
Verkenningen in Atjeh, by Dr. R. Broersma (De Locomotief, October 1923), chapter IV, ‘Het hout van Langsa’, pp. 21–24.
Atjeh als land voor handel en bedrijf, by Dr. R. Broersma (Utrecht: Gebrs. Cohen, 1925), pp. 20–25.