Men also attend to the daily needs of their children. Here a man bathes his young daughter (whose head is mostly shaven) and an older son. The son was afflicted with spinal tuberculosis. In later years his father had to carry him from camp to camp until he died.
Children learn to swim from older children, without adult instruction. Here some young children are jumping off a log into a pool. Parents seldom worry when children are playing in the water.
By the 1970s, traded cotton cloth and clothing had almost entirely replaced barkcloth garments, but some people still remembered how to make barkcloth by pounding the inner bark of certain tree species into a soft felt. Cloth made from the bark of the dart poison tree (Antiaris toxicaria) was favored because it is pure white. Here two girls, following instructions from their parents, demonstrate how to pound and wash the soft inner bark of the tree to remove the poisonous latex and particles of wood.
Many women are good at climbing trees and vines, though men usually do the most strenuous and dangerous climbing, such as climbing the towering bee trees to cut down bees nests. Here a woman climbs a vine to get some fruit from the treetops.
Since the 1980s, Batek have obtained swimming masks, rubber tubing, and metal rods from traders. They make spear-guns consisting of a carved wooden stock and a strap of rubber tubing that is used to propel a metal spear several feet at high speed and force. The fisherman swims under water to find the fish, usually shooting them from point blank range. This man has just shot a good-sized fish with his spear-gun.
About 1980 a road was built connecting Post Lebir and Kampung Macang with the Malay villages and towns down the Lebir River. Batek De and Batek Teh from those settlements began buying supplies at the weekly markets at the nearest village, Kampung Lalok, hiring rides with Malay traders. Here a group of Batek women and children shop at Kampung Lalok. Batek always wear Malay- or western-style clothing when visiting villages or towns.
