Sweet Babagon Pineapples

Although Babagon Pineapples has been popularised far and wide in Sabah as well as in Kuala Lumpur, no entrepreneur dare start a pineapple juicing or canning factory. The most popular non-feasibility reason cited by leaders and Government representative was the unsteady supply of the raw materials, rendering the setting up of the enterprise rather uneconomical. There are actually not less than approximately 1000 acres of pineapples plantation in the upper Moyog region, engulfing kampungs like Kampung Moyog, Mongkusilad, Kibunut, Poropok, Babagon, Sangai-Sangai, Nounggon, Rugading, Tintap, Borot, Timpoluwon, Manansawong, Sungoi and Timpango. Although pineapples fruit seasonally there has been a Government agency recommended technological knowhow to enhance pineapple fruiting. The harmless to human fruit-enhancing commercially-produced whitish tablet is dropped into the budding centre of the pineapple plant. If the pineapple plant was big enough and capable of fruiting then signs of a fruit would appear in a couple of weeks or so.

If ever a pineapple juicing or canning factory was to be set up in Kampung Tintap area, the basic infrastructures for such a business enterprise are now set in place; a near-good narrow but sealed yet crooked roads, an almost-reliable electricity supply, fixed TM telephone lines connections and a reliable almost-FOC, clean water gravity supply. In the present the apparent lack of incentives from both the Government as well as the Corporate Sectors to pineapple farming the pineapple-farm small-holders plant pineapples for incidental cash-crops for local consumptions only. They are also planting pineapples, not for the fruit-for-food of it, but also for the fruit-for-Chinese-religion-prayer use. There are about 2,000 young pineapples crown coming out of the Sweet Babagon Pineapples area every 15 days cycle. Since it has been talked about and popularised by those impressed first-time buyers and by the Agriculture Department personnels, the grandest dining tables the sweet Babagon Pineapples have ever reached, it has been said, were the former Prime Minister’s and his other ministers’ dining tables. It was also said that it had also reached the shores of one of the Middle East nations, Bahrain.

Sweet Babagon Pineapples are not only reputed to be sweet but they are in truth sweet. Some pineapple sellers try to dupe their buyers by claiming and naming their pineapples, Babagon Pineapples, irrespective of the place from where they had earlier obtained their pineapples for sale. This tactic is often ignored by the buyers for they could be considered a sale strategical gimmick. Buyers who know Babagon Pineapples can easily recognise the looks and general shape of the Babagon Pineapples.

Another factor which may demotivate entrepreneurs in setting up a pineapple canning factory in the Babagon area is the bulky size of the Babagon Pineapple. The standard factory slicing machine would slice the pineapple into two halves, normally discarding the bigger and better half. A pineapple juicing factory, therefore, may be the most suitable choice. If such an incentive to serious pineapple farming is created, one could bet one’s last Ringgit that every available land plot would be planted with pineapples. Both sides of the sub-JPJ standard Babagon-Timpango steep, narrow and crooked road would be decoratedly-planted with pineapples. An imaginary welcome arch immediately after the Moyog River fording section of that Babagon-Timpango Road would be strung with yet another streamer welcoming intending visitors...“Welcome To Pineapple Country!”

Taking Kampung Babagon as the central location, the other kampungs producing this particular land produce, Sweet Babagon Pineapples, are the kampungs within the approximately six kilometers radius. They are not grown only in Kampung Babagon itself. Sweet Babagon Pineapples, therefore, has become a brand name for the sweet pineapples but no one should claim its exclusive ownership as a promotional trade brand.

Tintapland was applied for from the State Government of Sabah and the NT status land title was released in 1977. Its total area in acres was only 9.55 acres after its originally applied for area had been sliced two times to give others shares of God’s land. It has always been planted with pineapples, the Sweet Babagon Pineapples, ever since.

When the land was first applied for from the State Government, there were two interferers, so to speak. One person who had earlier asked for permission to squat on the land pleaded for a small piece when it was being surveyed for the title release. He was given a slice of approximately just over an acres. Another person, a Government officer working for the Land and Surveys Department, helped himself, so to speak, of more that 5 acres from the same Land Application piece.

This high ranking officer of the Lands and Surveys Department submitted his land application overlapping the very land I had applied for. I was told that there was no prove that I had previously applied for the said land. I could not take no for an answer and saw to it that the District Surveyor at that time referred to and make a search for my land application from old files. I did not ininsuate that my land application was purposely hidden nor did I give an inkling that I was going to report my loss to the newly established ACA at that time. The big fat closed file was pregnant with unattended Land Applications all of which were signed by my father, KK Emmanuel Tangit Kinajil. It was a rule rather than just a mere custom that Land Application submitted by individuals for Government lands within the jurisdiction of a particular Ketua Kampung (Village Chieftan) must be ascertained and signed by that Ketua Kampung. There was a coincidence or was it good spirit-led? When that big fat extra-ordinarily pregnant file was opened at random, at the same time the District Surveyor confidently saying, “..you see, nothing...nah ..”, the file slowly opened at the very land application I had submitted very much earlier in the decade. The District Surveyor sounded embarrassed and grunted, “…uh!..uh!...” I siezed upon the opportunity to request rather than demand for an immediate follow-up actions which could well be translated into the issue of SP (survey permit) and ground survey.

That high ranking officer, an Executive Officer of that Department, who happened to be a distant cousin-in-law to me, only then came up to me discretely and asked to be given a small slice. I was very angry that I was given a raw deal…treated in such a way… losing precious time at that office. At that time, I was a secondary school teacher at SMK Kota Kinabalu, which was housed at Sabah College. In my processes of getting my way with the District Surveyor, one ‘iron’ man in that office, scolded me as I was argueing constructively, at least for me, with the District Surveyor, “Aiso nopo ka bo gia diaha’ nga’ aiso no!”, he almost shouted at me. (If he said,’nothing’ then there is nothing!) I ignored him and dismissed him as a very negative man. He came from the same kampung as me and known well to the family. I thought there was an inside conspiracy of something to purposely lose my bona fide submitted LA so that departmental personnel could quietly help themselves should I abandon my search for the LA. If it was a purposeful conspiracy then the initiator had picked up the wrong intended victim. I tried to forget the whole episode and agreed to give that ‘LA overlapper’ man a small slice. At that time Government surveyors were responsible of surveying all LAs. So the Lands & Surveys Department surveyors under the instruction of the District Surveyor who had found my particular LA and whose office was next door to the ‘overlapper’ Executive Officer, surveyed my land. The surveyors, puportedly under instructions, gave him a very big slice of my LA leaving me with only 9.55 acres.

In 2004, during the drought season, smoke was everywhere and affecting visibility on Sabah roads. The official Government advice rather than warning was that there should be no burning of any kind so as not to aggreviate the smoky sitiation. But it was during this time that the area sliced out for the EO was cleared and burnt down by his brother in law, whose wife was the EO’s sister. Understandibly, as a high-ranking officer whose coming to possess a piece of well-argued overlapped piece of LA land, did not want to risk his position by putting the piece of land under his own name. It was put under his, at that time, minor sister’s name. The brother in law created a big hill of a fire in clearing the +/- 5 acres. Mike, my neighbour, suggested I cleared the rest of the hill area during the dry spell and using the same unorthodox method. It was a smaller remainder of about 1 acre. All I said was, “OK, go ahead”.

Within the month the rest of the hill was ‘yulbrienered’. There was a good cause for a punitive compound for a few individuals. The Health as well as the Environmental Protection Departments could have instituted something!

Earlier, in the early 1980, the cleared side of the hill was planted with RM1,000-00 worth of pineapple suckles. Each suckle was 25 sen and there were an additional 50 suckles given as extras just in case some chose not to really make it. Therefore, not less than 4050 pineapples were initially planted on the eastern hill part of Tintapland in early 1980. They were the sweet Babagon Pineapples. There was so much pineapples, the plants and the fruit, so much so that one who was closely connected to the pineapples would not want to look at the planted pineapples and their fruits at that time.