Ju, Jo or Joe?

The Roman Catholic Missionaries had come up the shores of the island of Borneo, choosing the north-west side of the island, where Jesselton was, as their landing place. That was well over a hundred years ago. They brought with them mordenity and influence to the thinking of the local people. They especially brought with them a new belief, a belief in a heavenly God, God the Father Almighty and the morden aclaimed ‘Good News’ of salvation by Jesus Christ, God’s only Son. Together with the influence-dessiminated believes came the introduction of cannonised saints’ names, suggested taken by the local believers as additions to their existing names. Newly borns were especially recommended to take up names of saints from foreign lands. On 1st February, 1942, about 66 years ago this year, 2008, a bundle-of-joy-daughter, the first-born, was born of a mother. That baby girl was given Christian-Catholic names. Time passed by and the baby girl grew up to be a bounching young girl. When that bounching young girl was almost 2 years old, a baby boy, a brother to her, was born of her mother, his mother too, on 29th January, 1944. Minan Oginis, as many adults called her, or, Odu Oginis, as she was popularly called by many younger people, was undoubtedly the highly regarded midwife in attendance. She must have stayed in the same house long before the delivery time for that was the custom practised at that time. Nearly all the young people in the villages around were delivered by the famous village grand midwife, Odu Oginis. If a young person’s name was mentioned, Odu Oginis would say, “Ah, but she’s my daughter!” or, “He’s my son!”. She meant she was the midwife who saw to it that the baby was carefully laid down in the mother’s arms. When the babyboy was born, the infant birth-cry must have been louder than usual. The little conversation that issued could have been, “Oonu kaa, kusai?” “Ooh”. “’Patut no, opuod poogi o tiad.” (“What was it, a boy?” “Yes.” “No wonder, the cry was so loud”.) It was noted that that infant boy had an exceptionally big mouth. This must have been well displayed when it opened its mouth to cry. Odu Oginis must have stayed longer with the nursing mother because of the sensitive big mouth crying baby. Unknown to all onlookers at that time, the sensitive crying baby was at an early stage of developing a mysterious skin disease, locally code-named a Japanese skin disease. My mother told me much later that it was a miracle that I continued to live my 1st year. My skin disease was so severe that my mother had to use banana leaves to wrap me in, in the stead of a proper napkin. She said that the banana leaves were cooler to soothe my bare flesh. It did not stick to the flesh, rather the bared-skin body would slip and slide drop of the banana leaves if one was not too careful. My grandmother and aunties must have criss-crossed the hills around Guntiban to look for tongkuasam (herbal medicine) and other trees for their vonod (medicinal sap juice). They must have reached as far as Suok Kianau to look for any herbal plants expressedly or impliedly mentioned to them by others, either in passing or in truthful intentions. I was surely indeed quite a bother to the members of the immediate family and the family circle. After hearing all those hardships I had incurred to my parents and relatives around when I was still small, I wondered whether it had ever crossed my parents’ mind not to really mind at all should I had died during those troublesome years. But God was forever great. He saw to it that I survived. The skin disease left me completely when I was, probably, doing my 2nd year. Very much early, around the time of my birth, there must have been discussions among the people in the house, between my father and mother together with my aunties and uncles, as to what name should be given to me. My father, in much later years, confirmed to me his involvement in naming me Julius. A distant cousin who was born almost at the same time as me in Kampung Penampang, further down the Moyog River, was named by his parents, Julius. So my father also called me, Julius. It was theorized that everyone in the household then called me, Ju, a short form for, Julius. Nice name. In much, much later years, when I went to school, my must-be learned teacher called me, Joe, the short form for Joseph, not, Ju, for Julius. But my name then was not Joseph. When I had the opportunity to craftily adjust my given names, I took, Joseph, as my Confirmation name so as to put right what had been, sort of, collaboratively put wrong. In my real kampung-environment growing-up years, with the very limited kampung growing-up contemporaries as friends, there was a jingle which had the mention of the name Joe. My so-called growing-up friends sang the jingle to tease me. Joe, Joe Kanatok Nokojiil sominggu Minanakau do Natok!