Photo from open sources
The bajao people are an ethnic group that lives in the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia.
These interconnected groups of local indigenous tribes adopted call sea gypsies because of their nomadic sailing lifestyle. Bajao, perfectly adapted to life in the endless Indian Ocean, go on land just to bury their dead, replenish drinking water supplies, repair boats and exchange your catch for any goods or services.
The sea provides these people with home, work, and entertainment. From the age of five, bajao children learn to fish and manage with by boats. Sea gypsies do not receive education, and therefore do not know how count and write. It’s hard to believe that representatives of this amazing people do not care about calculating their age. They also do not use electricity and live solely on the light day, going to bed and getting up with birds.
A photo from open sources
Bajao live in small huts built directly on the water using specially fixed piles. Get into such a house it is possible only by sea or by a rope bridge thrown from neighboring huts.
Food and amazing lifestyle for gypsies bajao
Sea gypsies almost all the time fishing, and fish like easy to guess, is the basis of their diet, and often the only food. If any Bajao community is not very willing often land on land, changing the catch to necessary in the diet human (by our standards) bread, fruits and vegetables, then its members often eat exclusively fish. Any modern nutritionist will say that on such a diet a person will not last long, however representatives of this people feel great without any other food. And even when they have a significant lack of fresh water.
A photo from open sources
What undermines their health more is frequent diving, which, due to the constant pressure drop, causes bajao decompression sickness. Decompression sickness destroys walls blood vessels and human cells therefore sea gypsies like As a rule, they do not live very long. These people are able to dive without scuba diving to a depth of thirty or more meters!
A photo from open sources
Bajao have the habit of jamming fish with dynamite or poisoning water potassium cyanide, later simply collecting pop-up marine inhabitants from the surface. Both methods are illegal and pose a great danger to the environment. However, not it is worth forgetting that we are talking almost about savages, whom modern civilization ruined “easy fishing methods fish”.
Many sea gypsies pierce their eardrums, depriving oneself of hearing. This is done so as not to feel during diving time pressure, which is very painful. After all, if not pierce the membranes, then they break themselves from such diving (gap eardrum at a depth is very dangerous), due to which hearing disability is the most for these people common occurrence.
Bajao gypsies fade away
Bajao is religious and professes Sunni Islam. They say they are in countless dialects of the Austronesian language group, mixing in your tongue with the languages of those peoples with whom you often are in contact.
Interestingly, thanks to its simple boats, called “lepa-lepa”, sea gypsies safely survived in December 2004 years incredibly strong tsunami caused by the earthquake in Indian Ocean and killing hundreds of thousands of people.
A photo from open sources
Undoubtedly take refuge from a modern lifestyle these days very hard. Many bajao, especially youth, are moving live on land today to lead a healthier and more diverse life, getting an education, working and getting married representatives of other nations. It’s no secret that such small communities suffer from genetic diseases associated with incest close relatives.
So true bajaos, living almost their whole lives on water becomes less and less every year. This also contributes to the fact that nowadays it is customary to fight sea gypsies. They are actually poaching and willfully crossing borders of marine areas of various countries. Because of so non-traditional lifestyles and illegal fishing bajao risk soon disappear as a people completely.
Water Life Time Fish
