028 Woman slicing poisonous tubers

Title: 028 Woman slicing poisonous tubers
Description: One of the most abundant wild tubers is gadong (Dioscorea hispida), which grows mainly on sandy riverbanks. The tubers are larger than potatoes and are shallowly rooted, so they are easy to dig up. Their drawback is that they are poisonous in their natural state. Batek process them to remove the poison. These women have peeled some gadong tubers and cut them into chunks. They are now slicing them into thin slices which they will boil in the iron pot (center). (They can slice the chunks before or after boiling.) Later they will put the slices in an openwork rattan basket, which they will anchor in a stream for a day or so, using the flowing water to leach out the poison. Gadong is easy to gather, but laborious to process.
Coverage: Malaysia
Creator: Endicott, Kirk M.
Date: 1975
Format: JPG
Identifier: https://commons.keene.edu/s/KSCArchive/item/12943
Rights: http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
Type: Stillimage
Provenance: Keene State College