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Published: April 30th 2008
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Heavily laden with our three heavy bags, as well as the supplies we had purchased at the local market, the simple, flat bottomed, wooden boat made its erratic and precarious way through the rapids of the Skrang river to our destination, an Iban longhouse. It was a beautiful journey; as the boat swung from one side of the fast flowing river to the other, dodging logs and shooting rapids, I leaned back on my rucksack and watched the leaves and branches of the overhanging tree's as they flashed past above me. The sunlight hitting my eyes like a strobe light and the constant soft thwapping of waves against the hull was strangely hypnotic, so I half believed I was dreaming when four giant Hornbills flew across the river, their magnificent beaks and huge tails making them seem like a sort of feathered dragon. Antalai, our gentle and gracious host, was pleased at this auspicious sign - the Hornbill is believed, by the Iban, to be a messenger from the spirit world and even if Animism has been diluted here by the relative normalcy of Christianity, this bird is still highly revered.
Arriving at our destination we grabbed our bags and
followed Antalai up the steep path from the river to his Longhouse. We entered this incredible building at the South end and were greeted with the full splendour of its improbable length. A Longhouse is exactly that, incredibly long, it is this way so as to house all the members of a single community under one roof. The Longhouse in which we stayed housed 22 families and, at a conservative estimate, must have been at least 100 meters long. Stretching out in front of us was the communal area of the building, a kind of wide corridor about ten meters across, to the right of this was to be found the individual living areas for each family. Democratically demarcated, each family (including the Chief's) gets about eight meters of this house to call their own, the door's to these apartments are off the main corridor to the right. Assuming all are similar to Antalai's then each family has a small living come sleeping area,a kitchen and a small porch that leads to a cleared area behind the house. On the left of the main communal area, door's lead to a sort of Verander that most families used,at least when we
were here, to dry pepper corns under the fierce tropical sun (at least when it wasn't raining equally as fiercely). From this verander a precarious pole with notches in leads to a succession of small gardens,some with ponds for keeping edible fish, most with chickens and all with an outside toilet. The whole structure (except the tin roof) was built from timber and raised, on an army of stilts, six feet off the ground.
We were welcomed into Antalai's house within a house and then taken to meet the chief. We sat down and spoke for a while, smoking cigarettes and trying to find some common ground on which to converse. I had a stack of cheap tobacco from Lao and gave the chief's Son a bag of this as he seemed to have none. He disappeared and I thought no more about it until, ten minutes later, he shyly reappeared and made me a reciprocal gift of a beautifully woven rattan mat. This lovely gesture broke the tension and made the conversation a little easier, or at least made the silences between draws on cigarettes less awkward. We settled back to contemplate the rafters, the curl of blue
smoke or the inside of our eyelids and spent a very pleasant two hours meditating so, until we were called in for dinner.
That evenings dinner, and all the subsequent feasts of the four days we spent there, were basic but filling, nutritious and very, very tasty. We had bought supplies with us to supplement the rice that normally makes up the bulk of the Iban's diet (that and whatever meat they catch) and this was put to magnificent use by Antalai's wife. Each meal was a multi dish affair of many rare delights,a typical menu read something like this: Fern shoots cooked in soy sauce, steamed catfish, fried other type of fish, fried chicken, eggplant in unknown sauce, spinach, fruit and of course the ubiquitous rice. The best meal we had however was that which we enjoyed on the stony bank of a delightful river deep in the forest.
Antalai, Anny, myself and Anja (who we met up with again in Kuching after a break of two months) set off early into the hills. We passed the pepper groves where these vigorous climbers were producing their valuable corns, we passed plantations of rubber tree's (bought by the
British from Brazil) that had already had nicks made in their trunks, allowing the liquid rubber to drip into bamboo pots suspended under the cut to later be collected for processing and, after much trekking, eventually came to the small river that was to serve as swimming pool and restaurant. With only bamboo and leaves as his cooking implements Antalai proceeded to cook up an absolute storm. First he made a fire with a small fence in front of it and then started cutting bamboo into lengths. Bamboo is hollow and Antalai cut it in such a way that it formed a tube, sealed at one end - about the shape and size of a mortar launcher. He made several of these. Next he took a large leaf (about 1.5 feet across) and poured uncooked rice onto it, he then wrapped the rice to form a torpedo shaped parcel and placed two each of these into a bamboo tube. The tube was then filled with water from the stream and placed directly in the fire to steam the rice, leaning against the small fence to keep it upright. Catfish, chicken, Palm hearts,Fern fronds and tea were all also loaded, in
various different ways, into bamboo tubes to be placed on the fire whilst, finally, some chickens were spatchcocked, marinated and then spit roasted above the flames. After we had swam our appetites were massive but even given my legendary ability to put away food, there was still some left after our cumulative best efforts. So tasty, easily the best food we've eaten in Malaysia.
The remainder of our time here was spent,by myself at least, helping out in any small way I could. One of the tasks was the processing of the pepper. The pepper would be collected in the fields and bought back to the Longhouse in large rattan baskets. These were then emptied onto large rattan mats where, much like crushing grapes, the corns were trampled to separate them from the twigs onto which they still clung. The released corns were separated and the process repeated. Once as many corns had been separated as possible the twigs and remaining, tenacious corns,were placed in a wide weave, rattan basket that was raised above a mat on a wooden platform. The twigs were then trampled to sieve the corns through the basket and onto the mat. Once several baskets
had been processed in this way we spread them out to dry in the sun. Other tasks in which I made myself useful were washing up, carrying heavy loads, feeding the chickens and launching boats. When not helping out I spent my time happily observing the quietly purposeful Iban's going about their lives; mending nets, building boats, weaving baskets, rocking babies, fishing, playing in the river, sleeping in Hammocks or hunting.
The Iban have a long and proud history, many of their traditions pre-dating Malay and Chineese settlers and even though some of their more infamous tradition such as the taking of heads (in Antalai's Longhouse these old trophies were not even on display any more) have been abolished in favour of a peaceful way of life this has in no way diminished their strength. In much the same way the creeping fingers of modernity have not, as yet, diluted or replaced this proud tribes fundamental traditions or ethos. They may know the score in the latest Manchester United game before I do, but could still survive in the jungle for several weeks to my couple of days. Their children may go to a government funded boarding school two
hours down river and only come home twice a month, or work in the city five hours away, but in no way had that diminished their powerful sense of family and community. This was, for me, a little step back in time to a simpler, more direct and symbiotic way of living amongst a fascinating and different people, for them I suspect we were of no more interest (and indeed a barely tolerated burden) than the next ridiculous government decree.
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