selangau trip report

ok this is a very personal, long-winded post about my trip to selangau, so if you are not into such stuff, ignore this, ok.

day 1 – thurs, 14 jan.
reached bintulu about 4.00pm. mr sim, our host, and the local activist, was on hand to greet us and brought us to his house (see picture above) to stay in his 4WD. raining very heavy now and then during the 2 1/2 hrs journey (1 1/2 from bintulu to selangau town, 1  from selangau town to his house). stop somewhere in between for tea.  an iban happened to drop by to join us for tea (who knows mr sim). i was happy to note that he’s a catholic and i quickly interviewed him on his views on the allah issue (planned to interview a few others, hopefully to get a story). also visited his longhouse known as ‘rumah james’... that is his name and he is the ‘tuai rumah’ (head of the longhouse). hisl longhouse is quite a modern one… build with bricks and on the ground. his niece showed me her room and i was astounded to see its walls adorned with huge holy pictures here and there (see facebook photo album for his longhouse).

i’m sure many of you are quite aware of how a longhouse look like. i mean yes long of course… and when you enter the longhouse, you see the hall (or sometimes call verandah) which is a common place shared by all.  then they have what they called ‘pintu’ (or as we refer to ‘units’) which are basically rooms. the longer the longhouse is, the more ‘pintu’ of course.

the road from selangau town to mr sim’s house is in a very very terrible condition. repair/maintenance works is going on… and i understand had been going on for 3 years! many lorries and tractors been using the road daily, rendering the road to even worst condition. uneeven and potholes all around. this made the journey on the 4WD very bumpy and jerky… all through the journey!!  imagine everday we traveled like this… sometimes more than once a day.  during this first day, i was hanging on  tight because the jerks made me moved from side to side and sometimes even jumped up. however after the 2nd day, it was like i’m used to it already – no more holding on.

wow! mr sim has a lovely, huge, double storey bungalow  (see picture here) – a rare sight indeed, deep in the selangau district. i think he is one of the ‘orang kaya’ there! his house is equipped with all the modern facilities – electricity (but run by generator), flushing toilet, bath/shower with tap (but very very cold water from rain-water). he has i think 4 bedrooms upstairs. there are 2 tv in his house – one for the children (he has a daughter, age 6 and a son, age 10) and one, a huge one, for himself and family.

day 2 – friday, 15 jan
mr sim had to drop his 2 children at school at 7.00am so we went out early at 6.30am. then we went to the town for breakfast. the town is very small…. can walk round it in 15 mins. went to the market too, which was by the river side. surprised to see durians on sale… but what was even more surprise was that the durians were so small (some as small as  golf ball  – well only one flesh was found in the small durian!  the market sells snake meat! ugh!!

later in the afternoon, visited two longhouses. one is ‘rumah jebat‘.  this longhouse has sofa seats! however, ong and mr sim sat on the floor of the hall, followed by all the residents. i alone sat on the seat!  i notice that many of the residents from all the ‘pintu’ will come gather around us.  this was what happened to the other longhouses we visited too. it was like they were very excited to see us (visitors), so all of them quickly congregated at the hall and sit around chit chat with us. the children especially like to crowd round us and when we take photos of them, they were so excited and giggle a lot.

rumah jebat was one of the 2 longhouses that served us drinks.  when they served drinks, i moved down from my seat to join them on the floor.  i notice that when they served drinks to guests, all of them too were served drinks. beside the drinks, they brought 3 plates of snacks – one was biscuits and one was some kind of nuts, i think.  the other, not sure!

ong was the one who talked to them about voting rights and encouraged them to register as voters. most of them said they were registered already, while some said they were waiting for thie mykad application.

the next longhouse ‘rumah selai‘, there were some who did not have mykad and some who had already applied but waiting for the notification. then there were 3 people who wanted to apply for birth certificate (BC), including an old woman of about 70. imagine! the old woman already has grandchildren – her children and grand-children has BC but she does not! well without BC, one can’t apply for mykad and without mykad, one can’t register as a voter. ong helped them to fill in the BC form, which they already obtained from JPN.  since they are illiterate, they can’t understand the form… but as ong was filling in the form, i notice it was 5 pages full! and there were so many questions asked, so many requirements… even literate persons like ong and me find the form so confusing!! completing one form took nearly 1/2 an hour!

by the time we finished with rumah selai, it was already night about 8.00pm. after rumah selai, we went to rumah juki, which is the longhouse of mr sim’s iban wife. again ong and sim explained to them about voters registration.  around 9.00pm we went back to mr sim’s house for dinner before we went back again to rumah juki to stay the night.  the family of the ‘pintu’ we stayed with, i understand are mr sim’s in-laws.  woo!! surprised to see that once inside, they seems to have everything.  first entering, we see the living room, which has sofas, chairs, tables, tv, radios and so on… and it is very big too. then after that is the bedroom sections – this is where ong and i slept, with mattresses on  the floor and i notice 3 of them also slept with us, though i notice 2 or 3 enclosed bedrooms.  after the bedroom section, was the kitchen section – again big spacious place.  then after that was the bathroom… though you can’t really call it a bathroom since it is open and with 2 giant containers that contain water. methink they bath in the open with sarong using the water from the container. haha. luckily i already bathed in mr sim’s house. they do have a proper toilet but without flushing system (mr sim’s house has flushing system).

oh yeah so i notice, not only the longhouse but mr sim’s bungalow house too – they don’t have piped water but they store rain-water for use. that’s why the water was always so damn cold when i took a bath. they don’t have electricity too but they used generator which they will shut down at 10.00pm… when they want to go to bed. wahh! so early they sleep…. 10.00pm!

day 3- saturday, 16 jan
morning visited a very traditional poor longhouse. one thing i notice at every longhouse we visited, the people were very friendly and welcoming and most of them extended hand for a hand-shake. and when we were seated on the hall, almost all of them who stays in the longhouse will come crowded round us.  this longhouse that we visited, though poor, offered us drinks (the 2nd one to do so out of the many we visited).  of course as i mentioned earlier, all of them too, each had a glass to drink.

after this visit, mr sim took us to his old house (made of timber – a lone short ‘longhouse’ – which was abandoned and run-down) where behind the house was a plantation with many fruit trees.  there were many buah langsat trees around, and mr sim climbed one of them to pluck some buah langsat for us to eat. i noticed that their buah langsat were bigger in size than what we had in penang.

this old house of mr sim was just opposite the rumah juki longhouse – remember the longhouse where i stayed a night, and which is the longhouse of mr sim’s wife; and the rumah juki is just a short walking distance away from mr sim’s bungalow.

well, we went back to mr sim’s bungalow and had a rest there for several hours before we hit town for a forum organised by some PKR members on voters education.  a few VIPs were invited, i see. about 60 people came and only 4 were woman! well the forum was supposed to be held in a longhouse but at the last moment, the tuai rumah of the longhouse refused to allow the forum to be held at his longhouse, so the organisers had to use the coffee shop of a member  in town, to hold the forum. this could be the reason for the low turnout from women.  the venue is in town, away from where they were staying.

one good thing i noticed, they served food before the forum started… unlike most of our forums in penang, food was served after the forum.  the people already gathered as early as 7.00pm. food was served about 7.45pm and the forum started at 8.15pm. several speakers were invited to speak, all spoke in iban language. ong was also one of the speakers, he spoke in bahasa. it was a long forum! ended at about 11.30pm and by the time we got home, it was already passed 1.00am!

day 4 – sunday, 17 jan
went to the catholic church in the morning. st charles church at selangau town. the language used was iban and yes, i heard ‘allah’ being mentioned now and then during the mass. their mass was exactly the same as our, except for one part, before the ‘our father’ was said, where we stand, they kneel. oh their collection was done by individuals passing around the collection bag, with the wardens watching on. wanted to video the mass and also took pictures but they didn’t allowed us to do so. managed to take some photos standing right behind before i asked permission.

after mass ended, we went to the market again. this time ong bought some vegetables for mr sim’s wife to cook dinner for us. yeah, most of the time we ate at mr sim’s house with his wife’s cooking. great! we had home-cooked original sarawak food. (see facebook photo album for a picture of the food we had during the night – the last time we had food in his house.

after walking around the market, mr sim took us to see his plantation (palm oil). he had a house (shed) right in the middle of the plantation! though a small shed, but it has everything like a normal house – kitchen, living room, bedroom – all within one space of the shed! we had our lunch there.

after lunch, we went to another longhouse – which was quite deep inside, far far away from main road, like deep inside a jungle. the road we travelled on was very narrow, with long, high bushes on both side.  we stayed quite a long time in this longhouse, as there were a number of them who wanted to apply as voters and some applied for BC.  then after ong gave them a talk on voters rights/education, a video of last night forum was shown to them.  the video was shown only half-way as it was getting late (7.00pm) and the journey back will take some time.

we went back to mr sim’s house and had our last dinner at his home. it was that time that i took a picture of the dishes we had – all of them, mr sim said, were local sarawak dishes.  (again, see facebook for a picture of the dishes).

oh, all the time while visiting the longhouses, i try to speak to some of the residents regarding the allah issue. it seems that to most of them, they said, it is not an issue to them at all as they had no problem with the usage of allah. “nadai namanama! nadai namanama!” was what we heard mostly from them when asked if there’s a problem with them using allah, or with the muslim against them using allah. ‘nadai namanama’ is ‘no problem’ in the iban language.

day 5 – monday, 18 jan
this day, we went to the JPN office (jabatan pendaftaran negara) to wait for some residents from rumah selai (whom we visited on saturday) who wanted to come to JPN to either check their mykad application status or to apply for mykad/BC.  6 of them were doing some kind of application but more than 6 of them came for the support. since it was 6 of them, it took quite a long time, so i went alone to walk round the market and i bought the ‘buah dabai’ since i heard it is sarawak’s local fruit which can’t be found in peninsular malaysia. had to ask the seller how to prepare the fruit. i was told we can either eat it as fruit or eat it to go with rice.  i also browse some sundry shop to buy some sweets or chocolates for mr sim’s 2 young children. mr sim had been so kind to us, being a most friendly, gracious host (stay free, eat free, what!) then i had to repay him somehow or other, although in some small way.

the application at JPN took longer than we expected. as such, our plan to go to bintulu town first before going to the airport, to some souvenir shop was canceled. what a disappointment. i had wanted to go to buy something back for my family or friends.  yes i had to catch the plane at 3.00pm that day so mr sim left me at the airport. i did the next best thing – bought some souvenirs from the airport gift shop! yeah yeah, expensive but no choice as i’ll end up with nothing when i leave sarawak, if i don’t buy something. well, it was bye bye selangau, bye bye sarawak, as i boarded the plane at 4.10pm.

on the whole, it was a great trip – something new and exciting for me to experience.  glad that we managed to convince many longhouse residents on the importance of registering as voters.

don’t forget to go to my facebook photo album for more photos.  those photos i put up are only 1/4 of the no. of photos i took! i am going to put up ALL the photos in my own photo gallery instead because, as you know, facebook is not owned by me and the photos might disappear one day, so it is better and safer to put them up on my own hosted photo gallery site. at the moment though, i found there’s something wrong with my photo gallery site so i guess i’ll have to wait a while to upload all the photos.

UPDATED: oh yeah forgot to mention. in all the days while we were going around the longhouses, while ong was talking to them about voters rights and so on, or registering them, i approached one person of a longhouse we visited to interview them about the allah issue – how they think about it and whether they have any problem with it.