back from selangau, sarawak

yep, i’m back… on monday actually, then stay over at sharon’s house in kl before taking the aeroline coach back to penang yesterday.

indeed it was an eye-opening, totally new, discovering experience for me the 4 days i was in selangau.  there were only 2 of us from peninsula (3 backed out last minute) and we stayed at the house (nice big double storey bungalow) of our host, mr sim, the local activist (a chinese who speaks mandarin, apart from iban language of course).    the 3 of us went round vititng the longhouses to register voters.

on, on the 2nd night we stayed in one of the longhouse (which is mr sim’s wife, an iban, longhouse). visited lots of longhouses and had managed to register a few voters and helped many to apply IC and BC. attended an iban mass in church (yes, they used ‘allah’ a lot). interviewed many people on their thought of the usage of ‘allah’.

there were many kind of longhouses – traditional ones, modern ones, semi-modern ones. some really very long longhouse, some short longhouse.

lots of time were spent on travelling! the journey from our host’s house to selangau town took 1 hour! but that was not the worst part – the worst part was the condition of the road! it was so jerky and bumpy all along as the road was under repair… which i heard had been ‘under repair/upgrading’ for 3 years already!! lots of potholes here and there, and lots of uneven road – all through the journey, the 4-wheeler we were in never stop jerking up down, right left, up down, right left!! terrible! worst road i ever came across… and had to endure this several times in a day!

i will write about my experiences later and of course put up lots of photos.  today i’m too tired to wrtie about my experiences. just sharing two photos here first – you can see, this photo one of the longhouse we visited. many of you might not see the interior of a longhouse before…. well, no fear, i’ll show you the interior.