Iban longhouse (4th April 2010)

The Iban Longhouse and the footbridge over the river to reach it

At 10am this morning Alice and her daughter Chris came to pick us up in their van for the start of our tour. Alice owns and runs the tour company and Chris is one of her guides, actually perhaps her only guide, it’s nice that it’s a family run business.

There are 2 more people also staying at our Inn who are visiting the longhouse with us. Ella who is from London and Claus from Denmark, they had met on the boat the day before and like us managed to book the tour when they reached Kapit, it’ll be nice to do the tour with others.

Before we head to the longhouse, Chris takes us to a supermarket to buy some bits and pieces as gifts for the people of the house. The LP always says try not to buy sweets for the kids but it seems this is exactly what Chris is suggesting we buy, oh well I guess she knows best huh?

The Longhouses of Borneo are the traditional dwellings of the indigenous people. The communal dwellings are raised above the ground and can contain up to 100 individual family apartments. There is always a huge veranda of some kind outside all of the apartments which links them all together and this represents the main street of the village and is where all the activity takes place.

All the longhouses in the Kapit area are Iban longhouses and tonight we’re going to be staying with the Iban chief and his family, cool!

On arrival the longhouse looks really impressive. We had seen several longhouses as we came up the river yesterday and they all appeared to be just single longhouses in that there were no other buildings around them. The longhouse that we were visiting was very impressive indeed. There seemed to be the main longhouse where the Chief and the richer people lived (so Chris described) and then there was a slightly smaller longhouse almost attached where the poorer people lived, then there was also some other longhouses in front of the main longhouse where people were also living. It was quite a jumbled and busy looking place which made it even more interesting.

When we first arrived we went straight to the Chiefs house and dumped our gear. The Chief and his wife were out at the market in Kapit but there were several other family members around the house and lots and lots of children.

Chris and Alice showed us all around the community and we visited several people and were told all about life in the longhouse. One of the most popular activities seems to be rice production. All across the outside veranda there were many many mats spread with drying rice and inside there were several ladies and young men processing the rice. The men’s job is to separate the kernels from the actual grains and the ladies job is to constantly sieve the rice; it’s an all day job and there are bags and bags of rice in several stages of the process doted all around the longhouse waiting further processing.

Rice processing

Rice drying

There’s also a small school here where the kids go until they’re 7 years old but today it’s Sunday so they’re all swimming in the river and having a great time. This time the river looks really very inviting, it’s crystal clear and looks so good and it’s sooo hot here, I think later that could definitely be on the agenda.

Cooling down in the river

First though it’s back for lunch and the Chief and his wife have arrived back from market. The chiefs wife seems quite friendly and smiles a hello and welcome to us but the Chief doesn’t seem quite so friendly which is a shame seeing as we’re in his house, it’s not so much he’s not friendly I think, he just doesn’t seem to take any notice of us.

Longhouse life

After lunch Chris enlisted the help of Robbie one of the local young lads to take us jungle trekking and to a nice swimming spot. I think Robbie was from one of the poorer families in the community and was quite happy to give up some of his afternoon to show us around. He didn’t speak much English but of course more than we spoke Malay although Keith has managed to pick up a few words so we silently seemed to delegate him as our spokesperson!

Part of our jungle trekking route

The whole longhouse community seems to be surrounded by shallow river systems so it was a case of alternating a little bit of jungle trekking with a little bit of river trekking as we headed out, a great way to cool down. After about an hour walking we came across a nice little waterfall and plunge pool area where we cooled down for a bit before heading back and this time I went in.

Me and Keith cooling down in the river!

Once back at the Chiefs house Chris and Alice had already gone home for the night and it was a little unclear on the protocol to be honest, they hadn’t told us what we were supposed to do or not do or what we could do. Robbie was keen to show us his house and family so after a half hours sit down on the outside veranda he was back to pick us up and take to his house. First though we sidestepped into another house where there were several ladies wanting to sell us their wares.

It’s Easter Sunday here today and although traditionally the Iban weren’t Christians some have now converted due to the arrival of missionaries and in some parts of the community there seemed to be some kind of celebration going on. Robbie took us down to the river where there was a large group of men and boys playing a game called Tuak which apparently they only play on special occasions; it was played with a rattan ball and seemed to be a cross between football and volleyball! He introduced us to several members of his family who all seemed to be a little worse for wear on, what we can only assume was, rice wine! It didn’t seem to be the norm in the community though to be drinking so early on so we could only guess that either it was because of Easter or some other celebration going on that we knew nothing about.

One of Robbies relatives weaving

One guy we met wanted us to meet his wife and took us to his house and gave us water, he told us perhaps 25 times that the water he was giving us was boiled water! Well judging by the amount of times he told us we can only assume it actually was.......lets hope so! :-|

Back at the chiefs house and the four of us kinda hung around a little like spare parts. There were some kids watching TV and a couple of small ones around 4 or 5 who must have had too many ‘E’ numbers cause they were seriously hyper! :-) After about 40 mins wondering what we were supposed to be doing the chief called us into the kitchen area for dinner. Dinner, in a similar fashion to lunch, was rice, chicken and fish and was taken sitting on the floor of the kitchen area. The kitchen was very large and although not dissimilar to what we have back home it wasn’t the same either and there was plenty of room to be seated on the floor around the food and instead of the whole family eating together people would just come and go as and when they wanted.

The kitchen in the chiefs house

Again the chief didn’t really speak to us or even really acknowledge us and after dinner the four of us went back into the lounge area and sat looking at each other wondering what next!! About a half hour later the chiefs wife placed some mats out on the veranda area and all of a sudden a village meeting was in progress. This made things even more difficult for us, as the meeting was going on right outside of the front door making it pretty impossible for us to leave the house. For two and half hours we sat there chatting amongst ourselves thinking the whole thing a bit strange and actually a little uncomfortable. In due course, beds were made up for us upstairs and in the end deciding there was nothing else we were going to be doing this evening we headed off to bed, the thing is there seemed now to be some celebration or another going on a few doors down and this went on till 4am!