currently in a mood of listening to reggae music

guess im still not over this. i was recently been away for 11 days to a slightly remote area in Simunjan. i was living in an Iban village called Kg Kedumpai. it was a field course for our second semester (wow second semester already *gasping), also a joint field course with Copenhagen Univ, i think i had mentioned this in my previous post. so, there are 5 selected villages; Kedumpai Tekalong Semalatong Kesindu and Empili. so my group was assigned to go to Kedumpai. each group is a group of 9-10 people, 4 of Unimas students (excluding 2 interpreters) and 6 of KU students. i had a great time there. the village folks were very nice very welcoming and excited that we come to their village. the population is small, but even so, there are 4 headmen in that kampung. having more than 1 tuai rumah is a unique case, so it has become one of our interest in our study, along with our main interest which is to identify the livelihood strategies of the people in Kg Kedumpai.

we were staying in one of the headman's house. he is living in the house with his wife. their children are all working in the city. one of their in-laws is a Sabahan and a Dusun from Kota Belud, and some of the people there also married to a Sabahan (and Dusun), so the tuai rumah and his wife often introduced me to the villagers as 'Si Sabah' rather than 'Si Melayu' (which i am not, but people in Sarawak usually called any muslim as Melayu). one time during the minister's visit, he introduced me and saying like 'orang kitai bak menua lain' something like that la (meaning: orang kita juga ini tp dari tempat lain). on our first day, we were welcomed with 'ngajat' and 'joget'. it is a tradition of Iban people. afterwards, we had our lunch. since i was the only muslim in there (thats what i thought), i had an issue whether to eat or not (but it would be impolite to not eat what they had served), then suddenly a group of aunty2 and kakak2 came to me and said 'makai2, anang takut nadai jani ditu'. i love the people in there, they respect me even i was the only muslim (thats what i thought). one day, our cook wants to cook ayam kampung masak kacangma, so i thought i cant eat it because of course ayam kampung itu tidak di sembelih cara Islam. then suddenly our guide came to me and said 'jangan ragu2 makan ayam ini, saya muslim, saya kahwin dengan melayu tapi isteri saya sudah meninggal dan saya balik ke kampung ini sebab mau menjaga tanah pusaka kami' soo, i was not the only muslim there.

on the evening we had our informal transect walk around the living area. later that day, we had our discussion to plan what to do on the next day, task delegation and recap from what we have learn. i can say that i was a lil bit "cultural shocked" with how the orang putih conduct their work. they are so serious and overall we had such long hours spent just on the discussion. making decision is.. i say.. it is hard for them, its complicated. it is so different from how we usually make our decisions. it is almost impossible to reach a consensus. one time, two of our teammates were almost fight with each other because of the opposite opinions. but, overall, i am so glad with my teammates at least we were having less of drama like some groups.

we included both social and natural science methods to conduct this study, but we had exclude the questionnaire approach for this study. tbh i still a bit blur with what the hell actually we were doing. haha. most of the time, my job is a note-taker since they said i was good at it because i can listen to iban language and i can directly jot the info without waiting for the translator to translate from iban to english. almost everyday we went into the forest/crop fields *which i like*, even it was tiring. on our last night there, we had a little farewell party, invited the folks to come over, they had some drinks, the iban introduced their liquor to the orang putih and then the orang putih also have brought theirs, we play some games, we dance, and had a little feast. it was fun :')

even though during the trip i said i cannot wait to go home, but on our last day before we leave the kampung, i was reluctant to accept the fact that we're done, especially when seeing the aunty2 menangis when we were saying goodbye to them. 'datai baru' they said T.T

oh..i miss the moments already