The Long Banga STOLport with low-lying mist shrouding the mountain in the background.
IF you sit atop a small hill, overlooking the Long Banga STOLport on a Monday morning to catch the sunrise, don’t be surprised if you get more than you bargained for.
Little by little as daylight breaks, you will see couples walking together from the village in two specific directions – north and west of the STOLport.
Having arrived on a Saturday and met most of these people in church on Sunday, I couldn’t have been happier that they had waved to me as if I were a great friend – almost a relative.
These farmers were on their way to work gotong-royong style at their farms.
Like most remote villagers of Sarawak, the Long Banga folk – mostly Kenyahs and Sabans – live simple, honest lives. Numbering fewer than 400, they face more challenges than their town brothers and sisters. And one of these challenges is paying their electricity bills – on a Sunday!
Rumie Mohamad Muli from Sarawak Energy Berhad (SEB), told thesundaypost, “The people here have requested us to set up a counter on a Sunday for them to settle their electricity bills.
“So we fly in on Saturday by Twin Otter to set up the counter at the guest quarters at the Sarawak Energy compound. Most of the people will come to pay their bills after church.
“Some pay on Saturday and Monday while some don’t have to pay if they receive bills below RM20. Several have big bills like over RM200.”
Local resident, Madam Anye, was rather apprehensive about her electricity bills.
“I worry about my big bills. If I have to pay more than RM100, I have first to sell rice and vegetables even in Miri. We don’t pay our bills every month. We wait until we have enough cash. A freezer costs RM150 in transport charges alone from Miri and mineral water costs RM10 extra.
“Everyone likes the cold water from the fridge, of course. It’s not affordable to drink an RM3 tin of cola.”
Long Banga has electricity supply from the mini hydro-dam and the generator set installed by SEB.
One could imagine how warmly welcomed relatives and tourists would be if they flew in from Miri with a dozen cans of a soft drink or three trays of fresh eggs as gifts.
Rice growing
“We women go with our husbands to do the sowing or nugal. The men would dig a hole in the soil with a big traditional nugal stick and women would throw the seeds in,” fellow local Ludia Apoi said as she led me down the secondary forest path to the rice fields.
Women sow seeds on a hillslope.
“Using gotong-royong, the group will take two weeks to cover all the farms. Soon, we will see green padi growing on the bare brown hill slopes.”
Gotong-royong is taken very seriously by the villagers. When a woman falls sick, she will ask a female family member to take her place because every family must have a couple of members in the work party.
Each day, the group is able to sow seeds at two or three farms, depending on the size.
The farm owner would happily do the honour of providing the workers with a meal – breakfast or lunch – and they eat as a happy group.
Together with Ludia, I joined the gotong-royong and enjoyed an extremely delicious thick soup of white gourd cooked with fried baby ikan semah.
This special dish was hot from an open fire. Leaf-wrapped rice, glutinous and non-glutinous rice, nuba laya, made from rice and yam, and special sambal were served by the hosts to show their generosity and appreciation.
MASwings supervisor at the Long Banga STOLport, Felicia Osman, who took part in the gotong royong, explained, “When our group have finished with this small farm, we move to the next one. We usually waste no time after the meal. If the new session ends about 3pm, we can make it to another farm where we will be given a meal again. After that, we can call it a day.
“We bring our own rice but the hosting couple will also provide some rice, some cola, biscuits and other side dishes. This is actually a kind of barter trading. We don’t have cash to employ any worker to do the work.”
Long Banga rice is a small grain. Black rice is also grown. The Adang and Kanowit varieties are the favourites. They also have names like Beras Roti, which is rather special.
Medical services
Long Banga is served by a government clinic, built in 1986, with three nurses and three medical assistants who provide basic family planning, malaria treatment and pre- and post-natal services. For emergencies, a helicopter can be called in and will reach Miri within the hour.
The clinic serves six other nearby villages. Doctors from Miri visit every month. Some of the known emergency cases here have been related to childbirth. Most of the women are happy with the services provided.
Susan Anye, an agriculture college student in Mukah, is happy her relatives have stayed healthy and strong.
Her elderly relatives can still walk to church on Sunday and to their farms every day. Come rain or shine, some of her grand-aunties will still go and work at their farms, half an hour away on foot.
Vegetables
“Foraging for vegetables is an almost daily activity. We can look for paku uban, midin, paku (usually by the riverside) and other forest fruits and vegetables. The men fish and hunt besides tilling the land with us,” said Ludia.
Saban farms yield terung, white, green, red chillies, cangkuk manis, sawi, gourds and pumpkins. Lemongrass, leaves for wrapping rice and fish, and bamboo are also grown.
A woman places her payment into a tin after buying vegetables from an unmanned stall.
July and August usually see a bumper harvest of bamboo shoots.
“We women have to be strong and be the pillars of our society if and when our men have to work elsewhere to earn good income,” said Ludia, whose husband works in Abu Dhabi.
Animals and tamu
Poultry, pigs, goats and even buffaloes are reared in Long Banga. Every family would keep a few pigs.
There is only one mini tamu – which is unmanned. Each bundle of vegetables has a price tag. The sellers will leave a tin for the buyers to put the payment in.
Abang’s fish pond, teeming with ikan keli and semah.
Although payment is unsupervised, the sellers will always get their money. It’s a system based on trust and has worked very well in rural Sarawak, especially Long Banga.
The hunting season usually coincides with the fruiting season. But it’s not easy to fix the hunting season nowadays as both wild and garden fruit trees seem to not have any clear-cut fruiting season due to global warming.
Deer, wild boars, snakes, monkeys, wild cats and civets used to be plentiful as well but now they are getting rarer due to logging.
Another local Suling Anye said she and her family were looking forward to a good harvest from their fish ponds teeming with ikan keli.
Her husband Abang Anye called the ikan keli “the original population” as the native fish were brought in from the small stream flowing into their fish pond.
He has also released into the ponds ikan semah fry netted from Sungai Banga.
Transportation
Long Banga is an enclosed valley drained by two rivers – the Banga and the Balong – which converge to form one river flowing into the Baram.
Before the logging operations in 1996, everyone had to walk two days to Lio Mato with an overnight stay at Metapa. The subsequent journey from Lio Mato to Marudi would take two more days.
According to a blogger, the return trip to Lio Mato and Marudi would require five drums of benzene for twin 30hp outboard engines.
Hence, only the well-to-do could afford such a trip, albeit making sure, at the same time, there were 10 persons to share the costs.
The Borneo Evangelical Mission helped build the first airstrip in the area in the 1950s for their Cessna planes. During the Confrontation, the airstrip was improved. A Skyvan could be hired for RM5,000 in the 1970s.
Since 1997, a timber road has been in commission, enabling the Sabans to travel to Miri in eight to 10 hours.
Life for the Long Banga women has become increasingly easier with better transport. Many of the young women have learnt to ride motorbikes.
A Chinese trader is the sole supplier of the machines in Long Banga and his supermarket is well-stocked with foodstuff and other daily necessities. But a tin of cola still costs RM3.
Education
Rela captain William Kalang, an army interpreter during the Confrontation in 1963, told thesundaypost it was only after peace had returned in 1969 that he and a few friends started a primary school in Long Banga. The school was taken over by the government in 1972.
Pupils who passed Primary 6 had to attend secondary school in Bario in the 1970s. They had to walk two days to get there and could only see their parents once a year.
These well-educated girls are the future of Long Banga.
Now, the secondary school students can choose to study in Bario, Miri, Marudi and elsewhere. They can even fly to their destinations.
Today, the Long Banga primary school has about 130 students and provides full board to those with the right documentation.
Unfortunately, there are still many children – and adults – who do not have birth certificates and identity cards and could not get an education as a result.
One mother, who wished to remain anonymous, said some of her relatives without identity cards had never been to school.
“Those of us with the right documentation managed to finish Primary 6. As for our children now, after Primary 6, they can go to Marudi for secondary education.
“Today, a few of our Saban girls are taking up law, engineering, agriculture and medicine. This is really good – it gives us mothers lots of hope,” she added.
Water supply
Although Long Banga has officially been provided with piped water, water is now sourced directly to homes from the rivers.
The water can be brown during torrential rain. On dry days, adults have to carry water home after bathing in the rivers around the village.
Some civil servants working here buy bottled mineral water from Miri for their children – plus an extra RM10 for land transportation.
A box of mineral water sold in the shops can cost up to RM20 – for the bigger bottles. Some families use as many as six boxes per week due, in part, to some of their children having sensitive skin with low tolerance for the untreated river water.
The future
The people of Long Banga are looking forward to a brighter future.
The women especially are already experiencing a better life in their lovely green valley. They now have washing machines, computers and handphones. It is good that they can communicate with their loved ones overseas.
Suling said she is happy the Long Banga girls are home on holidays to help with the sowing but soon several will “leave to continue their college studies and God willing, be somebody someday”.