Along blowpipe, traditional tattoo, controlling braiding, canoe building and the custom of wearing huge clusters of metal earrings to elongate earlobes, the longhouse is now beginning to disappear.
I hoped the boatman knew where he was going. Use of mangrove trees, mud banks, stumps, and other natural features such as markers, he sailed with the same confidence as I walk to the local supermarket on Bali. It was comforting because I could never find my way here
I had only one week -., From start to finish - to see a longhouse. Most people indigenous Dayak Kalimantan, almost half of the territory's population, still live inland along the banks of rivers and tributaries.
I took a longbot (of longboat) Samarinda Mahakam River in East Kalimantan with more than just the usual baggage. I am also overwhelmed by too many preconceptions.
Remember, there was not a lack of preparation, which turned to have been the fun part. I started my course of anti-malarial pills a week before. As there are no banks or moneychangers inside, I had gathered rupiah packets in small denominations. A traveler told me that the head of a longhouse appreciate gifts like sunglasses, western shirts, coffee, cigarettes, sugar, salt, and flashlight batteries. Pencils, pens and notebooks are more with the children.
The longboat is specially designed to travel the river, decorated with painted bloodshot eyes to guide us safely through treacherous waters. During heavy rains, the river could double in size within hours. We tried to negotiate several branches of the river to reach longhouses intact, but turned back because of strong currents
The skies were darkening. Accelerated boatman. Beyond Tanjung Isui, my heart quickened as we rounded a bend and saw my first longhouse working in the village Mancong. We pulled ashore; shaking our boat in, among others, nestled like pick-up sticks along the dike. I scurried the steep, muddy road and villagers led me to an old cottage next to a court of posts and carved wooden statues. Although it has been known as a "tourist longhouse," it looked like the real thing to me.
As a courtesy, I remove my shoes, climbed the ladder and entered. Looking around me, it was obvious that the spirit of cooperation between parents and between members of longhouses was very close. While their parents were away in the fields and gardens, old women were in fact children and housework. Old men sitting around gossiping, smoking, repairing fishing instruments and agriculture. Children played on the long veranda of the building and in the shallow waters of the river.
Collaborative Habitation
The most prominent feature of the Dayak society longhouses ( lamin ) are roof apex structures that can reach up 150 meters long and 9-18 meters wide. Several longhouses, each with 50 or more families and less than 0 doors, can be a Dayak village. The villagers, working together, can build a new one within a week. Because of the tropical rapid decomposition, usually laminated do not last more than 15 years.
Most longhouses are high one to three meters above the ground on wooden stilts, which are easier to replace than rotten planks. kitchen scraps are pushed through the floor to feed pigs and chickens foraging below. The air flow below the structure reduces the vermin and prevent dry rot. Stilt building also provides protection against snakes, floods and - in ancient times -. enemies
A covered veranda, common living space, runs the entire length of the building, usually face the river. This space is used for loafing, child custody, visiting, repair instruments, and hanging fish traps, boat paddles, weapons and other items of daily use. Clothes are hung out to dry here.
A narrow door longhouse facing east, in honor of the sunrise and its association with life. Interior partitions separate family groups; distant relatives can live on the other side of the building. floorboards bounced and slapped that people traveled and worked. A mezzanine is used
for storing rice, baskets, woven rugs batteries, fishing nets and firewood.
It was raining now. I staked out a place on a mat in a corner of the porch. The new arrivals were brought tea and biscuits on hot-sweet. I could see up into the rafters blackened some old baskets. I imagined they contained skulls - totemic objects still revered, thought it was unlikely. The old skulls were turned into authorities a long time.
At night, dinner was served, the usual Indonesian fare omelets, nasi goreng , curry soup and banana fritters. Dutifully, silently, a long line of children, no more than six or seven years, carried the pots, bowls and plates with a large woven mat. They cleared the dishes after dinner away everything as efficiently and silently.
Around midnight, the speech calmed the audible barely whispers. I could hear rough, flexible scales being pulled up, keeping the property free of animals, insects and other intruders. The air was heavy with a fruitful door of a rainforest and mosquito coils acrid smoking invisibly. Completely shrouded in darkness, the screams and the sound of cicadas and other insects was deafening. In the enormous structure, the only sound was the interior of the soft breathing of sleeping bodies around me.
I felt safe, as if sealed away in a cocoon.
What will be lost when the longhouses go? A whole way of life. In both nights creaky old farmhouse, I knew that nothing could replace the sense of community you feel inside of one. The whole building seemed to expand and contract as if one with the forest, inseparable part of nature. This is a quality that a row of modern cement bunkers with corrugated iron roofs can never reproduce.
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