Welcome to the Longhouse

This post is about the week I stayed with members of the Iban tribe in a longhouse in the jungle of Sabah, Malaysian Borneo.

A longhouse is a traditional communal dwelling. This one was, for the holidays at least, home to hundreds of members of the same family. It’s essentially a terrace of individual households, complete with a shared gangway at one end. It was made entirely of wood.

I feel fortunate and genuinely privileged to have been invited there to celebrate Gawei (the rice harvest festival) and the wedding of my British-Iban friend Caron’s brother Lionel.

It was a very unique and authentic experience.

It says a lot that the two phrases I remember in the local Iban language are white boy ‘Orang Pitu’ and finish your drink ‘nirup abiss.’

It was a laugh-a-minute booze-a-thon.

Every night turned into kind of party that 15-year-olds throw when their parents are on holiday. Minus the snogging.

I had a brilliant time!

The first night, I presented my gifts of two carrot cakes I’d baked plus a bottle of Nando’s extra-hot peri peri sauce. We joined the men assembled around the barbeque  One beer turned into several and we were offered shots of home brewed hooch. Since it’s rude to turn down an offer from your hosts, we indulged. Repeatedly.

In the early hours of the morning I found myself a sleeping spot in the living room. Mattresses covered almost every floorboard and everyone from grandmas to children bedded down together, like a giant sleepover.

I was roused at 7am, in a state between still drunk and hungover, to witness the men of the tribe slaughter and butcher a pig for the day’s Gawei feast. They put it in a bag and sliced off its head. It was surreal but as humane as possible in the circumstances. 

A number of chickens and ducks were separated from their bonces, too.

It was first time I’d seen animals killed in real life. But I’d long wanted to, to see how I’d react.

I didn’t puke.

I have to give a comedy legend award to the guy who greeted us all with warm handshakes and then proceeded to shake the trotter of the now-headless pig.

The Gawei buffet meal was spectacular and a cracking party followed.

Guests (us) were invited to start at one end of the long house and make their way to the other end, stopping along the way at each household to be warmly welcomed, offered beer, whiskey and gallons of locally brewed rice wine.

Since there was no concept of mixers, all drinks are taken as shots. It didn’t take long before I reached the level of drunk known as ‘Matt Timberlake’ and I danced into the wee hours.

The Wedding was a wonderful night.

The bride, groom and groom’s sisters looked incredible in their traditional outfits. These made my own shirt-tie ensemble seem tame.

I was introduced to such a huge number of family members that it was no surprise when the wooden living room floor gave way as more than 50 relatives assembled for a photo.

As soon as it was clear no one had been hurt, the situation was hilarious!

During the wedding ceremony, the head man of the longhouse waved a chicken around to bless the marriage before the couple paraded in front of the guests. Then followed speeches, a fabulous feast and… you guessed it, a huge party of drinking and dancing!

If I was nervous that as a friend of a friend I would be surplus to requirements, I needn’t be. I was made to feel welcome and became part of the celebration and I handed out drinks to guests. I was assigned Chili vodka.

Tradition dictates that anyone who accepts a drink can also insist that the pourer (me) should also have one. I lost count at ten shots.

Prior to the British occupation of Borneo, the Iban tribe were headhunters. The practice died out in the late 1800s. I was proudly shown centuries-old trophy skulls. Between this longhouse and another I visited for lunch one day, I saw thirty of the grisly relics.

My own tradition of losing football matches on this trip continued as the Iban lads twice defeated England in games played on metre-long grass.

On our penultimate day, we bought colouring books, balloon animals and transfer tattoos for the kids. I think they had as much fun as us.

We also took one of the local lads with us as we sneaked out for a KFC. He was far more interested in the Superman watch that came with his meal than the Colonel’s chicken.

But with the food on offer at home, who could blame him?

Every day the tribe’s women prepared three wonderful home cooked buffet meals. The barbecuing was left to the men. Sometimes it was genuinely better not to know what you were eating but some dishes on offer included pig guts and pineapple (very tasty), jellyfish (slimy but surprisingly tasty) and boiled monkey (not tasty at all).

In between the heady booze-clouds, it’s hard to distinguish exactly what is memory and what is fantasy:

Did a middle aged man who spoke no English really have a tattoo of the words DISCO and SEX etched on his arm?

Did a man really liven up a bowl of bitter winter melon with a packet of Double Dip sherbert?

Was one of the Iban lads really named McAllister after the baldy Scotland international midfielder Gary?

Were blades really attached to the feet of fighting cocks?

Did I really see a monkey that been shot in the head with a homemade gun?

Did we really cook a peri-peri pig head?

It was that kind of a week.

All I can say is thanks for invite, thanks for the hospitality and thanks for the memories.