life in a Bornean longhouse

Something i found surprising about the Annah Rais longhouse was the fact that there were even more cats here than Kuching, a place called "Cat" in bhasa Malaysia. Before i go on to tell you about the longhouse's customs i should probably point out that, despite the name, a longhouse is not a single house. In fact it is a series of regular size houses - generally made of bamboo and/or wood - which all sit on top of a raised platform also made of bamboo.
The day traditionally starts by everyone going out onto the pathway outside their house and smoking with what looks a lot like a bong, the smoke is piped through the water before being inhaled. Everyone goes and joins their friends for a smoke and it is a very sociable way to start the day - an alternative to meeting for brunch i suppose. The bamboo floors seem to be not perfectly constructed as there are little gaps between each shoot but this is part of the design so not only do you have somewhere to stick your bong pipe but it keeps the place clean. This works by waiting for any dirt to dry as it will then simply fall through to the forest floor below.
Having walked around the village we were told that it took a week to do a round trip to Kuching a hundred years ago, a trip that took us an hour and a half the day before. Then we were taken to the equivalent of the village hall where they kept the skulls that remained from their head hunting days which were just over a hundred years ago. Oh, sorry. Did i not mention that they used to be head hunters? It must have slipped my mind. Well that's all done now and to prove it they have exchanged peace trees with the neighbouring tribe. It struck me as strange that if a particular insect was heard from the forest - which it was the day before - then it meant that someone in the village would die in the coming days but the fact that their peace tree was clearly dying signified nothing. That would strike me as a bad omen but, you know, each to their own.
The hall itself was simple but it was interesting to hear stories of how young men had to stay in here as part of the passage to manhood and somewhat disturbing to find out that they used to have over a hundred heads here. Firstly disturbing to think of that many decapitated people but it was mainly the reason why there are only about ten left that was strange; they had been broken whilst being played with. Yes that's right played with. And the only reason they said that they couldn't now was because otherwise they would run out of skulls to show visitors. This lack of reverence for the dead seems even stranger in retrospect given something we found out about other orang asli tribe's methods of dealing with the dead, but that is another story, one i will tell another time.

If you fancy reading non-travel stuff i have a selection of poetry and discussions on gender, identity and eco-graffiti amongst other topics at alexleclez.blogspot.com