Monday, November 16, 2009

Nostalgic Place by the River

Most probably not many can one find this type of building in not many years to come. Actually this type of dwellings are disappearing ('ditelan zaman', so to speak)in no time. In the past this particular one was used by my great grandparents to store 'ripo'(grinded sago logs) before it was processed to extract sgao flour in the traditional way termed as 'Mengenyak'. I bet not many people nowadays rememeber the term notably amongst the young Melanaus whose ancestors used to carry out such activity for their livelyhood.

On the other portion of the building, placed the 'Belanga' where sago pellets were produced, again by tradtional way and unique to the Melanau community. The 'Belanga' is actually an oven-like piece of work/place made up of dried clay. This is also the place where the Melanau biscuits-'Tebaloi' were/are baked.

Sooner or later this place will be just the memory of the thing in the past as less and less of our present generation engage in the above-mentioned activities.
However, it is not too late to capture this type of scenery if one travels down the river along Oya River(esp from Kpg. Medong,Kekan, Dalat, Tanam, etc), in Sarawak.