I was assigned to Sina Christina and aunty Dayang. On our first day of work, we dropped by Sina Supang's house before going to aunty Dayang's house. I was supposed to go to Dayang's house alone but my friend Jess joined along because her Tepu' said she was busy.
Left: Jessica Yew (Aping), centre: aunty Dayang, Right (Jonathan)
My day with aunty Dayang was a great. Firstly, she explained to Jess and I about her house renovations to make it into a homestay. Later, she invited the both of us to pluck pineapples and jungle vegetables. While she was driving to the farm, she gave me my Kelabit name, Lian which means gentleman and gave Jess the name Aping which means last and pampered child. Aunty Dayang taught us how to harvest pineapple and pluck jungle vegetables while we were with her. It was also an achievement on that day because I managed to introduce the word "selfie" to aunty Dayang!
Daniel and Jeremy joined the fun at aunty Dayang's house later on. Jess challenged Daniel and Jeremy to eat fried wood worms that was made by aunty Dayang. The challenge was accepted by these two gentleman and they challenged each other to a game of rock, paper, scissors and whoever scored the first best two out of three get to eat those worms. Jeremy won the challenge and got his share of wood worms. Later, Daniel tried some worms too followed by myself.
Wood worms don't taste that bad - the body part of the worms taste like jungle vegetables and the head part had a bit of a bitter taste. Aunty Dayang said that those worms are hard to get as the type of woods the worms grow up in can only be found in about every 1 acre of land. These worms are also expensive and can cost up to RM100 per kg because it has traditional value due to the 'hempedu' (gallbladder) inside the worms.
Aunty Dayang is 51 years old but trust me, she looks way younger than this! She is married and she has two children, a boy and a girl. She used to work for Shell but now she is currently building her own homestay in Arur Dalan. Actually, she could have stayed in Miri but returned to her hometown, Bario for some reasons. Since she is a very influential person in the village, one of her regular routines would be having meetings with other people and agencies.
One of the main reasons I like her is, firstly because she is motherly, friendly, smiley, easy to talk with and she is an independent woman. She is really multi-talented as she is good at cooking, photography, sewing, choosing jungle vegetables, communicating and she is fluent in English. She is an intelligent woman and she was always a role model in both her school and sewing class. Next, I respect her persistency, effort and sacrifices that she puts in to build a homestay. Hopefully her homestay would be a success in the future. Lastly, I admire her thrill for challenges, she said that usually most people would be intimidated by people with good English but she is happy to speak and learn from them.
Delicious food prepared by aunty Dayang.
I was curious so I asked aunty Dayang how she could speak fluent English. She said that she was the last batch to learn English in her school before the medium of instruction completely changed from English to Bahasa Malaysia. I realised how detrimental the impact of the change was on the local people of Bario and I did not view it as an issue in town until that very day. Most of the locals in Bario do not know how to speak English and therefore it is difficult for them to communicate with outsiders. I felt that aunty Dayang was really fortunate to learn English in school.
Aunty Dayang was like a second mother to me. She was the first person in Bario that I had a good long conversation with but sadly the last person I said goodbye to. If I were to visit Bario again it would largely be because of aunty Dayang.
My last photo with aunty Dayang at the airport before leaving Bario.
great selfies, but gotta love the foods on a big leaf!
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