DAY 7-8 Rumah Panjang Ulu Akup
Woke up at 5am in the morning and departed from SHALOM at 6am. At the last minute, one of the participants could not go due to personal problems =( Anyway, we went by car and we reached Pangkalan(the boat place) at about 10am. Along the way, we stopped at Lachau for a break.
We had our lunch at Pangkalan. After that, we were separated into our own teams(Team A and Team B) and got into the boats. The boat ride was seriously cool and awesome!!! I will let the pictures do the talking later;-) One thing we were afraid was that all of us were not wearing any life jackets. Thank God there was no crocodile along the river. The boat ride took about 1hour++. My leg was darn cramped by the time we reached there>_< This was because we have to sit in one position and not moved throughout the boat ride.
We(My team) were greeted by the Pastor for the RP(Rumah Panjang) and some of the RP people. And so our long walk/hike to the first RP begins! Bishop Peter had warned us earlier before this is going to be long walk. And he jokingly said we might take 4 hours to reach the RP. I thought: Great...(=.=) This was my first time going jungle-trekking with a 8kg load of bag behind my back and it's seriously a torturing journey. We made good progress until we reached a stream. Then the guide shouted:" Tiga-puluh satu lagi!" All of us except Bishop Peter couldn't believe our ears. That means we have to wade through another 31 streams!
We took about 3 hours 40 mins before we finally reached the RP. Bishop Peter congratulate us that we made it within 4 hours. Lol...I was just glad we reached and I got a blister on my left foot =( When we were walking, it reminded me of Jesus who carried the burden of the cross as he went to Calvary. Thank you Jesus^^ All of us were very tired and we rested at the stream just beside the church. 15 mins later, we heard the sound of 'kompang'. It was the tuai rumah and several elders who came to greet us. Peter told us this is too good for us "missionaries" because they welcomed us like YB.
Hearing that, all of us immediately put off our tired face and followed them into the RP. Two of the elders perform the 'ngajat' for us and we circled the RP twice! When we sat down, they served us tea. I cant believe my eyes when they served the amount of food before us. There were so much food and they served us different kinds of drinks too. I remembered I drank like 6 cups!
After tea, we went for a bath at the river. It was my first time bathing in a river. And the river is clean unlike the rivers in Peninsular M'sia. After a good dinner, we went to the church for worship. That night we din't do much but we introduced ourselves. Most of us spoke in our poor Iban language that we learned. The Iban language is quite similar to Bahasa.
One interesting thing happen though, Peter was not feeling very well and he asked for some medicine from Patrick, our team first-aid guy. The funny thing was Patrick gave him the wrong medicine(ubat sakit perut) and the side effect was drowsiness. Peter felt so sleepy that night that he went to sleep early. When Peter found out the next morning, he gave Pat a good 'lashing', much to our amusement XD
The next day, after breakfast we did gotong-royong. We cleaned the church, planted some flowers, and dug a drain. In the afternoon, we had lunch. Lunch was delicious! We had some of the Iban famous dishes like bamboo rice, wild boar, ayam pansoh(chicken that is cooked using firewood) and tempoyak(fermented durian). Later, we played with the children and the youths. At night, the RP was having the Ranyai to celebrate the closing of the Gawai Festival. A banana tree was planted in the middle of the RP and some items like soft drinks, dried food, and balloons were hanged with a string on the leaf branches. Then all of us have to 'ngajat' around the tree and then we have to cut down one of the items. After that, we have to put in an offering for the church. All of us danced in a funny way and the RP people laughed at us. Nevertheless, I enjoyed it^^
By the way, the RP has no electricity so they have to depend on generators and oil lamps. It's usually hot in the afternoon but at night it's quite cooling even without the fan. The people there are very friendly, they even provide some of us with mattresses and pillows. And here I thought we are going to sleep on the hard wooden floor. Ahh..such nice people =)
Photos:
A market at Lachau
Pangkalan
The boat ride
The 3 hour 40min journey
The small stream beside the church
The elders doing the 'ngajat'
This is just tea. Look at the amount of cups each person have to drink!
End Of Part II
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