Cultural Meets - The Traditional Bamboo Hut

I came back from Murut’s village on the 5th of June and I have lots of things to share about my trip but I am not sure where to start. Okay let me start with why I went to that village. I went to this village because they have a program which was organized by the community of this village and one of local NGO. They called it “Pertemuan Budaya” or Cultural Meets. The participant was from all over Sabah from different zones/areas and different race and culture. They came all the way to join this three days programme.

During my stay in this village I observed a few things about the people there. Okay, let me share about the good things that I observed among them first. On the day I arrived I saw everyone is working so hard to finish their preparation for the events. However almost all of them are adults age around late 20s until late 50s. They use all the knowledge that they have to complete the traditional bamboo hut for each of the three villages that involved. They seem to be aware of each other tasks and the hard work are continues until 2 am in the morning. I like the way they prepare the hut because they didn’t use so much modern tech because all of the resources they get from the forest such as rattans for tied every piece of bamboo, bamboo for floor and wall, leaves (I am not quite sure the type of this leaves) for roof and small logs. The interesting part is that, even though they are from the same race and culture but for each village they have different ways of designing their hut. It was so amazing to see them work together to finish it up. Around 11pm the hosting village completes their hut and they celebrate it by gathering together in that hut and having a meal together. They have two “ayam kampung” for that night. It was really a wonderful thing to see them working as one family just to finish the tasks.

Okay, the not so good things to see is that, none of the teenage were helping the elders. Maybe this is their tradition where only experts or elders are doing tough works like this because they have the expertise. But the problem is the teenage will never learn to make this traditional hut from the elders if they are not trying to involve or participate. I will not comments further on this because as far as I can see, they are doing well but in future I still hope that the skills and knowledge will be pass down to the younger generations. However, I believe they have their own way on inherited their knowledge to their kids.

I think I just stop here first. Will share more after I get my photos from this visit. A few photos that I took shows the traditional bamboo hut that I mention above.