SUNDUNG DO PITONGKIADAN ITI NOKORUOL DO GINAWO, NGA ABANTALAN NOPO DOT KOPOSIONKU...:)

MY ULTIMATE DREAM IS TO SET MY FOOT ON EVERY COUNTRY ON PLANET EARTH; TO LEARN THEIR LANGUAGE AND CULTURE, TO APPRECIATE THE BEAUTY OF NATURE IN DIFFERENT PARTS OF THE SAME BIOSPHERE..:)

Thursday, December 11, 2014

Part Two: The Journey Continues: I Fell in Love with the KADUS culture

My exposure to their culture intensified as I began to mix around with more and more KadazanDusun friends after I became a member of the Catholic Students’ Society and ultimately I lived my life with them under one roof for almost four years. I have to admit that the Sabahan Christians, unlike their Sarawakian counterparts, were very staunch and dedicated believers who had strong ties with each other and also with the local church authority. They were so vocal in expressing their ideas and the bond between them reached an exceptional level. I really saluted their kinship spirit!

The Nunuk Ragang Monument near Ranau, Sabah. 
As a matter of fact, I learned a lot from them; from the “sumazau/sumayau” dance, traditional food and beverages such as “tapai”, ‘tuhau’, ‘bambangan’, ‘lihing’, ‘bahar’ and more. Hahaha…don’t ask me if I ever tried any of the listed above…you won’t be able to say “NO” to any of the Sabahans if they offered you a glass of “tapai” for you to take a sip. It was still far from mastering the language itself but anyway, a good introduction. Something is better than nothing, isn’t it?? Sabahans are definitely Sarawakians best pal since the dawn of Malaysian formation, so it is not a strange thing to find them working closely to each other. It is a very common thing, especially in the Peninsular where these two races become minuscule. Moreover, both races can be found in quite a large number in industrial cities where most of them earn their living by working in the factories. In fact, they are much open-minded and their religious toleration is an exceptional example to their Peninsular counterparts. It is not a new thing if you find a Dusun family that consists of both Christian and Muslim members living under one roof. Well, this is truly the spirit of unity practiced long before we were introduced to the 1Malaysia concept.
The beautiful belles  from four of the many KadazanDusun tribes in Sabah
I was explained by one of my housemates the reason
why they would prefer to speak in Sabahan Malay 
instead of their native KadazanDusun language. One of 
the reasons was because they were so used to be
that way. It was not only practiced in their family 
but also in their community; despite the absence of any other non-KadazanDusun tribes in their area. The older generation is very fluent but when it comes to the younger ones, the problems started to arise. They started to mix around with other races as they started to leave their homeland to the greener pastures. They started to interact in Malay and as a result, the younger generation forgot their own roots and becoming assimilated with the urban environment. This is not something strange since all cultures around the world are suffering the same fate despite with a different degree.

The descendants of the Nunuk Ragang in their trademark costume
I shared with my housemates that the scenario won’t happen to the Ibans since the inability to speak in our native language was considered as a humiliation and definitely the ones who will be blamed first are their parents. Yes, it is true that there are a small number of educated Ibans who are suffering from inferiority complex; acknowledging that the Western culture is superior to their own and as they are afraid to expose themselves as coming from a race that is considered by the former as “uncivilized, barbaric and living their lives like cavemen”. Far from truth, the Ibans are one of the well-studied people by the Westerners; from the Rajah Brooke’s era where the Christian missionaries paved their way to spread the message of God’s salvation to the savage tribes of Sarawak to late 1960’s right before the formation of Malaysian Federation. Together with the other tribes that experienced the same encounters with the British colonials such as the Zulus and Maoris, the Iban culture is not something new to the eye of the Commonwealth countries since numerous records and studies had been carried out by both local and foreign professionals. 

(The story doesn't here, though....see you again in my next entry!)

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