SHELTER


The longhouse is the preferred lodging of the Iban people, an entire village under one roof. The whole thing sits high on stilts and often pigs and chickens slug it out underneath for territory. Stairs lead up to a long veranda where chilies, rice, cocoa on other produce might be drying in the sun on rattan mats. Through doors on the veranda a long common hall opens up with many doors lining the back wall. Each door belongs to a separate family and opens first to a living room, then to the kitchen and bathroom. Everything is separated only by thin wooden walls. Each family is somehow related to the longhouse Tuai Rumah or headman. When a daughter is married the husband will move from his longhouse into his new wife's. The longhouse members will pool their resources and efforts to build an extension to house the newlyweds and their future offspring. Some longhouses have close to a hundres rooms stretched out under the common roof. Communal events and celebrations take place in the common hall. The communal and family atmosphere of the longhouse means children always have others to play with and an adult or two watching out for them.


FOOD

Members of the longhouse will own their own section of land to farm or livestock to raise. They trade with and help each other to keep costs low. A sister will trade a piglet to a brother for some fish to stock her pond with. A child will help her aunt cook and clean while her parents work together to harvest the pepper crop. Each day, someone from the family brings vegetables back from the farm to eat for dinner. These vegetables are supplemented with produce from a local market if the longhouse is close to a town or village. The majority of ingredients, if not all, can be traced to the farm of a family member or friend.

The staple crop of the Iban people is padi or rice. They grow many different varieties of padi but the two main categories are wet padi and hill padi. Wet padi is grown in soggy mud flats while hill padi can be grown dry and on the slope of a hill as the name implies. Traditionally rice would be ground and tossed by hand to separate the husks.

DANCE

The parents and elders of the longhouse community teach younger Iban the traditional dance of the headhunter.



MUSIC

There is no dancing without music of the gongs.