Tough indigenous men of Long Seridan came together recently to repair a broken bridge that links their longhouse to the outside world by land.
The bridge was cut off by a timber company operating in the area last April on the pretext of preventing thefts in a timber camp near the longhouse.
After months of waiting for the bridge to be repaired by the timber company on humanitarian grounds, the longhouse community leaders called their young men working in the urban centres like Miri, Bintulu and Kuching to come back to repair the bridge.
The reason being at the end of this year before Christmas there is going to be a big Kelabit naming ceremony in the longhouse. Due to this significant traditional event in the culture of the tribal Kelabit clan, there are expected to be a big influx of not only their own people going back to witness the event, but a lot of outsiders especially tourists are expected to make a bee line for Long Seridan.
Although there is a rural air service to the longhouse, the flight frequencies are not expected to be able to ferry all the people who plan to go back for the occasion.
Hence, the urgency of repairing the broken bridge in order to facilitate a smooth flow of traffic back to the longhouse for the traditional event and also for Christmas at home.
According to the team leader Joseph Maran, three 4WD vehicles from Miri with scores of men took part in the gotong-royong to help their community at home.
“We used about 30 pieces of logs to repair the bridge,” said Joseph.
He wished to thank all those who volunteered to take the time off to do a tough job for their community.
“It is this spirit of self-reliant that is commendable among the men of Long Seridan. It taught us that if there's a will, there's a way. Initially, we were discouraged after failing to get any positive response to get the bridge repaired but we decided to do something ourselves” said Joseph.ENDS.
Caption: BUILDING BRIDGES: Tough men of Long Seridan at the bridge. Joseph is the one holding the chain saw.
