Thursday, August 27, 2009

2nd Day Balingian Mission

On the second day, early in the morning, I got up and went to the garden to see for myself the lifestyle of our Iban friend.
I noticed this flying fox on the fishing string not understanding why it was there. On closer look, I realised that it was trapped... the line is full of fishing hooks (you can see one hook on the far right)! The flying fox went there in the hope of having a rambutan meal and ended up being a meal to someone else.
Our host, Frankie, showed me around... by the way, he speaks English.
.. his padi drying hut.
This is how it looks like inside. The roof can be opened to allow sunlight to get through. I am very familiar with this thing. The padi is poured on the floor, spread out, and the roof is open so that sunlight gets in. When rain or evening came, the roof is closed back... manually!
My other team members got ready and have our morning devotion led by Ming Chu. I was the first one to get up and has about one hour of "free" time to walk around the compound and garden.
Our host cooked for us a mee hoon meal + some biscuts. I was supposed to cook but when I got up, they had already started cooking. Lucky me!
After breakfast, I asked our host to show us around, especially his store house and noticed this huge container used to store padi.
A member asked... how does this padi become rice? Well, it has to go through a rice milling machine to have the husk and rice separated. Or, it can be pounded in a special vessel for the husk to be removed.
This is how sago tree looks like. It looks like coconut tree.

1 comment:

MCM said...

God Bless u all...