Sarawakian Local Delights : Lemang

Christmas Nostalgia

Each Christmas I would remember how my former maid and cleaning lady saved our Christmas once in the early 2000's when we first moved to Miri. Our faithful baby sitter had gone away to get married and we had to make do with an Iban lady who converted to Islam. She worked for us three mornings a week to do just the cleaning and laundry. She was with us for three years until she got a permanent job with a statutory body.

rich and fragrant lemang cut into lovely slices.

The first Christmas she was with us, she cleaned the house as usual and left to tend to her stall in the kampong with her son. She told us that she had to make more cakes for her customers.  In fact she took off after 2 hours of work and we did not mind.

We were busy trying to put together a Christmas event at home and we seemed to have endless problems at hand. With school going to open in a few days' time, as a mother I had not gotten everything done since I was teaching the holiday courses at the college. Fees had to be paid, kids had to have new shoes,and even bags had to be bought. Even though I had a car, I felt that I only had 2 hands and two legs. Like the characters of The Chrysalids I was wishing I had two more hands and two more legs.

 My head was spinning already by Christmas eve.

It was a good thing we only had two invited guests for our dinner. The menu was set as we had mee hoon to take the place of rice. Then suddenly two of the family members  and the two visitors looked at the turkey, mashed potatoes and salad and expressed their desire for rice to go with the curried chicken. How was I going to prepare rice in an instant? Another visitor suddenly arrived after we said our grace thanking God for His provisions. My family was always prepared for unexpected guests.

As we took our first bite of the turkey, and dug into our mashed potatoes, we were thinking it would be nice to have some lemang or ketupat. But any way one my daughters was happy that it was quite a good western dinner.

All of a sudden, there was a knock at the door, so  I thought that it would be another unexpected guest. And there standing in front of us was our loyal maid with a plastic bag in her hand. She had walked all the way from her kampong just to bring us the lemang she made (she and her children made lemang for special occasions like Raya or Gawai for sale). She had just closed her stall and thought of us. And we never expected a gift from her because she was such a busy person.

God had blessed us in a special way. The lemang was more than enough for all of us. In fact, we had enough for the next day. May God bless Minah and her family always.