Sg. Teku Tales : Our Family Visiting a Longhouse

 After my father passed away suddenly many of his Iban and Malay friends continued to be our family friends. They and their families would drop by our wooden house in Brooke Drive, very often bringing a gift of some food, like bananas, yams and even fish they caught. We were very touched by the trickle of free gifts. God was provident.

One of the gifts we especially appreciated was fresh bamboo shoots from Suan who lived with his family in the short longhouse in Sg. Teku. He was my father's quarry foreman and often times body guard whenever my father had to collect dynamite from the Police Station in Sibu.

We would always remember him cycling from Sg. Teku carrying two lengths bamboo poles on his shoulders all the way to Sibu. They must have been 10 or more feet long. After delivering the bamboo poles (for our clothes drying) he cut the grass. 

He was our faithful gardener for a few years too. We liked the way he cut our bamboo hedges, using the long straight blade and I can still hear the sharp noises the blade made with the bamboo. Shuk, shuk, shuk.........In many of the sword fighting movies later in my life, I heard the same sounds.

(photo by Han Sen, Sibu)


One Gawai he invited the family for the first time to visit. It was probably he felt good about himself getting a job with a company and his wife was doing well with their pepper garden. We arranged for a special Sg. Teku taxi to take us to his longhouse, as we did not have a car then.

We all sat on their new mat on the floor and the family happily shared food with us and the taxi driver who was their friend. There were cakes,and cooked food. We were treated very well as we were given spoons while others ate with their hands in the traditional manner.

A special dish was offered to my mother and she was delighted. Thinking that it was fresh bamboo shoots, my mother took a mouthful.

To her horror it was sour! But she swallowed the food anyway, almost choking herself.

Later my mother graciously whispered to me, "Did you try the bamboo shoot? It looked a bit off? Rotten?"

I was sure my mother was terrified by the taste, as she was so delicate in the way she ate her food.

My dear mother was so polite. She had her first bit of the famous Iban Kasam Tebu, or fermented bamboo shoot.

Many years later whenever she visited us she would warn us not to serve the soured bamboo shoots. My mother did have an aversion for sourness all her life!