Then and now: A longhouse story in Beluru

JUST three minutes away from Beluru, an idyllic town along the Bakong River, is where a modern-looking longhouse with a Western name, Rumah Morgan, stands.

Named after its chieftain, Tuai Rumah Morgan Sanda, the Iban settlement was established sometime between the 1920s and World War II (in the 1940s).

It is a community of three separate longhouses, named Block A, B and C. According to the villagers, this arrangement is such a rarity nowadays as such settlements would often end up splitting due to disagreements, resulting in them having multiple headmen even within a singular longhouse.

In this aspect, Rumah Morgan has remained united as one – a testament to the strong bond among its residents and leaders.

Like most of rural communities in Sarawak, Rumah Morgan residents are self-employed, relying on the cultivation and sale of cash crops like oil palms on their own plots of land, and at the same time supplementing their incomes through the sale of wild produce like ‘upa palas’, sago palm shoots and ferns foraged near the riverbank.

Backyard vegetable gardens and mini fruit orchards that grow ‘embawang’, mango, guava, ‘engkala’ and durians, planted by the past generations, help add to their household coffers.

In the past, the villagers planted padi, but with the riverbanks being so low and often subjected to floods, the land for planting became limited and thus, oil palm had become the preferred cash crop in the area.

The residents were also involved in animal husbandry in the past, rearing their own pigs for consumption but ever since the African Swine Fever (ASF) outbreak, such operation had stopped.

First visit in 2018

During our first visit to Rumah Morgan in 2018, we were warmly received by its residents who walked us through their daily lives in the settlement.

Rimau, a Block C dweller, told thesundaypost that his grandfather had, many years ago, come to help the longhouse folks as a shaman. At the time, many Ibans did not understand Western science, and neither was there any Western doctor service provided by the past government.

Rural medical services only reached Marudi and Miri during the Rajah Brooke era. Back then, the shaman also brought his followers to Beluru in Miri Division.

Like many of his fellow villagers, Rimau made a living as a smallholder oil palm planter, but with no land of his own, he relied on a small plot that his wife Annie had inherited from her grandmother.

Rimau dreamed that one day, after having managed to save up enough money, he would buy some land from friends.

“For now, I have not had any luck in applying for land awards,” he said.

The couple, as much as being very hospitable, was sincere in sharing with us their lives as oil palm smallholders and also their plights.

They told us that while palm oil served as a sustainable source of income for the villagers, it was not without its shortcomings. That year had recorded low palm oil prices, averaging US$639 per metric tonne – among the lowest in the past decade and alongside high fertiliser and pesticide prices, many smallholders were struggling financially.

Jack, Rimau’s smallholder neighbour and friend, added that if the price of fresh fruit bunches (FFBs) ended up below RM400 per metric tonne, it would be very hard on them.

At the time, he called for a FFB price ceiling to be implemented but at the same time, he also resigned to the fact that even with this measure, there were still other factors that were weighing down on the smallholders.

‘Transport woes’

For many smallholders, transporting their FFB harvests was a persisting problem as many depended on their friends who were fortunate to have vehicles of their own. Still, those without the vehicle would be charged a fee for the transportation of their crops to the nearby mills or ramps.

Rimau and Annie had yet to have enough savings to buy a vehicle, and were depending on their neighbours to help transport their FFBs to the mills every three weeks.

Lacking access to capital

Every 17 to 20 years, in accordance with the oil palm’s life cycle, the smallholders would need to undertake replanting. This, along with the maintenance and fertilisation of the other mature trees, could be very costly for many smallholders.

“If we could earn slightly over RM1,000 every three weeks, we could save up a bit to buy seedlings, which are now very costly,” Rimau said.

He added that the situation was especially dire for smallholders who, like himself, were without their own land, as none of the local banks would even entertain the idea of issuing loans without any land titles as collaterals.

“There should be a kind of people’s bank to help farmers with no land titles. Government subsidies are not easily available. If we had access to some capital, it would provide some relief and the farmers could start to value themselves more and enjoy their land rights,” he shared.

Labour shortage

The smallholders, especially those whose estates were on Native Customary Rights (NCR) land further from Beluru, had to deal with the issue of labour shortage just like any other large-scale plantation owners.

Most smallholders were running the operations through ‘gotong royong’ (work party), but with many young folks moving out to the urban areas and leaving the ageing villagers behind, such a way might not be entirely viable down the line.

Foreign workers might be an easy solution, but even this had its own sets of problems, said Rimau.

“Even if the smallholders with more land tracts had the money to hire foreign workers, they would still encounter problems if they did not have land titles and might end up having to illegally hire them (foreign workers).”

FFB thefts

Another resident, known only as Fabian, highlighted another ‘pain in the neck’ for the oil palm smallholders of Rumah Morgan – rising number of FFB thefts.

“Security level at most smallholding estates is lacking because the owners tend to come around only once in three weeks, or slightly more often, especially if they’re what we call the ‘gentlemen farmers’ from Miri or Bintulu.

“Now, smallholders must produce their original MPOB (Malaysian Palm Oil Board) licences and log books before they could sell their fruits at mills or the collection centres; otherwise, they could be accused of stealing, especially if they had more bunches than expected.

“But, the thieves, being so cunning, have their own ways of selling the FBBs without getting caught.”

Fabian called for the police to make more regular patrols around the mills and other outskirts areas such as Beluru.

He said in the past, people were very respectful of other property owners.

“Even when a durian fell from a neighbour’s tree, they would pick it up, put it on a platform and tell the owner about it.

“Such peaceful and harmonious lifestyle in the longhouse has always been maintained by a sense of respect for the land, and for one another.

“I hope we would continue to prosper with our oil palms, but without losing our spiritual and ethical values,” said Fabian.

‘Gradual improvement’

As mentioned by Rimau earlier, many younger rural residents had opted for relocation to the urban areas for better economic opportunities.

Another driver for this rural-urban migration was them seeking a better quality of life.

Rumah Morgan, despite being so close to Beluru town, did not have piped water when we first visited it in 2018, though there were talks about plans to implement this basic amenity.

Rimau said the residents still dependent heavily on rainwater, collected using ‘water savers’ installed in front of all the longhouses. He said although the river was really close by, the water was deemed not safe for drinking due to waste flowing in from industrial, quarrying, logging and palm estates’ activities and also from other settlements in the area.

Nonetheless, with regard to education, Rumah Morgan had a large secondary school, SMK Bakong, next to it, while a Chinese primary school, Hua Kwong, was located at the nearby Beluru.

Rumah Morgan itself was being ‘redeveloped’ – moving away from its old structural designs and being transformed into new wooden-and-concrete units that were not only more comfortable, but also more resistant to normal wear and tear.

The works on the new Block A and Block B reached completion a few years back, with Block C still under construction at the time of the visit.

The couple had to save money to complete their ‘bilik’ (household unit). The kitchen was ready – it was the usual way for the longhouse folks to build their ‘bilik’ starting with the cooking area at the back.

Once this was ready, they would move all their essentials into this space and live there until the whole structure reached completion.

In the meantime, the Rumah Morgan folks would continue hosting the guests at their old place. It would take them three, or maybe even five years, to complete their new home – without government subsidies or any oil palm windfall.

* The next part of the series will be out next Sunday, highlighting the growth and progress of this village that have been taking place since the writers’ first visit in 2018.