The Gawai (not to be confused with the Japanese word ‘Kawaii’, which means something else completely different) is a uniquely Sarawakian harvest-cum-thanksgiving festival celebrated by the native Dayaks here every 1st June.
Hello Kitty. This pampered pussy changes into her cultural clothes every festive season. I call her the Barbie Doll cat.
Whilst the Malays are the natives (or bumiputeras) and form the dominant race in Peninsular Malaysia, the Dayaks are the dominant race in Sarawak, just as the Kadazans are the dominant race in Sabah. A lot of them are from the rural area, but have since migrated to Kuching city for work and studies.
A common misconception held is that the Dayaks are similar to Malays because it seems as if both races speak the Bahasa Melayu as their mother tongue. In actual fact, the Dayaks speak a language that is very similar but not identical to Bahasa Melayu.
Jalan Padungan. You can call it Chinatown, but Kuching city is majority Chinese anyway.
Apart from that, the Dayaks are now very modernised and drastically different to the bloodthirsty headhunters the history books tell us. Most Dayaks here practise Christianity instead of Islam. They are also bloody good alcohol drinkers, and the younger ones have damn cool English-sounding names like ‘Matthew Anderson Lockhart’.
One thing I appreciate living in Malaysia is that almost all races here get to celebrate their respective festivities. I forget how good it felt because I don’t have that kind of luxury when I was in Australia. I can personally attest that hauling your ass to work/lecture on the first day of Chinese New Year isn’t the best feeling in the world.
This is how we celebrate festivities in Kuching… by making our streets a little bit brighter.
So anyway, I was in the city last night practising my night photography skills when I noticed a particularly interesting set of decorative lights along Jalan Song Thian Chiok that seems to be telling us some story. Its a bit like pictures in the Egyptian pyramids really.
I know they’re supposed to depict customs and cultural practices of the Dayaks here. But someone not born here might not be able to understand what’s going. So here’s what they might intepret it instead.
This is a story about how the Dayaks celebrate the Gawai Festival.
All day long, the men sit on their butts smoking their big-arse Sarawakian cigarettes. What’s this Dunhill thing you’re talking about? Dunhill is for pansies. Sarawakian cigarettes are for real men, like us.
Feminism? Never heard of it. Our bitches spend their day and night rolling them big-arse Sarawakian cigarettes for us, the real men. For entertainment, we dress them up in skimpy clothes so we can watch them shake their asses while we smoke our life away. Ooh yea, baby.
And, errrr…
Usually them chicks do a good job out of it. But sometimes they don’t. So we gotta teach them a lesson, eh?
Of course the Dayaks are all really friendly people and they’re not like that at all. But decorations like that can easily be misinterpretated, eh? 🙂 Happy holidays, my fellow Sarawakians.