For over forty years, longhouses in the Melupa area, at middle Krian in Saratok, have been surviving on water from ‘gravity feed’.
These ten longhouses, namely Kedap, Nanga Assam, Sungai Belong, Tanjung Sikup, Munggu Embawang, Pelaie Ili, Pelaie Ulu, Mendas Asal, Mendas Baruh and Mendas Atas, most of which are near streams or the main rivers of Melupa or Assam, have been using gravity feed system for their water source.
The system of using gravity feed involves digging or widening the source which is usually a very deep pool of a stream at higher ground about 10 to 20 kilometres away. In order to collect a higher level and thus giving a stronger current of water source, the pool is further dammed. This water source is connected by PVC pipes joined together to the receiving longhouse or dwelling. Two or three receiving centres or statations with taps at the settlement are built to further connect taps as supply channels to individual households. So you will find out each household/family apartment is fed with respective water pipes and taps for water supply, quite similar to those under the supply from JKR or waterboard.
Apart from the 10 longhouses, two primary schools namely SK Nanga Assam and SK Mendas also depend on the water supplied through gravity feed.
My longhouse, Kedap which is by the right bank of Melupa River, is fed by this system getting its source from Sungai Jangung, a tributary of Sungai Kedap about 10 kilometres away, that flows into the main river, Melupa. Longhouses in the upper Melupa such as Tanjung Sikup, Sungai Belong and Munggu Embawang get their water through the system from upstream of Sungai Kara flows into the Melupa whereas those in Mendas, Pelaie and Nanga Assam get water from Mendas, Pelaie and Sulau streams respectively. For SK Nanga Assam, the school gets its water supply from nearby Sungai Kerong.
As for Kedap longhouse, the gravity feed from Sungai Jangong has withstood the tests of times with the PVC pipes having been changed no less than five times in the last forty years or so. Though the water may change colour according to the wheather, the supply has been very reliable. At times the main tap at the two stations outside the longhouse, which house a toilet and washroom each, need to be put on to enable water flow. This would help to protect the main pipe from bursting due to water tremendous pressure. People with cars use this opportunity to wash their vehicles lending some justice to the water ‘wastage’.
Up to this day, water supplied by this gravity feed – at Kedap we use to refer to it as ‘ai Jangong’ as way to give credit to its source – has never failed us.
Pipe rapture problems did become the culprit once in a while but these were temporary shortlived constraints.
Our longhouse developent committee, under Tuai Rumah Robert Lin Malina, has arranged for a daily schedule to inspect and monitor the pipe system and our gravity feed source at Ulu Sungai Jangong, including clearing the water channel there. Now it is easy to go to the source, thanks to proper lanes provided by SALCRA. Ulu Sungai Jangung is now part of the oil palm plantation at Ulu Kedap under the Saratok Oil Palm Estate.
We do enjoy going to the source at Jangung upstream especially when the stream has plentiful of upriver fish and makes a very good fishing ground. My preference is rod fishing. It is like a kind of sport and is good to rid one of any stress. When we were young, long before the coming of SALCRA and oil palm plantation, we used to go fishing at night using the ‘pigo’ (special lamp) to look for fish and prawns at Jangung stream. However, after my late uncle Ampoi Jembu (my father’s younger brother) claimed that he had an encounter with a giant at Jangung one evening, we abandoned further plan to fish there at night. Now the Kedap longhouse folks only go to Jangung to check the dam during day time. Prawns and fish are still abundant there.
It is good that Jangung has provided us with reliable water supply all these years as now the Melupa River in front of our longhouse is not so friendly and safe as before. Now that the river is free of any longboat with engines and that the ‘pom-pom’ motorlaunch has been gone for decades, the ‘river kings’ are aplenty. Once, one of them about six-foot in length, came up crawling and tried to attack a visitor who was with my two brothers enjoying barbequed chicken wings by the riverbank. Our visitor (man) managed to escape while the uninvited guest (croc) went down crawling empty-handed. My two brothers quickly abandoned further plan to enjoy the late afternoon gathering at the Kedap waterfront. Their visitor made an abrupt exit and returned home to Nanga Melupa longhouse.
The imminent presence or these hungry and dangerous crocodiles is the main reason why Kedap folks no longer bathe, wash and collect water at Melupa River. Only the daring fishermen frequent the river for fish and prawns.
A few of them, including my partly handicapped but fearless first cousin Buma Ampoi – still a bachelor at 58 – used to see the red eyes of the river kings in the water at night but so far both kept to their own respective territories, staying a distance from each other.
Further upriver the Melupa, at Tanjong Sikup, where the water is crystal clear hundreds of metres from the tide, longhouse folks need not worry when bathing at the cool and soothing water. Men are the rulers of the river at this part of the Melupa, the birthplace of my late father Salok. On the right bank opposite the longhouse is our Sungai Pentik rubber garden, a 30-acre piece of land cleared and cultivated by my parents circa 1960 when I was a toddler.
Despite being near a river with clean and crystal clear water, Tanjung Sikup longhouse residents also use gravity feed, sourced from nearby Sungai Kara upstream as aforesaid. So they wash, clean and shower in the confines of their own apartments similarly as their counterparts in other longhouses using the same system.
In a way this makes longhouse folks enjoy the same convenience of having water – albeit not treated and at times murky – supplied to their homes as those in urban and sub-urban areas.
When Kedap held its Gawai Antu in 1973, guest of honour the late Tun Jugah who was then Federal Minister of Sarawak Affairs approved some fund for proper feeder road to the longhouse as well as fund for gravity feed. Works on the road and the gravity feed started immediately and by early 1974 both projects were in place and nearing completion.
Kedap was lucky to have Jugah as guest as my uncle Musa Giri was his private secretary and accompanied him to China in 1974 for Beijing visit and meeting Chairman Mao and Premier Chou En Lai. For that they became the second and third Iban to visit China after the late Temenggong Jonathan Bangau Renang who went to Canton Trade Fair in 1960.
Thanks to Jugah, Kedap was the first Melupa longhouse and among the early longhouses in Saratok to be served by gravity feed system of water supply.
Even with the newly installed water supply system from JKR/Saratok Waterboard, the old pipes and taps from Sungai Jangung remain useful to this day.
