Skandis Longhouse 2 / Sarawak

All morning I had seen women coming and going with plastic buckets. When they came in, the clothes in the buckets were wet and neatly rolled, each item its own dripping package ready to be unrolled and hung on the clothesline to dry in the sun. These two women had a completely involved conversation the entire time they washed the clothes, never pausing as they agitated each item in the bucket of soapy water and then laid it out on the flat rock (notice that each woman has a suitable rock) to scrub it forcefully with a plastic brush.

After a while, the woman on the left put shampoo in her hair, sudsed it up, and then swam into the middle of the river and had a thorough wash herself, never revealing anything between her armpits and her knees, even when she deftly changed into a freshly washed (and still wet) sarong. A bit later, the woman on the right did the same, then soaped and scrubbed the T-shirt and pants she had been wearing. You don't see naked adults at the longhouse. Men bathe in their underpants, but women stay well covered. People usually bathe several times each day. It's very hot and there are no fans, even though a petroleum-driven generator is turned on each night for lights.

Below is the Kesit River, which we traveled on to reach this longhouse. No roads come here. (From Engkilili, east of Kuching, you follow the Lemanak River to the Kesit.) In the upper right corner you can see the clothes hanging out on the riau, or porch. Most of the longboats are missing because the men had all gone (with their roosters) to a cockfight downriver. They came back in time for dinner, drunk on beer and happy. The headman's rooster had been a big winner and so was given the honor of spending the night inside the longhouse. The headman made RM 30 (about U.S. $7.50) on his bets and was hugely pleased.