Hari Raya Haji

Some of the huge family.

I met Oldman down at the boat ramp at 11am this morning, and then Sky turned up with two other girls in tow. One was from England and is living here and teaching at an international school, and the other is Malaysian but has lived in New Zealand nearly all her life. We were going to take the boat but in the end we drove to the Kampung. On our way into the village a horde of people were blocking the path, dragging something on a wagon. Getting closer, it turned out to be the sacrificial cow (post-sacrifice). This was cut up later and given to the poorer people. I was going to try to explain it all but the AllMalaysia website sums it up so well and fills in a lot of my gaps of knowledge! I understand about half of what the local people say here and sometimes that's easier than others.

Me and the kids

We arrived at his house and were welcomed by the family. I had brought five little koalas (no Aussie should travel without them) and to my surprise, Oldman has exactly five kids. There were about twenty all-up though. We were given plates and told "Makan! Makan!" (Eat! Eat!) We did so, helping ourselves to lots of delicious curries, rice dishes and noodles. Nobody else was eating, I asked Oldman and he said he'd already eaten a lot earlier but I'm not sure whether it was to do with prayers. Anyway we ate until we were full, and talked to the family (as best we could given that they didn't speak much English). Then Oldman got up and said, "ok come, now we go next door!" The four of us just stared at each other - another feast awaited us!! Before this one however, the traditional prayers were done and this took quite a while. One man did the singing and was using a book to read from, but others were mouthing the words without the book. Given that it went for maybe 20 minutes, I was pretty impressed that anyone would know the words by heart. It was very interesting to watch, I wish I understood more. They repeated one phrase over and over at one point and were using their fingers to count, I think anyway. Well then of course we ate. I felt bad because we were full but they were waiting for us to take food before they would (and there were about 40 people) so I had a small plate. The food was all delicious, all  local dishes.

It was nice to see the people in their own houses, and quite amazing to receive such great hospitality given with absolutely no expectation of anything in return!