METAL ON METAL—the clanging is clearly heard as I arrive at the riverbank, where five other longboats are moored. The boatman motions my company and I to head to shore, and summoning up my balancing ability, I hop from one partition to the next, across to the next longboat, and safely to land.
“Kampung Orang Penan, Long Beku,” the boatman sputters.
It is quite a journey to reach Long Beku. We had driven from Penang to KL to catch a two-and-a-half-hour flight to Miri, Sarawak, before getting on a 4WD for a fivehour bumpy ride via logging roads to Long San Village in Ulu Baram. From there, it was a 45-minute upstream battle on the long boat (we had to get off the boat and push the boat upstream at one point because the drought had shallowed the Long Akah river).
I am told that only 86 people live in this village. We amble up the slope to the village. Unlike the other longhouses we’ve seen belonging to the Iban and Kenyah tribes, theirs are a tiny fraction of the length, held up on wooden stilts and walled by corrugated zinc sheets.
Ahead of us stands a hut; the metallic sounds ring out from there. Several teenage boys and young men stand by, presumably waiting for us. As we approach, they shy away, revealing two craftsmen at work, hammering glowing metal against an anvil. These are local craftsmen, masters of the traditional art of parang (machete) making.
