Bario

The Kelabit have farmed the highland plateau for many generations, growing wet rice in the valley and leaving behind the megaliths, stone jars and cut ditches that are still found in the fields and forest. Their remoteness, several days' walk from the nearest rivers navigable to the coast, kept them largely outside the reach of the Brooke government, which had little presence in the interior.

The outside world arrived abruptly in March 1945, when an Allied party of the Australian Z Special Unit parachuted onto the plateau in Operation Semut to organise resistance behind Japanese lines in Borneo. The Kelabit gave shelter and help; an airstrip was cut in the valley, and the wartime contact opened the highlands to administration, mission work and, before long, schooling. Christian missionaries arrived soon afterwards, and within a generation almost the whole community had converted, giving up rice wine and older ritual practices.

Education transformed Bario more than anything else. Families sent children down to schools in Miri and Kuching, and Kelabit graduates became prominent in Sarawak's professions and government out of all proportion to the size of the community, while the plateau's own population fell. Bario became known nationally for its rice and salt, then for small-scale tourism and for the e-Bario project, which brought a solar-powered satellite link, a telecentre and school computers to a village off the electricity grid. A rough logging road now runs down to Miri, a journey of ten to fourteen hours, ending total dependence on the aeroplane.

The Kelabit are the smallest Indigenous group in Sarawak, numbering about 6,600 people, most of whom now live in the coastal towns rather than the highlands. They belong to the wider Orang Ulu grouping and are closely related to the Lun Bawang across the mountains. Their language is distinct, and their naming system is unusual: adults take new names as they become parents and grandparents, so that a person may be known by several names over a lifetime.

Longhouse life continues in a modified form. Families keep private rooms along a communal gallery, and at Bario Asal the hearths still run in a single line down the middle of the building, a layout particular to the Kelabit. Older women in the village may have stretched earlobes and tattoos from before the mission era, and beadwork — heavy strands of old trade beads worn at ceremonies — is the community's most valued heritage.

Christianity, in the form of the Borneo Evangelical Mission and its successor church, shapes the weekly rhythm: services, choirs and gatherings on Mount Murud draw people from across the highlands. Hospitality is a serious obligation, and guests are fed generously and often refused payment for small kindnesses. Irau, the great Kelabit feast, marks marriages, deaths and name changes with days of cooking, speeches and gong music.

About 1,500 people live on the plateau, spread between thirteen to sixteen villages, and the number rises and falls as relatives return from Miri, Kuching and further afield. Many households are older people, with school-age children often living away, and the community's centre of gravity has shifted to the towns.

Farming is the base of the economy: wet rice in the valley fields, vegetables and fruit in garden plots, buffalo used for ploughing and for meat, and salt boiled at the springs. Bario rice and Bario salt both sell at a premium on the coast, and pineapples and highland vegetables go out on the aircraft. Homestays, guiding and porterage add cash income, and government teaching and clinic posts account for many of the salaried jobs.

Days begin early and end early. Power comes from solar panels, micro-hydro and generators, water from gravity-fed pipes, and connectivity through a satellite link that comes and goes. Supplies arrive by air or on the logging road, so prices are high and shortages routine. The concerns most often raised are the reliability of the flights, the state of the road, logging on the approaches to the highlands and the slow loss of young people to the towns.

Meals here are built on Bario rice: small, soft, fragrant grains grown in the cold highland fields, harvested and milled in small quantities and regarded in Sarawak as the finest rice of the highlands. Only about 500 tonnes are produced a year, and that scarcity is part of its reputation.

The second local product is salt. Brine from springs near Pa' Umor is boiled for hours in shallow pans, then packed into bamboo tubes lined with leaves and smoked, producing a dark, coarse salt that is used in cooking and given as a gift. Buffalo and wild boar meat are preserved with it, and smoked and salted meat remains a staple.

The rest of the table comes from the fields and the forest: midin and other jungle ferns stir-fried with garlic, terung Dayak stewed in soup, pineapple, cucumber and pumpkin from garden plots, river fish, and nuba laya, rice steamed and wrapped in leaves. Labo senutuq, buffalo meat shredded and cooked slowly with salt, is the dish most associated with Kelabit feasts, and food at an irau is cooked in bamboo over open fires. Coffee, tea and the highlands' own fruit are the usual drinks, with rice wine much less common than in other Sarawak longhouses.