The Recipe (side note)

No, this is not a continuation of the previous post. And no, it is not a recipe about distilling the langkau either. I just want to share an amusing excerpt that I read a couple of weeks ago, from an old document pertaining to the brewing of tuak (rice wine) in upper reaches of Belaga at the end of the Brooke rule (1841 – 1946). If you must know, Sarawak was governed independently by the Brooke family or the White Rajah for three generations (about 100 years) before the Japanese occupation. Charles Vyner Brooke continued its family’s reign over Sarawak after the Second World War but eventually surrendered the country to the British Crown in 1946. Sarawak gained its independence in 1963. So, that’s a crash course on Sarawak history for you.

Anyways, the following excerpt is a list of duties for an ‘upriver agent’ (URA) in Belaga at the time. Upriver agents, usually a young British officer at the time, worked under the District Officer to ensure smooth governance over the people in each district. They would collect taxes, issue gun licenses, provide advises on farming, monitoring longhouse community migration, etc. The URA would then submit the report to the District Officer of Belaga who would, in turn, record it in the Belaga Information Book or simply known as the ’station diary’. Below is an excerpt of the URA duties at the time:

When I came across  Duty #9 – “To give lectures whenever possible to the local people on:” – I became more fascinated. What kind of lectures could these colonial officers give? I must say after reading the whole document, the instructions for the URA at the time were very succinct and specific. They even had records of the number of people living in the area, the local communities’ incomes, their activities, movements, etc., and mind you, this was in the late 1930s and early 1940s when access to such remote communities are very difficult and treacherous. It could take months to arrive in the upper reaches of the Balui river in the Belaga district at the time!

So, as I read Duty #9 and its subsection, I turned to the next page. Duty #9 (e) caught my attention and I couldn’t stop laughing when I read it:

In case you can’t read, the instruction says “Do not turn 70 per cent of a good padi crop into ‘Borak’. This is sheer madness. When there is no ‘Borak’ people can drink water but when there is no padi people cannot eat mud as a substitute.”

The instruction for the URA was also to tell the local communities living in the Belaga district not to brew 70% of their rice harvest into borak! Borak is “rice wine” in the languages of most the indigenous groups living in the area, such as the Kayan, the Kenyah groups, Lahanan, Kejaman, Seping, Sekapan, Punan Bah, Penan etc. Yes, burak equivalent to the Iban word tuak.

I thought this was hilarious. The station diary was signed by John Fisher (I think), the District Officer of Belaga in 1938. This was not an isolated case because the brewing of the good ‘ol tuak or burak was prevalent among the indigenous communities in Sarawak. Even my demented kanid’s ethnic group almost got wiped out because of consuming the burak in the early 1900s!

When people asked me “Why Sarawakians drink a lot?” the excerpts above could give you a glimpse of life then. It’s probably in our genes.