28 November 2008. Here in Kepong. Almost the end of the year. Have been trying to collect my wits lately. Too many things to do, too little time to do them. I seem to be always lacking time to get rid of all these action items. For this blog, I have been trying to compose in my head what I want to say for the past week or so.
First, thought I would talk about boards of non-profit organizations. It occurred to me that in my rather long career in development work, something like 32 years of professional work, I have yet to see a board that is genuinely functioning according to its mandate. Most of the time, the leadership in these boards is captured by a few who come from some other civic groups and they need to be identified with another organization presumably with more prestige and influence in the community.
Most boards I have worked with is controlled by a strong leader, who tells you to write the minutes even if there has been no meeting held! Members of these boards are almost always busy to meet and if you happen to be in the technical secretariat being paid to support the board, you are in for a rough time. You will be mostly thinking for the board and carry out what you have thought of - with the blessings of the Board. All they do is stir coffee, a friend says. Well, that's for stirring committees, a favorite creation of most boards if they do not want to do the work themselves. These committees will surely get the blame if things do not work out as planned.
Anyway, things get done somehow and everyone is happy. But I really want to see a real Board.
The other matter I thought I would like to write about are those longhouses I saw in Sarawak in two field missions I had with Habitat colleagues and volunteers in such places called Serian, Kapit, Kalapa in Sarekei. It's one house right, but you find inside individual units with families inside. You can count the doors to know how many families live inside those longhouses (one word!). The number can range from 8 to 32 or even more. Actually, a long house is a village named usually after the Kampung chief.
Families in a longhouse share a common area where they can have social functions under one roof. This makes sense. You do not have to take cover in case of rain. Also, it is easier this way to mobilize all the families for a community meeting. But there is also another reason for the common area as told to me by an old woman in a long house. She says she is often requested to look after the children when all the adults go to work during daytime. It's easier for her to do so if the children are all in the common area; she can see all of them from her end of the long room. Makes sense!
The longhouse, as everything else in this dynamic world, has been undergoing changes. In the old days, they were made of bamboos, wood and palm leaves. I have seen longhouses made of cement; the common area has tiles, and the windows have jalousies. There are TV sets, radio, fridge, sofa and other modern amenities inside. I did not see modern beds. The old traditional mats are there on the floor of the one-room family unit. I tell you these are among the best mats I have seen in traditional places - such as those in the Pacific and a few Asian countries.
In some areas in Sarawak, the longhouses have become tourist attractions. Well, you never know how a traditional thing like a longhouse will be in a global village where we all live. They get transformed into something else - such as being a tourist attraction rather than just a traditional abode for a village of families.
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