IT is easy to like Sunarti Atings from Lubok Antu. The 34-year-old mother of two is warm, chatty, and so refreshingly honest with her life story that you want to laugh, cry with her and hug her at the same time.

When she was 18, she fell passionately in love with a 16-year-old “who hated school but was really smart”. They got married, had kids and for a short while they were a happy family.

But, says Sunarti, her husband is the gatal sort and when she couldn’t stand his womanising ways anymore, she took the kids, left him, moved in with her dad and got a divorce.

That was more than 10 years ago and Sunarti, who proudly declares herself a “pure Iban”, now works seven days a week (with only two days off a month) at a restaurant near her home. She earns RM400 a month and her father helps out by working at a petrol station.

Theirs is a kais pagi makan pagi, kais petang makan petang subsistence where there is never enough money to cover all their monthly expenses.

Her ex-husband has re-married, got a good job off-shore and has started giving RM200 to RM500 every three months for their two kids without the knowledge of his new wife.

She would “be livid, of course, if she found out”, says Sunarti, who would like to get married again because “it’s tough raising two kids on my income. Kita perempuan - tak kahwin susah, kahwin pun susah (For women, being married is difficult; not being married is also difficult).”

Sunarti does not know her mother who ran off with another man when she was just a baby. Her heart-broken father married again but a few years later her stepmother also ran off with another man so her father gave up on women and marriage.

“People see me and I look happy but actually I am not. I’ve never had it easy in life. Mine was an evil stepmother, the kind in story books. She gave me stale rice and food that had gone bad and would hit me all the time when my dad wasn’t there.

“Once she hit my head with a parang. I am alive only because of God’s grace. He protected me,” says Sunarti, a staunch Catholic who doesn’t get to go to church on Sundays because she has to work.

Getting by: Although Sunarti continues to lead a hard life, on her meagre salary, her positive attitude helps her get through the day. — SHAHANAAZ HABIB

Unlike other states in Malaysia, Sarawakians are not discussing politics that much at the warung and coffeeshops – at least not openly.

Perhaps it is because Sarawak is the only state in Malaysia that will not be holding state elections simultaneously with the parliamentary elections. The state elections were held in 2011 so Sarawakians will only vote for their MPs come May 5.

Sunarti feels people in Lubok Antu, which is about 270km or a three-and-a-half-hour drive away from Kuching, are happy enough with development in the area and are grateful they have running water, electricity, Internet, schools and “an okay” road.

She also appreciates the RM500 BR1M the government has given her father and the RM100 for each of her school-going kids.

But she worries about the social ills prevailing in the area. “I don’t know what’s wrong with kids today. I see kids in primary school already smoking and turning into bullies. They demand money from their mother and if she refuses to give, they punch and beat her.

“Mothers too are in a damned-if-you-do, damned-if you-don’t situation. If they don’t give their kid the money, their child might steal. Kids today really don’t know how hard parents work for money,” she says.

Daisy Richard is only 15 but she is already the mother of a four-month-old. She got married hurriedly a few months ago after she became pregnant. Her grandmother looks after the baby when Daisy goes to the market to sell vegetables.

But it is her 18-year-old husband who works and provides most of the baby’s needs.

“I dropped out of school because I didn’t like it. Yes, I am happy in Lubok Antu. I am happy to be with my mother and my baby is cute,” she says, smiling.

Chew Sen Hui, 43, is a Sarawak Chinese from Lubok Antu who, like his dad (and most Chinese in the area), has ventured into business.

He speaks English, Malay, Hakka and Iban, which is handy when doing business in an Iban heartland like Lubok Antu,

Paying the price: Since the cost of transport ation to Long Lama is high, prices of goods there are also steep.

“Ibans love to hunt and if they catch anything they’ll sell it at the market and have money to buy things. They like it when we can speak Iban,” says Chew who admits to making the most money during Gawai (the Iban and Bidayuh Harvest festival) when he easily sells 30 to 40 karaoke sets and new furniture and TV sets.

Chew is always on the look-out for wild boar meat, which sells here for RM22 per kg. It is more expensive than ordinary pork, which is only RM16 per kg, but Chew thinks it is definitely worth the money.

“Wild boar meat is hugely popular and it gets sold out within an hour,” he says.

Chew opens his shop at 7am and closes by 4.30pm because “my kuli (workers) want to go home to see their wives.” He himself doesn’t get to enjoy family life much these days because his wife stays in Kuching with their children, who are there to study in the best Chinese school in the state.

He thinks people here will vote for Barisan Nasional because the thinking in villages differ from towns.

“Village folk depend on the government for financial help. In towns, you can assist them in any manner but they won’t vote for you.”

Agreeing, Embat Lala says he will go for whoever has money.

“If they have no money, why I should follow them?”

Michael Jordan is a Bidayuh who lives a 45-minute drive away from Kuching. Named after the basketball legend, he does play a bit of basketball but football is more his game.

He says his father has banned discussing politics in their home.

“If we are watching TV and a segment on politics comes on, we always switch channels. We believe that if we follow the political rhythm of the country, it can lead to the destruction of our family,” says Jordan.

They learnt the lesson the hard way years ago when his father, brothers and uncles got into a brawl over political differences and only came to their senses when one got hit so hard that he passed out.

Jordan, 19, is a reformed Mat Rempit. Two years ago while doing his Rempit stunts, his bike crashed, leaving him with broken bones. But instead of feeling sorry for him, his father without remorse told him it would be better if he (Jordan) died than cause the family such difficulty.

“That struck a nerve and was a wake-up call. I never did stunts after that,” says Jordan, who still rides a motorbike to get to and from work in a hotel in Kuching.

At a riverside cafe in Kuching, Dollah (not his real name), 53, worries that his six children will not find good jobs if they remain in Sarawak.

“There are very few jobs and the salary is low. It averages around RM400 to RM500 a month and these are jobs like working in fast food chains and not on par with their level of education,” he confides.

“Last time, I wanted them to stay put and not go overseas for work. But after looking at the situation here, given the chance to work in Australia, I would also go,” says Dollah who is of Sino-Malay parentage and works with the government.

Like many in Kuching, he has seen the Global Witness Inside Malaysia’s Shadow State video that has gone viral. The video implicates Sarawak Chief Minister Tan Sri Taib Mahmud and his family in alleged shady land deals in the state.

The London-based NGO went undercover, posing as foreign investors wanting to buy land in Sarawak and the video captures snippets of conversation between Taib’s first cousins and lawyers on how such deals are made, including breaching Malaysian law and evading tax.

(The MACC has said they are investigating the allegations but the Chief Minister has denied the deals and called the video and MACC’s investigation “naughty”).

For Dollah, though, the video comes as no surprise because this is what people here have been saying all along. But he believes that politically, although there might be some impact, it will only be minimal.

“Politics in Sarawak is not mature like in Sabah. You give people (in the interior) a packet drink, a packet of rice and RM50 and they’ll vote for you,” he says.

He also worries that Sarawak has still not sorted out the question of who would succeed their 76-year-old Chief Minister.

“I fear if he passes away there will be chaos if there is no clear successor,” he says.

I drove from Kuching to Lubok Antu and back and had planned to drive to Miri. But as elections had been called and Sarawak is huge, I flew instead. I then took a 4WD drive with a driver to Long Lama, the heartland of the Orang Ulu.

It takes a good three to four hours in a 4WD with off-road tyres to get there as the gravel road is either pock-marked with enormous potholes or muddy.

After experiencing this bone-shaking “adventure” ride in Sarawak, I will never ever complain about any road in peninsular Malaysia again!

“If a woman has problems giving birth, just send her to Long Lama and after two thuds and a shake, the baby will surely come out,” quips Adrian (not his real name), a shopkeeper from Long Lama. That aptly sums up the arduous journey.

All the people in Long Lama and nearby villages like Long Apu and Long Laput are asking for is a properly sealed road.

“Just give us a road so that we can at least go into town and sell one piece of tomato,” says Adrian, somewhat dramatically.

Although he makes a profit of RM12,000 a month, he is annoyed at having to spend a huge chunk of that buying spare parts for his car and for maintenance and repairs.

Since the cost of transportation to Long Lama is high, prices of goods here are also on the high side.

When it comes to voting, Adrian says, the older people here would lean towards Barisan because they are easily satisfied.

“You just have to announce that you are giving RM5,000 to a church and another RM6,000 to the school and that’s enough to make them happy. They are also grateful to get medicine free.”

But he says it is a different game for the Internet-savvy younger voters.

Darrel (not his real name) from Long Apu also longs for “just a road”. It takes him eight hours to get to his village from Miri because there is no road.

One of the ways villagers move around the area is by river but that journey takes twice as long.

“VIPs, MPs or assemblymen helicopter in and out so they don’t experience our bad road,” says Darrel who is a Kayan.

“If you give us the road, the opposition won’t be strong here.”

Long Lama, Long Apu, Long Laput, and Long Banyok are all in the Baram region where the government is planning to build a hydro-electric dam. This has become an election issue. If the dam is built, Darrel’s village will be flooded and the villagers will have to move out.

“We never reject development if it is good. But who is the dam for? Who does it benefit? There are no factories here,” Darrel points out.

“They shouldn’t make it a condition that if you don’t agree to the dam, you don’t get the road. Is it so wrong to give us infrastructure like a road?”

Carawan Kalang, 33, a Penan, says that although her village won’t need to move, she is against the dam because she fears it might break someday and drown them all.

Even her son, Alysther Laing, 14, who speaks five languages, is an A student and wants to be a policeman when he grows up, is concerned about the impact of the dam and the possibility of massive flooding.

Carawan, though, won’t be voting in the general election although her brothers and sisters will. She still has no IC or birth certificate (which is not unusual for indigenous folk born decades ago in the interior areas) so she can’t register as a voter.

“Each time the NRD officers come around to register us, it just happens that I am away and without a road it is hard to get here. Maybe I will be lucky and get it in time for the next election,” she says.

> The writer’s e-mail is shaz@thestar.com.my

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