Kampung Janggap's women ladling equal portions of the various mouth-watering meat dishes from the Christmas feast for themselves and the children. — Pictures by Choo Choy May

Men in Kampung Tual, where villagers plant and tap rubber trees. Some in Kuala Lipis also plant cocoa trees, banana, or collect petai, durian or honey for sale. — Picture by Choo Choy May Seen here is a church building in Kampung Tual, which is also of the same well-ventilated and cooling designed by Pastor Moses Soo and built together with the Orang Asli. — Picture by Choo Choy May A man with a sarong full of Christmas goodies leaving the church building in Kampung Rangan. — Picture by Choo Choy May Pastor James Lee shares a meal together with the men in Kampung Rangan after a Christmas service. — Picture by Choo Choy May Kampung Janggap villagers bowing their heads and closing their eyes in prayer. — Picture by Choo Choy May Kampung Janggap residents singing along in a Christmas worship service. — Picture by Choo Choy May Children in Kampung Janggap playing sepak takraw after the Christmas service. — Picture by Choo Choy May Masani carting off his family’s Christmas gifts in a motorcycle. — Picture by Choo Choy May Bowls of the Christmas feast prepared ‘kenduri’-style by Kampung Janggap villagers. — Picture by Choo Choy May Previous Next

RAUB, Dec 25 — There are no shopping malls anywhere in the neighbourhood so the run-up to Christmas that started way back in November in the form of sales, huge Christmas trees and songs is virtually absent in Kampung Janggap.

The village is almost 90 minutes' drive away from Cheroh, Raub in Pahang and reachable only by four-wheel-drive or motorcycle through a mix of tar roads, rocky and bumpy jungle trails and across streams; Cheroh itself is two hours away from Kuala Lumpur by car.

Christmas for the Orang Asli community here is a special celebration where they get to receive annual gifts and families and communities gather together for a rare, good feast.

Last Saturday, we joined the Orang Asli community for a Christmas service in one of the 37 churches run by volunteers from the Christian mission organisation Gospel to the Poor (GTTP) for the Semai tribe in Kuala Lipis, Pahang and the Temiar tribe in Gua Musang, Kelantan.

Kampung Janggap's villagers sitting in the single-hall concrete church building that they built together with GTTP. The buildings ceiling and walls are designed to keep things cool even without fans.

Sitting on the cool tile floors of a simple white-walled church hall which sported a colourful mural and a Christmas tree onstage, Kampung Janggap’s villagers both young and old — including mothers with babies in cloth slings — prayed together in Bahasa Malaysia (BM).

They also sang Christian songs in BM, led by one of the Kampung Janggap villagers as other villagers played the tambourine, drums and electric guitars.

Raub-born Pastor James Lee, who has been a full-time volunteer for over a decade with GTTP, then shared with them the Christmas story.

“This year for Christmas, each person can get six kilogrammes of presents; it was very difficult to bring it in, how many such trips did we make this is blessings from the Lord,” he told the villagers, adding that the Pahang villagers were getting slightly more than their Kelantan counterparts’ 4.5 kilogrammes due to the tougher road conditions to get to the latter.

The Orang Asli community prefer to cook lemang the day before it is eaten to get just the right texture.

After the villagers had Holy Communion, they then joined in a Christmas feast they had cooked together, featuring fried chicken, beef, fish, rice and the rare treat of lemang or glutinous rice cooked in bamboo.

Then came the banci or the giving out of gifts according to the list of 44 families of over 100 persons in Kampung Janggap, with the portion allocated for each person in a family this year being two kilogrammes of rice, two tins of both sardines and condensed milk, one pack of sugar, one pack of oil and one cup.

The ubiquitous sarong was invaluable as the villagers used that to haul the presents back to their homes just steps away. Some even used it to take the rice portion scooped out to them.

Volunteers scooping rice into the wonderful sarong that can not only carry a child, but also Christmas gifts such as cans of food.

Villager Da, 41, said his two favorite Christmas songs are the Selamat Hari Natal (We wish you a Merry Christmas) and a song with the phrase "Tuhan gantung di kayu salib" (The Lord hangs on a cross).

Da, who himself has nine children, said that villagers have a similar celebration during Easter, but that they only receive gifts once a year during Christmas. He said the food items gifted to the villagers could last up to one month.

Kampung Janggap villager Masani said Christmas is a joyful time of good meals with friends and family.

Another villager, Masani, 27, said villagers would wear new clothes on Christmas day if they had new clothes in the first place.

“Each year when it is Christmas, we are happier. We are thankful because there are gifts,” the father of one said, confirming that the villagers do not pass each other gifts but would visit each other's homes to have meals together.

This open house Christmas celebration can extend for up to two or three days, he said, as it also involves visiting nearby villages to eat and have a good time together.

Over in Kampung Rangan which is the only village under GTTP in Kuala Lipis still using a bamboo building for church services, a family is seen with their Christmas gifts — including tinned food in the sarong.

Earlier in Kampung Rangan, a village just about 15 minutes' drive away, a team of volunteers together with Lee distributed 540 kilogrammes' worth of the same gifts brought in by four-wheel-drive to 90 people from 22 families after a Christmas service.

This is on top of 60 kilogrammes of food brought over for the families’ post-service meal.

Pastor Moses Soo, who leads the GTTP organisation, said seven pastors — three from the local Chinese community and four from the Orang Asli community — visit each of the 37 churches once a week to both hold services and bring in meat such as fish or sardines for the post-service meal.

This means that services are held daily in different villages.

Depending on the prices and donations made to GTTP, villagers may only get to eat beef and chicken a few times in a year, Soo said.

The villagers' typical diet includes their traditional staple food of tapioca and tapioca leaves, banana trunk, banana heart or bamboo shoots.

Meat items are something they may only eat once a week on days when there are church services.

Pastor James Lee shares a meal together with the men in Kampung Rangan after a Christmas service.

In order to ensure that each church manages to celebrate Christmas and receive their gifts ahead of today, volunteers started going in four-wheel-drives to distribute the gifts from last Tuesday with around three Christmas services held on any one day.

Although access to certain villages in Kelantan were earlier cut off for three weeks due to rain, volunteers had enjoyed exceptionally good weather when they set out for Christmas services and gift distribution for the 19 churches there, with the last held on Friday, Soo said.

As for Kampung Tual which has the church with the largest congregation of around 500 people in Kuala Lipis, Pahang, the villagers had already hunted wild boar on Friday, and will be cooking up a feast together using three different kitchens from as early as 5am today ahead of their 2pm Christmas service. Lemang, fish, chicken, beef are on the menu.

While the Orang Asli community may celebrate Christmas differently from city folks, it is a precious celebration for them and not just in terms of food and gifts.

Pastor Moses Soo is seen here with volunteer Ruth Wong and some Orang Asli children at the children's home in Cheroh, Raub.

GTTP, an organisation which has been catering to 3,000 villagers each in 20 years in both Kelantan and Pahang, runs a children’s home for about 50 Orang Asli children from these two states and sent another 200 to children’s homes in the Klang Valley to enable them to attend schools in a more conducive environment.

Soo said these children would get to meet their families once or twice a year, especially during the year-end holidays where they can celebrate Christmas together in their villages.

“Christmas is the most important festival to them,” he said of the villagers, explaining that they only celebrate the two occasions of Christmas and Easter in a year.