The untold story of Muhambur the legendary giant

Many year ago, before the electricity had came to our village, Kampong Tinambak. Villagers use oil lamp too bright up the dark during night and there aren’t many entertainments for the children to do, nowadays children have TV, radio and internet so they can stay till midnight.

Those days were different, after having dinners, my cousins, siblings and I sat together infront of our late grandfather while he drinks bahar. (A local tuak was made from pure coconut liquid has been added with rosok and overnight preserved) and begging for him to tell us susunud (English called it fairy tales). If he drunks enough, we were that luck for bedtimes stories otherwise we felt asleep in the darkness night. There were many susunud that he already told us, but only one of his stories has caught my attention, Muhambur, the legendary giant, the tales of Muhambur were almost same with the western fairy tales, Gulliver’s travelers , but in Dusun Native version?. Oh come on.

Chapter I: New Village and Threat

 Muhambur was described as a taller person, same height with the Bambangan tree. (Bambangan tree height was in between 3-4 storages building). His body was solid with muscles; the nearest description I ever got was Hercules. He was not totally bold; he has some kinds of longs hair that has been tight together like the Aladdin’s gene. No villagers ever knew exactly where did Muhambur came from, because those day most of the Dusun native were nomad peoples, seeking a good land for planting paddy and gathering more foods from the forest. If they are lucky enough, they will find a good spot to envelope , luckily kampong Tinambak was one of them.

As the time passes by, resident at kampong Tinambak were getting crowded and more forest nearby has been cutting down to open a new land for paddy field and built more houses (almost like the Age of Empire games).Since villager need to gather more foods , they need to gather deep inside the forest. Ever since villagers start to encounter a huge man hiding behind a hills (Maralamin Hills), sometimes villagers saw a footprint 5 times bigger then a man and the worst things were, buffalos were start to missing and plants were stolen.

  “Before machine was introduced into agricultures, buffalos were very useful animal, not because it has a raw meat but it can act like a “machine” from ploughing till carrying heaving things or gift to you future in law family. Own a buffalo mean your own a tractor, it also measure as your current asset.





Because of these matters, villagers were starts to wonder ,who stole their buffalos and plants. Ever since they came here, there were never such an incidents like this before, why now? One morning, all the villagers were told to attend a meeting, it was a surprise meets because the disappearance of buffalos are getting worst, it was difficult to worked at paddy field without the buffalos to carry a heavy harvest. One of the villagers explains that he has seen a giant eating lot of bananas, pineapples and coconuts. Buffalo’s bones were every where near the Maralamin hills, he added. That explained where all the buffalos had gone. How could we catch a giant? We don’t know how strong the giant is? Could it take a hundred mans strength?, suddenly a drank man passing by, Then he yield “ I want more siopon...I want more siopon…” then the drunken man fall asleep because he has already took to much siopon since last night.
  
Then one of the villagers got an idea how actually they are going to catch the giant.
 ---------- To be continue -----next week update on Friday.


“siopon is local traditional liquor was made from brewed rice”.