DRIVE-THRU KENDURI[1] an ongoing joke among my siblings. Why not? It is fast, cheap and convenient! In fact, my eldest sister had a drive-thru wedding during the pandemic. My second sister’s wedding, on the other hand, was done through rewang. It was the most tedious kenduri preparation I have ever participated in. So, for my future kenduri, my sister joked that I should marry into money and have a hotel wedding, or at least a buffet catering—no more rewang!

Jokes aside, rewang is a cherished tradition; a community affair and a dance of teamwork many urban and modern Malays have forsaken. It is a manifestation of the traditional Malay practice of gotong-royong[2], where friends, family and neighbours come together to prepare for big occasions like a kenduri. Kenduri, or communal feasts, are held to celebrate big occasions like weddings, Eid and even young boys’ circumcision. All these require rewang.

Although the practice of rewang exists in most places in Malaysia, the most unique rewang I’ve ever experienced was in Langkawi. But divert your mind from the turquoise blue seas and bustling beaches tourists are exposed to. Not that Langkawi. This is the Langkawi of the locals, backgrounded by verdant paddy fields and pink albino buffaloes (who love mud facials)!

Pelantar: The Pulse Of Rewang

In Kampung Bohor Tempoyak from where my mother hails, we take rewang very seriously. A day before the wedding, the men gather and assemble the pelantar, a structure of raised wooden flooring with a canopy without walls. The platform essentially functions as the working area for food preparation—think of it as an open kitchen. Kawah[3] (big woks) are also placed near the pelantar for cooking.

The pelantar is the busiest and most rowdy area during rewang. Spices, onions, garlic and potatoes are stacked in bulk in huge basins, waiting to be prepped. Although the kenduri is usually done at the hosts’ house, the host is not obliged to prepare all the cooking utensils for rewang. For the prep work, female community members usually bring their own knives and their preferred utensils from home. Others lend their kawah, cookware and pots for bulk cooking. They keep track of utensils by placing personalised markings (stickers and markers) on the items.

In my experience, you don’t need to know everyone to work on the pelantar, but once you’re there, everyone will get to know you. While the head in charge of the main dishes will usually have been decided during the kenduri meeting, the rest of the roles are flexible. As one of the younger ones on the pelantar, I might start off slicing onions and find myself moved to the frying team an hour later. Young children might not be skilled enough to peel and cut onions, so they are tasked to help with other tasks, like peeling eggs or deshelling peanuts. That’s the beauty of the pelantar—you get to bond with everyone through shared tasks, shedding onion tears and suffering from pijar[4].

Kerabu Beronok: A Langkawi Specialty

Amidst the frantic chopping, boiling and frying happening on the pelantar, there is another delicate task: making kerabu beronok. This dish is a sour and spicy raw sea cucumber salad made with shallots, cashew tree shoots, green sour mango, grated coconut, bird’s eye chillies and lime juice. Cousin to the more popular sea cucumber, gamat, beronok, or its scientific name Acaudina molpadioides, is a popular exotic delicacy popularly enjoyed in Langkawi.

You cannot call yourself a seasoned rewang helper until you have cleaned this slimy, eerie-looking sea creature. Hundreds of these lying in a basin is not the best view—imagine staring at a pile of pink alien-looking translucent eggs. The inside of beronok is mainly seawater and mud, and cleaning it involves gutting them to remove these and wormy-looking strands. Speed is key when handling beronok; prolonged handling can cause them to break down. Holding the slimy, bulbous sea cucumbers is also hard work, as they constantly slip from your hands like slippery water balloons.

Cut and cleaned, beronok resembles raw squid or octopus tentacles, only firmer and glossier. The beronok slicing station often becomes a snacking spot—nobody can resist the temptation of the salty, chewy and crunchy pieces.

After a final rinse, the prepped beronok finally joins the rest of the ingredients, which have been chopped up. The elders can be quite particular about how you cut these—everything has to be sliced thin, but not too thin. The green sour mango must be finely shredded by repeatedly hitting the mango with a knife. All those are to be mixed with a spice paste called sambal nyioq (coconut sambal) made from blended chillies, shrimp paste, grated coconut, lime juice, kerisik[5] and sugar and salt. It sounds tedious, but get one taste of the kerabu beronok and you think it is all worth it.

The Buffaloes

Can’t find men at the pelantar? Well, they are with the buffaloes in the field! Langkawi without its buffaloes isn’t Langkawi. These animals work in paddy fields and graze on unwanted weeds. But they mean a lot more to my family—buffalo milk nourished my mother after her mother succumbed to breast cancer. For us, buffaloes play a central role in rewang, especially during Eid al-Adha or the Festival of Sacrifice.

Back in the day, every house had buffaloes. My favourite were Opie and Lola, my uncle, Pak Lang’s buffaloes, whom I stubbornly named despite my mother’s warnings. In Islam, Muslims are not encouraged to eat animals they have grown affection for, like pets, so nobody really names their buffaloes. I learnt the lesson the hard way during the rewang for my cousin’s wedding. On that day, I was a vegan.

In Langkawi, buffaloes are more popularly chosen as sacrificial animals during kenduri, as opposed to cows in mainland Kedah. Men take on the responsibility of handling, tending to and slaughtering buffaloes. They also manage the meat processing—dismembering, dressing, cutting, deboning and trimming.

Out of respect, they ensure that the animal is kept separately during the slaughter and meat preparation. Buffaloes are prevented from witnessing the slaughter of their cohorts. For holy sacrifices, we try to utilise all parts of the animal, and whatever remains are buried to prevent other animals (such as cats and dogs) from scavenging.

Maximising the edible parts of the animal is key here, and with that comes the cleaning of the buffalo’s four tripes. This tends to be the loneliest task in rewang, as it is usually done by a small water canal near the paddy field—far from the lively open kitchen. And the person doing that? Me—the not-so-skilled worker with a strong gut for tolerating the stench of predigested grass. Despite how unpopular this job might seem, the four types of tripe—perut kitab (bible tripe), perut sarang lebah (honeycomb tripe), perut tuala (blanket tripe) and perut jerami (reed tripe)—are some of the most sought-after delicacies during the kenduri.

Tanam Today, Kenduri Tomorrow

One of the most important roles in rewang is the logbook keeper. During rewang, there is a practice called tanam, which literally means “to plant”. Think of the tanam system like a community savings account for kenduri supplies. There are two main types of transactions in the system: tanam and bayar. If you tanam 10kg of sugar with a kenduri host, it is like making a deposit that they will repay or bayar during your own kenduri in the future.

According to my mother, who is usually the log keeper for our family weddings, this person acts like the account manager. She records all the tanam and bayar transactions in a kenduri logbook. At the same time, the log keeper also tracks every item in the kenduri supply and communicate to contributors what is needed, so there’s no surplus.

What can be tanam-ed is inexhaustive, you can tanam onion, spices, rice, traditional snacks and even a buffalo or a cow, if necessary. The same goes for bayar—if someone tanam-ed a carton of condensed milk, you can bayar with other items of equal value, such as a carton of sugar or rice. If a host already has enough supplies for the kenduri, contributors might tanam other wedding essentials, like bunga telur[6] (egg flowers) or door gifts instead. Some contributors may choose to donate instead of participate in tanam or bayar; in these cases, it’s really up to the hosts whether or not to return the favour.

From the buffalo to the kilos of rice, onions and other essentials, feeding hundreds during a kenduri—sometimes up to 500 people—can be hard on the pocket. Thus, in rewang, the tanam system is essential to financially support the host. It can only work within close-knitted, communal communities, where there is a strong sense of trust and reciprocity—a spirit that is hard to maintain in urban areas.

Circling back to my sister’s joke about “no more rewang”, the reality of why rewang is dwindling should not be attributed solely to the reluctance of the younger generation to continue the tradition. With urbanisation, the rewang I have described is simply no longer feasible. We no longer have the time, space and communal energy to execute it. The pelantar, the buffaloes and the logbook system—they all seem to have disappeared in our fast-paced city life.

Footnotes

[1] Kenduri refers to Malay celebrations and social gatherings which usually involve a feast and religious rituals to thank God.

[2] Gotong-royong is communal work, especially in cultural activities or deeds meant for the collective good, such as cleaning up the kampung together.

[3] Kawah (literally translates to crater) is a thick and large wok used for bulk cooking over open fire.

[4] Pijar refers to the burning sensation caused by handling chillies. The elders suggest rubbing the affected parts with coarse salt to alleviate the discomfort.

[5] Kerisik is made by toasting coconut until it is golden brown before pounding it into a paste (usually until the oil is drawn out). The process is quite similar to making peanut butter, but are usually manually grinded with a mortar and pestle.

[6] Bunga Telur refers to hard-boiled eggs tied on a stick and decorated with flowers and embellishment, typically given as a door gift for guests. The eggs symbolise fertility for the groom and bride.