RANAU: The death of a woman brought together more than 20 people who took turns carrying her body home for the funeral at a remote village here.
Family members and residents of Kampung Penulangon took about three hours to carry the body of Jilimiah Digi, 52, in a casket from the roadside to her house yesterday.
Jilimiah died after a long battle with lung cancer at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Kota Kinabalu. She was buried this morning.
His nephew Eliwen Jaibi, 33, said they had to carry her body because there are no roads, even dirt track for four wheel drives, to their village.
“We took about three hours to reach the village about four kilometres from the main road,” he said adding two lengths of bamboo pole were tied to the casket so that the volunteers could carry it on their shoulders.
“Everyone took turns carrying the casket. Normally it takes about 90 minutes for us to walk to the village but with the casket it took about three hours.
“We did not stop and had to go through a suspension bridge, hill pady plots and even some steep stretches along the way,” said Eliwen, a farmer in the village about 75km from Kota Kinabalu.
For the trip to bring the casket from Kota Kinabalu, the family paid RM2,300 to reach the junction from where the family members and villagers took over.
“Things would be different if a road could be opened,” he said.