The jungle wedding

Susie and members of the wedding party on the river. Susie's home in a longhouse settlement in the jungle of Sarawak can only be accessed by boat. Picture / Michaela Jack

This is the moment that Aucklander Garry Allport and Iban woman Susie Kudom are married. The couple are seated on low stools. Susie's father circles a rooster over their heads, its legs bound with twine. Then his small, strong hands push the couple's heads together, hard enough to make Garry wince. As he stands before them, hands on their temples, he intones a blessing.

This is a wedding Iban-style. We are deep in the green and twisted jungle of Sarawak, the Malaysian part of the island of Borneo. Our hosts descend from formidable headhunters; today they are largely subsistence farmers with a reputation as generous, family-oriented people who embrace the modern world but retain traditional ritual.

And today, seated on the tiled floor of a longhouse several hours by river from the nearest settlement, several hundred Iban chatter away and pour rice wine for the 22 New Zealand guests. We are watching another chapter of a unique love story.

Garry, born in 1963, the youngest of three children, attended Lynfield College in Auckland, then did a civil engineering cadetship. A keen runner and sailor, he roamed the world, working in Britain and Australia. But learning to fly was always in the back of his mind, and at 26, Garry started training.

He later spent three years flying relief operations for the United Nations in Sudan and a further four piloting charter planes in other parts of Africa. In 2001 he started flying for Royal Brunei Airlines, making a home in the wealthy sultanate.

Susie, 12 years younger than Garry, grew up to the rhythm of the rice-planting season in remote Melaban, a village accessible only by a fast-flowing river. As a child, after classes at the onsite primary school, she would run half-an-hour to the paddy fields to help her parents.

Schooled in Iban handcrafts and animist ritual by a strict grandmother, Susie, the eldest of six, was raised to believe that everything - such as rice or animals - is an expression of living spirits, and certain things must be done to please them.

But Susie didn't want her parents' backbreaking life. She followed a cousin to Brunei to work: as national park tour guide, office assistant, typist, cashier. At 18, she ran for Sarawak in the Malaysian National Games.

Garry and Susie met at a dinner party in 2003. Susie, at the time the office manager for a car servicing company, was accompanying a friend. Her first impression: "He's so handsome!"

Garry was struck by her outgoing nature and how well-travelled she was for a woman of her background - she'd been to Japan and Britain. Some months later, he tracked her down at work, saying his car battery was playing up. She couldn't find much wrong, but made checks and charged him $10. "You still owe me," he said, to her surprise. "Lunch?"

Susie went but was cool, telling Garry she didn't want to go with a "Euro man". She had already rebuffed a number of expats. They all left eventually so why get involved?

Garry persisted. Susie told him, as she had told numerous others, that she would date him only if he could beat her in a race up the capital's notorious Bukit Shah Bandar, a steep, muddy hill.

The reason, she told me later, was that like most Iban, she is non-confrontational - "I just can't say no". The race, which she always won easily, became an indirect way of telling men to push off. Although Garry was fit - he had run several marathons - she thrashed him, too. But Susie took pity: "I was thinking: okay then, I'll give him a chance."

Susie captivated us, too, when Garry brought her to New Zealand in 2003: she seemed at home and her English improved rapidly.

She showed us photos of her family and sketches of Iban life, and served us sandy-coloured rice wine, called tuak. We were fascinated by this smiling woman who had walked so confidently between jungle and city.

Susie found work in Auckland, minding two schoolgirls and helping out in a teak furniture shop. Later, she studied Thai massage and combined that with Iban beauty techniques, landing well-paid work in Auckland spas.

Meanwhile, worried about culture clash, Garry dithered over proposing to Susie. "I had a lot of worries," he said, "and for a long time I decided that it would be best not to get married."

But then he decided that the quality of their relationship was what counted. And he noted that Susie had bridged the gaps. "We accept that our parents come from different worlds," said Garry, "and that there will be limited cross-over at their level."

On a sunny October day last year, Garry and Susie had a white wedding with Iban features at Cornwall Park. Her parents couldn't make it so Garry's dad Ron gave her away. Jo Jata Vallely, an Iban friend living in Brunei and married to a Royal Brunei pilot, was one of the matrons of honour.

To bless the pair, their wedding rings were put in a small bag of rice and passed through the hands of each guest. A gong, struck three times, summoned Susie's gods to the ceremony. As Iban believe that these gods live in large, old trees, Susie poured a tuak offering on the ground beneath a pohutukawa.

But the couple also decided to get married in Sarawak and invite New Zealand family and friends. A traditional longhouse wedding was important, said Garry, "as a mark of respect on my part, but mainly for Susie.

"We also wanted people we are close to in New Zealand to get a feel for where Susie comes from. Susie talks about the longhouse a lot and this makes it more real to our family and friends."

On a Monday in May, after 11 hours in the air between Auckland and Brunei, two hours' driving over the border into Sarawak, Malaysia, and 85 cramped minutes in a motorised longboat, Garry and 22 sweaty Kiwi mates clamber on to land, unload slabs of beer, the three frozen tiers of the wedding cake, and warm champagne.

Garry's parents Ron and Shirley are not present, but his brother Rob and two teenage nieces are along for the five-day visit. There are six under-10s, among them Maia and Sacha Baillie, aged 5, and 8. Parents Gail and Russell see the trip as a chance to increase the kids' confidence and experience of life. And me? I want to learn what makes Susie tick.

The sound of gongs drifts towards us, followed by the villagers, compact people with shiny black hair and broad smiles. Susie, who has travelled ahead of us, carries a bottle of tuak and a glass, ready to pour shots for each arrival. Susie's longhouse is called Melaban, the name is a corruption of "Melbourne" and refers to Australian soldiers who were stationed in the area in World War II. The settlement houses about 600 people in three two-storey concrete and wood longhouses.

One of the longhouses stretches about 350m, and the others, which face it across an open space, about half that. Running down the front of each is an 8m-wide, covered open corridor called a ruai, off which family apartments open.

We follow the ritual for new arrivals and are escorted, in ragged procession, the length of two of the ruai, gongs calling the news of visitors. There must be the appropriate welcome. Offerings to the spirits and the ancestors are laid out on the ruai's tiled floor: sticky rice shaped in lengths of bamboo, popped rice (which looks like popcorn), rice cake, hard-boiled eggs, and the ever-present tuak.

Susie guides Garry, who speaks only a few words of Iban, through the ritual, which involves creating patterns in the plates of popped rice with the other food. The rooster clutched by one of the elders disappears outside; a bloodied feather comes back and is laid across one of the plates.

In response, we sing the national anthem and the guys do a spirited haka, to the amusement of the Iban.

Garry, who has visited the longhouse several times before, has prepped us on other aspects of daily life. Leave your shoes outside. An Iban, having shaken your hand, touches the fingertips to the heart.

There is plenty of piped stream water into the longhouse but we need to boil it before drinking. There is a squat loo and a flush one, but you need to fill the cistern with a bucket to flush it into the septic tanks.

Most importantly, says Garry, don't call Susie's parents by their given names - it is impolite for even Susie to do so. Her dad, who speaks basic English, is Apai ("father") and her mother, who speaks none, Indai ("mother", pronounced "en-aye").

We've arrived in the week of the harvest festival, called gawai, which is holiday and wedding season. All work - planting rice, tapping rubber, tending the pigs - stops.

Longhouse life is simple, communal and family-oriented, much like marae life. Though the selfish attitudes of Western life are absent, some of its consumer goods are on display. As there are no roads, and when it rains, it pounds, I wonder how hard it is to transport stereos - and lounge suites, and TVs for playing DVDs and videos, and chest freezers - up the river in boats barely backside-width.

There's no privacy, and people are constantly on the move. You just do what you're doing, whether that's dressing, sitting on the kitchen floor peeling vegetables or drinking tuak (though I don't see any overt drunkenness).

Iban life means "being open-hearted", says Susie. "You have to share everything, do everything together, and be respectful."

The meals - eggplant stews, palm hearts and casseroles of chicken and beef - are cooked on a bottled-gas hob, though there is an open fire out the back. Rice comes with everything. Breakfast is crackers and peanut butter.

In the intense heat, everyone moves languidly except for the gaggles of Iban kids, who have a few words of school English and spirit the Kiwi kids away. Several of Susie's peers speak some English but it is harder to converse with her mother and aunts, some of whom never went to school.

We wash our sweat-soaked clothes and ourselves in the blessedly cool shallows of the river. Nudity is not on in Iban culture, so you soap up under a sarong.

It is obvious from day one that chickens mean a lot to Iban, and not just for food. Iban identify with them, says Susie, as chickens are independent, resilient creatures who can scratch a meal from the soil. They are in touch with the gods of the earth.

But what surprises us most about the longhouse is the noise. Our stay is accompanied by ear-splitting artificial noise. All day and most of the night, boys throw firecrackers; shotguns are fired into the air.

Two-stroke household generators, which normally only run from 6pm-9pm, rattle most of the night, powering competing stereos.

Why the commotion? Harvest festival is akin to our Christmas and New Year, says Susie, and "everybody has to make a noise so the spirits can see that they are being invited".

The wedding formalities get under way on our third day with another walk the length of the ruai, Susie in her white wedding dress and Garry in a safari-style suit.

Once we've assembled outside Susie's parents' apartment, Apai performs a swooping, foot-lifting Iban dance, a rattan hat decorated with five hornbill feathers on his head, a sword and a narrow wooden shield in his hands.

It's still noisy - stereos, fire crackers and chatter.

Garry and Susie cut the three-tier cake in their white outfits, but the wedding party changes into traditional Iban garb to pour a champagne tower.

Iban strength in weaving and silverwork is reflected in the outfits: the men wear a long red loincloth (over bike pants) and a woven waistcoat. The women are helped into beaded collars, woven wraparound skirts and towering silver headdresses. An overskirt made of silver Malaysian coins is bound tightly around their waists.

Gail finds getting the headdress on uncomfortable, but she grins widely once it is in place. "It's all so wonderful. It's going to be a shame to take it off."

Garry and Susie wear solemn expressions as their heads are pushed together and they become symbolically one. You can pick newly-weds from the bruises on their temples, says Susie later, and she is surprised not to get one.

Then the games begin. Traditionally, competitions determine in whose house the couple will live. Teams barrack for Garry's brother Rob and one of Susie's aunts as they compete in a smoking competition, a blow-out-the-lamp contest and a halve-the-betel-nut face-off.

Then things collapse into tuak-drinking, dancing and karaoke caterwauling. Traditional Iban dance for the newly-weds is on the programme, but we never get there. It doesn't seem to matter.

Cock fighting - technically illegal in Malaysia but widely practised in Borneo - dominates the day after the wedding, and the betting is keen. The roosters have a double-edged blade attached to a leg, and some of the fights, flurries of bloodied feathers, last as little as 20 seconds. If both birds die, there's no payout.

That evening in Susie's parents' house, Apai calls us together for the Gawai Eve spread. He circles the room, lifting a rooster above our heads and the food, as a blessing.

The next day, Garry and Susie are up at 4.30am to wash a pig that he has been given, one of 50 that will be sacrificed in a Gawai ritual. "The Iban," says Susie, "believe that the pigs are proud to be killed."

Outside Apai and Indai's home, Susie and Jo, in traditional dress, bring out plates of offerings, which include rice but also sweets and dried peas.

The first sacrifice is a rooster. Garry's pig squeals with human intensity as one of the elders slices its jugular, and the liver is excised immediately so it can be used to read Garry's fortune.

Apai examines the liver, laid on a plate, and, smiling broadly, pronounces that Garry will marry twice - ticked that off already, quips Garry - and that he will be promoted. Then the liver is cooked for him to eat.

The carcasses lie for hours more, until someone gets around to collecting them up for the pot. It is an odd juxtaposition: the reverence accorded animals before death and the apparent indifference after.

On the morning we leave, we present gifts to Susie's parents: pencils and books for the school, clothes, more whisky. The presents and money donated, says Garry later, "earned us a huge amount of mana in the eyes of the Iban people".

But there's one last thing: a tug of war, Iban versus Kiwi. It's utter chaos, with uneven teams and tuak splashed on the tiles to slip people up. But everyone is laughing themselves stupid.

As we leave, Garry dubs the trip "a resounding success. I'm really proud of how everyone fitted into the longhouse culture".

And everyone understands more about Susie: "That's important to me because I have brought her to New Zealand, where life is very different."

Susie heads back to Auckland with her parents' blessing. "It was important for my parents to know and trust Garry and his community," she says. "They are happy to let me go back because they have seen how Garry is. They can sleep well at night."

Who was in the wedding party?

Gail Baillie
Matron of Honour

Marketing manager for an Auckland law firm, Gail and husband Russell took their two daughters and her in-laws, Bill Baillie, the legendary 1960s athlete, and his wife Val.

The benefits for the kids, she says, included a mod-con-free existence, "and learning in a very real way where meat comes from. They didn't generally see any slaughtering, but they knew that the losers in the cock fights were called 'lunch' and that the pigs-on-sticks ended up as dinner".

Jo Jata Vallely
Matron of Honour

Jo, 33, was a matron of honour at both weddings. Also Iban but from another part of Borneo, Jo is married to Wanganui-born Jason, a pilot for Royal Brunei Airlines, which is how she met Garry.

She is a full-time mum to two children, an 11-year-old daughter and a one-year-old son (both of whom stayed at home with the nanny). One of six children, Jo grew up a city girl as her father was a school principal - though her mother "never went to school in her life". She had never worn traditional Iban dress before the wedding, "which is a shame, really".

Mark Darin
Best man

Manager of an Auckland medical equipment company, Mark and his wife Fiona took their three children, aged from 7 to 11. His enduring memory: Susie, in her Auckland wedding outfit, perched in a longboat on the river. It was not quite where he expected to see a white wedding dress.

Andrew Balemi
Best man

A lecturer in statistics at the University of Auckland, Andrew left the longhouse feeling "awe at the strength and power of the Iban way of mutual dependence". But he wondered how "the West's relentless individualism" might undermine Iban ways as younger people leave longhouses for the cities.

Kudom Anak Enkang (Apai)
Susie's father

A rice farmer most of his life, Apai is a senior member of the longhouse. Susie's parents also have a concrete house with some mod-cons several hours down the river.

Nyala Anak Kamyau
Susie's mother

Addressed as "Indai" by all of us, she is illiterate, but has learned to sign her name. She apparently suffered a few sleepless nights after hearing her daughter wanted to marry a foreigner, but warmed to Garry after he engaged himself in longhouse life.

Jarom Antot

Temenggong or head man for the region, and one of Susie's maternal uncles. He is the only person left in the village who really was a headhunter, she says, and he wears the distinctive throat tattoo to prove it. Everyone else's tattoos, says Susie, denote their masculinity rather than a murderous past.