JULY 6 — Long Lellang is a tiny, remote village in the highlands of Sarawak, home to around a hundred families, mostly from the Kelabit and Penan tribes.

Not many people outside of Sarawak have heard of it, and even within, only a handful of 4WD aficionados have visited because it is difficult to get there. It does have an airfield, Long Lellang Airport (IATA: LGL, ICAO: WBGF), classified as a STOL (Short Take Off & Landing) port served by MAS Wings Twin Otter aircraft that can accommodate a dozen passengers at a time.

It is not often anything sufficiently significant happens at Long Lellang to interest the media but the one time it merited mention, it came out wrongly as Long Tellang.

It could have been a simple typo but the article is archived online and, being a great article, has been shared and searched on Google.

When Baru Bian was appointed as works minister recently, the first member of the Lun Bawang community to hold such a high post, the spotlight naturally turned on him, and that article was re-read and cited by others, and that small error propagated. Search Google for “Long Tellang” and you will see, all the results link to Baru Bian. Except that he went to primary school in Long Lellang.

When I first saw “Tellang,” I was unsure if it was an error because I had never heard of it, and although I have visited the highlands several times, I am in no way an expert on the geography. So, I asked a few friends, including a few from Long Lellang, and they, too, had never heard of it.

Long, in the native languages, means “confluence of two rivers,” much like the “kuala” in Kuala Lumpur. Since there are so many tribes collective called Orang Ulu and they all have their own languages, there other village prefixes such as Pa and Ba, with similar or related meanings. Ba'Kelalan and Pa' Dalih are examples.

Another son of Long Lellang who has walked barefoot to school and gone on to greater things is my friend Roland Bala, who now runs Heineken in Cambodia.

Ironically, those children of Long Lellang who go out into the big wide world are often misidentified as being from Bario, which is much better known. It's easier to just say “Bario” when asked about their hometown than describe where Long Lellang is.

So, I hope the record is set straight so that the people of Long Lellang get to enjoy their day in the sun.

* Paul Si is a Malay Mail reader.

** This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of Malay Mail.