Wood stock in Cow Stone

I passed by the wood seller in Batu Sapi this afternoon. My finger eagerly took a picture of this piled wood not because it is a wood but because the owners of the wood beside the street are Tausug who had been staying in Sabah for two decades.  This wood sales for quite high price but at least in this area only here where this stuff is available.

Wood is indeed inseparable to every family or household in a community or a certain place. Aside from its uses as the number one material for building a stilt house it is also used in a Tausug community to cover the hole inside the graveyard known in the Tausug language as Ding Ding Hali [wall to rest]. That is why there’s an idiom of the Tausug which sounds “Maglitu digpi’” it means someone had passed away.

Tausug in this area had been relocated from one place to the other many times. For the land where their houses located is not theirs. But whenever they are you can easily distinguish them through the wood shop alongside the street.