by. Zuraida
A few weeks ago, I visited my friend at Mega
Timur village, in Kubu Raya district, 4 km to the north of Pontianak. It is
about 40 minutes by motorcycle from my house in Pontianak. She asked me to come
to her house because one of her brothers would get married. I am eager to come
because I am really interested to see a madurese traditional wedding ceremony.
I arrived at my friend’s house a few days before
the wedding ceremony. Fortunately, they were busy to make a kind of traditional
food called dodol kuear at that time.
Dodol kuear is such a compulsory
serving at madurese wedding proposal ceremonies. A wedding proposal ceremony
without dodol kuear can be assumed as a “small” ceremony. But it was not about
money at all. It was about some traditional values and the spirit of social
involvement that was constructed by the process of making dodol kuear in Madurese society. This was an interesting perspective
of how traditional food can define a culture.
I had dodol
kuear twice, once at a haul
(death) ceremony and the other at the celebration of Prophet Muhammad’s
birthday at my friend’s house. Both of them are Madurese traditional ceremonies.
I had it for third at that time. Dodol
kuear was made from rice powder. It had sweet taste which came from
palm-sugar.
Dodol
kuear
was made with simple equipments such as a traditional trivet, a large frying
pan, and young rib of palm-leaf to stir the batter. The process of making dodol kuear involved almost all of people
in the village especially in collecting fire woods for the trivet, preparing
the ingredients, and stirring the batter that takes at least the power of four
people. It took three or four days to process it. People talked a lot and had a
great fun along the process of making dodol
kuear. That was the time when people in the village gathered.
From the process that I saw, there are some values
of local wisdom that can determine the attitude of Madurese society, such as
togetherness, solidarity, and mutual aid value in a society. Madurese people
believe that if they help others, they will be helped by others. As the
proverbs that goes: one good turn deserves another.
