Zuraida Thamrin

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. It is such a compulsory serving at madurese wedding proposal ceremonies. A wedding proposal ceremony without it can be assumed as a “small” ceremony. 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.
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. It 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 it 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 it. 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. The people believe that if they help others, they will be helped by others. As the proverbs that goes: one good turn deserves another.