THERE will be no Gawai celebration this year for residents of the 11-door Iban longhouse Mandau Lempaong, in the rural town of Betong, some 140km from Kuching.
Their preparations to usher in the biggest festival in the Dayak calendar – the festival to give thanks to a bountiful rice harvest – have instead turned into those to bury two residents who on Thursday evening died in a head-on collision on the Pan-Borneo Highway.