Adit-2 Blessing Ceremony

I was invited by PPAMPS to witness the blessing ceremony at Adit 2, Karak last week. Since this is the last ceremony to be held (blessing ceremony for Adit 1, Adit-3 and Adit 4 were done earlier), I honestly didn't want to miss it. Luckily my boss gave the permission, which made me the only representative from the Ministry.

We left Cheras at 8.30 pm and arrived at Adit-2 at about 10.30 a.m. The ceremony wasn't until 11 a.m., thus I was cursing at the fact that I'll be burnt again today. 4 days under the sun and I'm dark as a kuali, SERIOUSLY!

With Puan Norzani & Kak Zaharah infront of Adit-2

Notice the kesho-gi above the tunnel portal?

We chatted with the contractors and the highlight of the day was the success of the groundbreaking ceremony the previous day and the newspaper report of the event. I took the opportunity to take photos of the items that will be used for the blessing ceremony, namely salt, sakae and rice grains.

This blessing ceremony is done as the contractors of the project are Japanese (part of the JV). Japanese believe the gods are in nature such as in mountains and seas. They consider mountains as a holy place as back in the ancient days, mountain woships took place. As miners often face dangers while doing excavation or tunnelling works in the mountains and considered deadly dangerous, the blessing ceremony is conducted so that the miners can withstand and work with mother nature.

In Japan, the mountain god is said to be a woman. As traditional custom and in order to appease the goddess, Japanese decorate the tunnel portal with a curved shaped tree and pray for safety throughout tunnel excavation and construction works. They call the tree Kesho-gi. Kesho means make-up and gi means tree. Kesho-gi is considered equivalent to Torii, the entrance of approach to a shrine of a holy place.

Torii

The project director arrived at about 11.15 a.m., together with the DO and JD of Bentong. We assembled in front of Adit-2 and the ceremony started off with the recital of Doa Selamat. Then, the contractors faced the opening of Adit-2, bowed and started to tabur firstly the salt, followed by the rice grains and finally the sakae. They then bowed and clapped thrice. 

Assembling in front of the tunnel portal

Bowing to the mountain god

Tabur garam

Tabur beras

Tabur sakae

Bow again

Clapping thrice (or was it twice?)

To mark the end of the blessing ceremony, they invited the DO of Bentong to press the blasting machine. According to Puan Norzani, that was blasting tahap kanak-kanak but it was loud and bergegar enough so I cannot imagine how the real blasting would be like. We then had a toast (Muslims with Coke and the rest with sakae) and later took photos with the drilling machine infront of Adit-2. The drilling machine was really fascinating and I felt like I was in a Transformers movie coz it could open up (like it was transforming)..I really dunno how to explain it. Suffice to say that when it did its stuff, I did the transforming sound effect..hehehe.

Blasting master getting ready for blasting

Ka-BOOM!!!

 

Transformers-like equipments

 

We left Adit-2 at about 12.30 noon and had lunch at the site office. I was really glad I came because I don't think I'll have the opportunity to experience it elsewhere. It was a very unique custom and interesting to watch. I'm glad I was part of it.

 

With Puan Norzani & Mr. Kawata