The infant boy was born sickly. Before him there were six others born into the same family namely eldest Ilam (who died of drug overdosed as a spinster), brothers Bajat, Balai, Rantai and sisters Jentang and Mala (deceased at age 42). The boy had many names: Ridau, Gimran,Lachum and Kaka.
Story passed down from the mother had it that while she was pregnant bearing the child she had a dream. In the dream she was told that if the child happened to be a boy he belonged to them. She protested but was ignored. The folks interpreted the peculiarity of the dream to be the root cause of the boy very sickly childhood. Offerings after offerings were offered to their god but to no avail. The elders decided the only way was for the child to be given out and adopted by the boy auntie who was barren and had no child of her own.
His health improved after the adoption but he was still not free of other minor problems. He had his saliva continuously spilling from his mouth (meriul) down his chest and body causing some kind of skin disease, which they called “kaka” in local terms. Looking quite unhygienic, fragile health and with prominent big ears (so they said) he was often a subject of ridicule, contempt and demeaning jokes from youngsters and elders alike. He was bullied time and again and made funs of by people who knew next nothing on the proper nurturing of the young life self esteem, spirit and morale. Not surprising he grew up to become very shy, withdrawn, timid and had very low self esteem and only finding solace in the company of more understanding and sympathetic souls in the longhouse. One particular source of comfort and company was his very old grandma who always stayed at home to look after him because of her age. They spent many days together while the rest in the family worked in the paddy fields.
A typical day in the longhouse was play acting and making mock home (main temuai), a swim in the river, bathing in the boat or even sliding on the mud slope at the river bank. Breakfast and lunch were normally very simple and basic. Sometimes simply sugar or cooking oil and even preserved shrimp paste (belacan) were often used to force rice down his mouth during meal times. Preserved shrimp paste were normally stored in dried bamboo hidden somewhere in the kitchen (atas para). Only when the working members in the family took a day or two breaks off from the routine paddy fields work were the meals more varied than usual with all the fish, meat and vegetable dishes.
Evenings were normally spent in the ruai (veranda) listening to the men folks sharing and exchanging their little stories about their respective recent and past fishing or hunting adventures. The ladies on their part were making traditional mat, breast feeding their little ones or merely listening to the stories being told. Bed times were about 9.00 pm in preparation for early works the next morning. There was no TV but they had an old transistor radio to kill off some evenings bought by one of the brother’s pulai bejalai ari menua jauh.
The poor boy initial experience in school was at the longhouse kindergarten. One of the longhouse folk, who had some basic education and came from outside the village but married to the longhouse girl volunteered to teach. In one of the incident while attending class, there was this little girl who involuntarily caused a stir – a tapeworm was crawling literally out of her backside (burit). The incident greatly embarrassed her and caused the other children to scream in fear and others in laughter. The schooling experiment did not work out very well and soon it was closed down.
The folks subsequently decided to gather all school going age children in the longhouse including the boy and sent them to a proper government primary school about three hours away by boat and trekking through fallowed paddy land (nengah umai, temuda, rimba). The actual sending off to school these children were preceded by a fanfare with offerings to the god (miring, begawai, bedara).There were about 15 – 20 children in all. Not all children wanted to attend school and be separated from their parent at that young, tender and early age – away from the “comfort” of home. There were a lot of negotiations, protests and persuasions. Some had to be dragged, threatened and shipped out to boarding school by force.
To be continued.........................
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