Kampong daze

September is a busy month for my family. My sisters, Marina and Lalita, were born on 10th & 18th September and so was my eldest girl, Nabiya, on 22nd September. She will be celebrating her 22nd birthday in two days.

I too will be celebrating my birthday on 28th September!

Birthdays are usually a time of reflection for me. This coming birthday is no exception. However this time around I wish to approach it differently. It moved me to start this blog to be a repository of my memories from as far back as I can remember before I lose them for good. Stories of my early days from my elder sister Betty and my elder brother Piruz hopefully will fill up the gaps, of course assuming that their memories have not failed them. Betty's tendency to be sensational is legendary and most times her imagination does get carried away.

My mum and late grandmother used to fondly talk about the night that I was born. It was some time around midnight in Kampong Gita (a village named after Margharita Brooke, wife of Charles Brooke - the second of the White Rajahs of Sarawak). This is in Sarawak, which is situated on the island of Borneo.

In 1959 there was no Malaysia yet, as Sarawak and Sabah only joined Malaya to form Malaysia in 1962.

Kuching in 1959 must have been a small, quiet town hogging the banks of the lazily meandering Sarawak River. The mixture of English-styled colonial buildings and pre-world war zinc roof Chinese buildings along the narrow streets with throngs with trades, trishaws and bicycles. The wooden houses and their thatched roofs typified the Malay kampong houses in their unique traditional designs which would have dotted the river banks.

Kampong Gita however is not any where near the town centre but somewhere in between Kuching town and Matang mountain. Back in 1959 it was a new settlement carved out of a rubber estate. Years later when I was attending in primary school the kampong was still surrounded by rubber trees.

To access the kampong at that time, one would have to cross the old Satok Suspension Bridge across the Sarawak River. Jalan Matang would be hot and dusty on a dry day, turning into a thick stew of yellow muddy river after the frequent tropical afternoon rains.

There was a Matang transportation company which operated a rudimentary bus service. I remember that the bus was small, not unlike the 'tut-tuts' but much smaller, probably half the size and without any of the decorative facade. The seats were benches along the sides which faced each other, open windows with a green canvass rolled up or down which acted as windows. The buses were painted yellow...I imagine to camouflage the dust and the yellow mud of Jalan Matang.

Kampong Gita at night was quiet, as dark as night can be when the moon has not risen. Street lights came only 10 to 12 years later, if I am not mistaken, and the nights were so dark that when we looked up in the sky we could see the stars like little diamonds scattered on a deep, black velvet blanket. Rubber estates and abandoned rubber estates that were turned into secondary jungles and underbrush surrounded the kampong. Villagers would turn in early, shut their doors and shutters and settle in for an early dinner and the favourite after dinner entertainment would be to tune into the popular dramas of Radio Sarawak. No television and no other distractions.

Rumours of headhunting was still rife though no one could attest that it was, in truth, still occurring. These rumours were fuelled by beliefs that the spirits needed to be appeased as new buildings and bridges were being constructed. Coincidentally a new bigger bridge was being built across the Sarawak river with the intention to replace the old suspension bridge.

The surrounding rubber estates and jungles of Kampong Gita were said to have 'inhabitants' of spirits of various kinds such as the dreaded 'pontianak' (long haired blood thirsty vampires after the blood of young men and mothers giving birth), 'sengkalang' (spirits who are men by day whose head will detached from their body at the neck and scoured for victims at night), 'hantu bangkit' (men and women from certain accursed families who raise from the dead during the first forty days of their death and come back to visit families and friends) and a multitude of other spirits.

On the night that I was born my father was away in the seaside village of Santubong where the installation of the new British Governor of Sarawak, Sir Anthony Abell was being comemorated. I guess that explains how I got my name.

It was against this backdrop that my mum gave birth to me around midnight of 28th September 1959. My mum and grandma would talk about how my grandma and my aunty had to rush in the dead of night looking for the kampong midwife. They painted a picture in my mind of my grandma and aunty rushing in the middle of the dark night. Spirits watching them and my mum left alone in the large wooden house in labour. They swore that they heard the sounds of the chains of the 'jin berantai' in the jungles that night.

Among my earliest memories was my experience of my mum teaching me the alphabets and numbers...I remember my elder brother and sister were at play schools at the time while I was being taught my ABCs and 123s at home. So I presume I couldn't have been more then 4 or 5 years old. That is as far back as I can remember.

Contrary to the dark stories of spirits and jungles etc, what is really interesting though is that the early memories of my early experience tend to have a bright and sunny backdrop...I must have had a very happy childhood. I remember vividly the light blue or very light green walls of our wooden house. I guess our family house was still new too.

Dad who was a mix of a scottish father and an Iban (and supposedly Chinese descent) mother, was a very easy, cheerful person with lots of lighted hearted jokes...a lasting trait of his until he passed on 2 years ago. My memories of my dad has always been of a cheerful and positive person. My dad was a NICE man, a very responsible husband and a great father. I always felt comfortable in my dad's presence. He would understand if we made mistakes and support us if we failed. He was the superhero 'Mr Reliable' to me. And he was such a handsome man. He was said to look like Clark Gable, hollywood heartthrob of the time.

Mum is equally exotic and pretty; of Northern Indian (mongolian ancestries) and Malay descent. Mum strikes me now as a picture of a very focused person clear on what she wanted her kids to be when we grow up. A very firm visionary and no nonsense person and my pillar of strength. From my earliest memory I remember that my mum had a clear picture of me doing well in school, university and moving on to be a successful person. This character of my mum is deeply etched in my life making me one for clear goals, objectives and dreams.

There are lots of wonderful experiences of my parents which I hope to piece together.

Wonderful experiences with my brothers, sisters, aunties, uncles, grandparents, friends are coming back as I write this piece. Pieces of a jigsaw puzzle I hope to put together as I go along to cherish and share with my children. Memories of the fasting month and Raya are always sweet and tomorrow's Raya should be a wonderful addition to this. I trust it will be the same for my four wonderful children, Nabiya, Mark, Elyza and Adam.