The titi dwellers

I wanted to migrate from the kampung series for a bit and start tracing my venture into primary school, but Nabiya and Marko wanted me to stay on in the kampung a little longer. They were curious to know more of the Kampung Gita where I grew up. They think that everything from my era was funny. So here I am, back in Kampung Gita in the 1960s and 70s so they can make fun of our bell bottoms, high heel shoes and clogs.

The kampung was like any other Malay kampung in Sarawak. Wooden houses with 'atap belian' roofs, belian stilts and resting on belian 'gelegars'. (I really cannot find an english word for 'gelegar' so just ask an old Sarawakian friend what it means. Belian is the iron wood found only in Borneo. Most houses would have wooden window shutters.  

Our house is No. 35 Jalan Bunga Rose, Kampung Gita (no post codes those days) and like most houses ours have verandahs with sturdy belian staircases. As a boy I used to get belian wood splinters, 'suran', in my toes or fingers and extracting them from under your skin was a painful experience.

Our verandah was a bit different from others. It was on a split level between the ground level and the first floor of the house and spacious. This was where we would surround mum in the evenings while she fed us nasi campur dinner from a large tray. Like noisy baby birds huddled in the nest, mouths wide open waiting for our turn for a handful of food from mum - 'makan sapik' as we call it in Sarawak.

No 35, Jln Bunga Rose was an average house, living cum dining room areas for visitors and three bedrooms. Originally the bedrooms did not have doors, just curtains hanging from a cord. The dining and kitchen were on a lower level. The floors were wooden and there were gaps between the planks of the wooden floors. As little kids we had fearful imaginations of pontianak or any hantu peeping through the gaps or poke their long finger nails through. We were very careful where we placed our feet then.

The bathroom was just a protrusion from the house, zinc walled, belian floors with gaps between the planks. When you shower, water would drain through the purpose built gaps in the floor to the 'juruk' below. The 'juruk' was murky, muddy, slimmy green drain below the bathroom. Most kampung boys would have their 'tales from the juruk'. Betty recalled I once fell in the juruk when I was around 5 years old and reemerge like the Swamp Thing, covered in slime from head to toe with bubbles in my mouth. 

Houses in Kampung Gita were quite similar, slightly different in size and shape but with the same basic concept. Wooden planks were arranged horizontally for walls, with slight overlaps for effect called "..dindin sisit" in Sarawak. The imperfections in the planks and craftsmanship would be very telling during the nights when rays of lights flickered through the cracks. Aiyoo..these cracks was probably why we had 'orang minyak' or 'pong pong' as Betty called him (or them?). Pong pong meant stark naked; so obviously Betty must have seen the 'orang minyak' in his nudity. Poor girl is 'traumatised' till today..hehehe. 

Then there was the far out 'outhouse'; the now extinct 'jamban'. Nope, no 'jamban tarik' for us. It was just a hole in the ground with a drum in it and the top end cut off. A small hut on stilts over the drum, zinc roof, zinc walls and a rudimentary latch door. Wooden floors with...hehehe...a hole in the floor where we did our big job. Whatever you do, do not look down through the hole. But kids are curious ...boy oh boy...do not look down! We also learnt how to hold our breathe for as long as at least a minute or more. Get your job done fast and furious if you must but get out, pronto! You do not hang around in there! Gross!!

For obvious reasons the jamban were ALWAYS built as far away as possible from the main house. Ours was a good 20 meters or so, right on the fringe of the jungle. As an 8 year old it seemed more like 100 meters. I remember a certain macho boss in the jamban and had constipation, hollering out loud for "AYER! AYER!". Yours truly would ran the whole imaginary 100 meters to give him drinking water. Man!!!

The distance to the jamban posed another problem for us kids - what if you need to visit the jamban at night? No way! Not with all the hantus in the jungle around you; probably giving birth to the mysterious late night 'titi' dwellers!

The drains lining the streets in the kampung have always been there. Those days we would have a simple wooden walkway over the drain, called 'titi'. Every house had a titi and ours was originally belian and later changed to concrete piles. I remember the day when my dad and uncle were working on replacing the belian titi with concrete piles. My dad's finger was almost crushed when it was caught between the concrete slabs. It must be very painful.

People in the kampung seems to spend a lot of time on their titis. Most built wooden benches for sitting on their titis. Some of the benches are simple one piece of wooden plank while others had back rests on it. The kampung folks young and old spent a lot of time sitting, congregating and socialising around the titi. The teenagers would gather at the titis at night, chatting, singing (trying to singing) with their guitars or dating. Later when television was introduced, the shows like Wild Wild West, Bonanza, Little House on the Prairie, etc led to the reduction of the titi dwellers.   

There were also the mysterious late night titi dwellers...hehehe. Because the jambans were far from the main house, most people were afraid to use them when nature's call came late at night. Out of desperation a very small number (I stress SMALL which means yours truly excluded...hehehe) would resort to the drain instead. 'Shadowy figures' hunched at the edge of the titis with their heads covered in sarongs in pitch darkness. You could see these shadows in the corner of your eyes as you walked the streets at night. I suspected that the titi dwellers actually used their neighbours' titis instead of their own. My dad built benches with back rests on both sides of our titis so that nobody could use our titi. The titi dwellers finally became extinct when street lamps were installed.

Nonetheless Kampung Gita was a very pretty kampung, cheery and full of sunshine. There was a lot of hustle and bustle, villagers in the streets, kids playing all kinds of games - hide and seek, kites, hop, skip & jump or jengkek as we knew it, etc. There were kids running, balancing a bicycle wheel with a stick; playing badminton and football on the streets. There were adults walking the babies and elderly folks stopping and chatting with neighbours. There were folks calling out to each other from the windows or verandahs, greeting and joking. The 'apek sekerem' (ice cream man) plying the streets ringing the brass bell on the wooden handle.  

The gardens were well kept and trimmed, flowering plants of all sorts planted in the garden. There would be 'bunga podin', cempaka, frangipani, roses, bourgainvillas, marigolds, etc. Each house would have some form of vegetable or edible plants in their garden or on the road reserves in front of their houses. Tapioca, sweet potatoes, bananas, yam or keladi, coconuts, rambutan trees, papayas, pokok pinang or beetle nut trees, chillis, tomatoes, kacang panjang, etc. We were practising 'buku hijau' if anyone can still remember that.

During the rambutan season the boys who did not have rambutan trees at home, would help themselves to their neighbours'. My late neighbour, Ghani, was the prime target. He worked in the Agriculture Department and had planted the best rambutan trees. During rambutan seasons we would be hanging on the branches of his tree while Ghani would be raining curses and profanities at us.

We had plenty to eat, boiled tapioca or bandung (now glamorously called ubi kayu) and eaten with cocunut and sugar were yummy. And of course we were told by the elders that you should not climb a banana tree or else you get 'burut'. Ask a Sarawakian friend if you do not know what burut means.....hehehe! Will talk about that another day. 

What made each kampung unique are the characters, personalities and lives of the people in the kampung. The casts of Kampung Gita were unique, not chosen nor picked, no director or producer, no scripts, some lead characters and many supporting; just a reality drama with numerous sub plots trudging along. Having stepped off the stage for more then 20 years and watching fleetingly from the side, I wonder if I can I really make sense of the main plot. It is an endearing story of surviving and thriving. 

For some it is a story of staying simple in the world of Kampung Gita. For a few who wished to dream of a world much bigger than Kampung Gita they let their imaginations bring them beyond the boundary of Kampung Gita and out of Borneo. Then there was a whole bunch of people who grew organically, branching out but remaining deeply rooted in Kampung Gita too and never wandering too far away. But there were sub plots of despair, sadness, delights and happiness too.

Meantime thank God the mysterious titi dwellers are extinct!

(My editor has a real job now working with an oil and gas company, but I do not need to remind her that she is still bonded to her father and needs to edit this posting. Till then ignore the 'england mistakes' or titi dwellers will visit you...hehehe..bye)