IN THAT House

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In that house?at Sungai Kerling, at around 6 pm one day, in the shared kitchen, my mother was preparing our dinner, suddenly 3rd?uncle flung a stool at her. It went up and dropped in a curve before reaching my mum. She blocked it with her left arm and got bruises on her upper and lowered arm.

I was shocked but could not follow my mummy because she ran out of the house and walked to ?my Guakong house which was more than a mile away. I waited in the kitchen until she returned. to continue preparing the dinner. I knew she would never fail us. She told me she was a very strong person because as a teenager, she used to collect fire wood for the family. She used an axe, and a machete.

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More than an hour later, she returned to prepare the dinner. Kim Toh was outside the house at that moment, and Kim Yong, ?was in the bedroom upstairs. He was then slightly more than 12 months old. I was the only one who saw the incident with horror. My dad was still in Masapol looking after the rubber estate, which consisted of about 40 acres.

The 4th uncle was still living there. He too would always abuse my mum with sarcastic and harsh words. My zeechim and sachim would always whisper to each other. My mum told me those people wanted to kick us out of the house and land.

For that night we ate dinner with a lighted kerosene lamp. And not a single word was ?mentioned about the assault because of the fear of another attack.

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Before Nienie moved to Batu Arang, to live with her brother Kim Suah, she gave all her remaining cows and goats to Chau Tham. The house of Kim Suah was subsided by Nienie ?and she was allocated a huge room. NieNie also had a share on a hardware shop operated by Kim Suah, in Labuan. The shop was named Sin Lee Company, a hardware shop.

There were two huts for cows to sleep in at night, and another hut for the goats too. Before Nienie left, there were also about 10 pigs in another hut. But she sold all before she left. The pigs were fed with pig?weeds, grown on that land too.?Sweet potatoes and the shoots of the potatoes were also used to feed the pigs.?

Before the Japanese invaded China, my yehyeh bought the parcel of land in Sg.?Kerling, which was a forest, and had a timber house built. Five wells wells dug?so that the family would never run out of potable water during the dry season every year. He planted hill paddy?enough for the whole family for one year. The paddy was grown every year, then. More than one acre was grown with paddy.

My yehyeh shop at the town was Tiong Guan. At that time the business was very bad and it was not worth running that shop. He moved the family to a village where he could earn more money by rearing cattles, goats, pigs and fowls. By then the school teacher could not comprehend all these. He started to look down on my dad who was the only student not residing in the town. My dad left school at age 10, at primary 4. My yehyeh then bought him a parcel of 10 acres of rubber land, and recruited several Indonesians to be the tappers and helpers. My dad lived at the rubber plantation and managed the routine there alone with the assistance of all those Indonesians. He also continued to study Chinese until he had mastered at least about 3000 Chinese basic words. He also mastered the use of Chinese abacus for calculation, which was very useful when he had to declare the income tax every year. After several years of managing the plantation, he made some money and bought two more parcels of lands which were connected to his land. After my yehyeh and nienie passed away, my 4th?uncle wanted to get married but he told my dad he did not have the money to make it. Since the first parcel of land was paid by my yehyeh, my dad sold the parcel and gave him all the money for him to buy a parcel of land in Labuan, and have a timber house built too.

I still remember how my aunties removed the paddy husk. They used a rice pounder, which was actually a timber mortar manufactured from a block of timber 3 feet long and 20 inches square, with an opening cut ?from the top to about three inches at the bottom. The hole was about 18 inches diameter. The timber pestle was 5 feet long with a diameter of 2 inches from the top, increasing to 2.25 inches at the bottom, which had a round ball at the end. My 3rd?and 4th?aunt would pound the paddy after it had been dried in the hot sun for two days. There was enough rice for the whole family all the year round. This timber mortar was manufactured in that way because of stability and the deep opening would prevent the paddy from flying out during pounding. The paddy husk was used to feed the pigs after cooking it!

The remaining areas were planted with coconut trees, each about 30 feet from the other. So apart from eating weeds, the pigs were fed with crushed coconut too. They also planted various types of fruit trees. I remember there were pamelo, jackfruit, mango, guavas, limes etc. They also grew plenty yams, tapioca, sweet potatoes, and kangkong?[water spinach].

Within our compound, there were several cows, goats, ?pigs, dogs and fowls. It was common to see the animals having intercourse in the field. The fowls and the ducks did the same thing. They were allowed to roam freely. It was normal and no one would pay any attention to that.

Ah Tham inherited 5 cows and about 6 goats from Nienie. And the cows used the horns?to break into mother’s vegetable garden which had a complete fence made of timber and coconut leaves. The cows ate up some of the vegetables. That garden was about 24 feet by 44 feet. She built that all by herself. Each bed for the vegetable?was about 3 feet wide, 22 feet long ?and 10 inches high. The first two beds were with long beans, followed by 2 beds of spinach, with another 2 beds of cucumber. The other 6 beds were with okra, brinjal, changkok manis, and yams.

Every week, mother would harvest the vegetables?and carried them in two baskets with a bamboo bar on her shoulder, to Guakong house who would bring them to the vegetable sellers at the market?on the following day morning.

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Mother also collected about 10 coconuts each week, removed the husks, held the nut on the left palm, and split the nut into halves by hitting the nut at the center between the top and the bottom of the nut, with the blunt side of a chopper.

She then removed the coconut meat or flesh as some people called it. She grated all the meats and then put all the grated flesh into a large container. Then she held the grated coconut into both palms and squeezed it to collect the milk in another container. That container is then covered and left until the next day, when the fat formed on the top of the container. A large spoon was used to skim off all the fat and leave the fat in the wok, to boil it. A brownish chunky waste would float to the top. She would collect this waste to put on a wire mesh on top of the wok for some oil to drip down from the waste. Three and a half large coconuts would produce one litre of oil. The oil was filled in clean bear bottle, and tightly plugged with corks. Every week, she would bring few bottles of oil to my guakong who would help to bring them to the market for sale.

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Chicken coop : We had one with more than about 15 hens and two roosters. I remembered only the bigger rooster, because that was the only one which allowed me to sit on his back, to play with him , if I did not put all my body weight on him. The other rooster, a smaller and younger one, ?would not allow me to touch him. The coop was constructed with ataps on top and wire mesh on the four sides, with four timber poles protruding ?vertically from the ground. The wire mess is to prevent the snakes from going in to kill the chicks. Several inches from the bottom of the coop, they were many cross bars for the chicks to roost at night. Mum built this hut out of timber Guakong collected from shop houses in the town. Every week, we had sufficient eggs to take over for Guakong to sell at the market. Guakong had to walk from his house to the river mouth. There he boarded his canoe, and paddled it to the market. From Guakong house to this canoe he had to walk about 30 minutes. In the sea he needed another 30 minutes to cross over to the market. Life was definitely not easy in those day when electricity and running water were still unknown. And infrastructure was very primitive.

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My mother also used to buy some bamboos from the Malay villages to weave baskets and sieves. These too were passed on to gukong who would help to sell them at the market. The shirts and shorts we wore were also tailored by the mother. She would prepared all the required pieces of clothes and bring them to a neighbour’s house to use their machine for sewing.

The three partitions of the land was suggested by my Nienie, and it was obvious Ah Tham and Ah Yam grapped the better portions because during dry season, they needed the extra well of water to grow their vegetables. Those five wells were our only means of potable water. There was no water supply from the government facility. Later on Ah Yam managed to ?change the owner of the land?to?his himself alone, after my Nienie passed away. Ah Tham moved out after he had sold all the cows and goats.?Nienie bought another parcel of land near the Tamu ground, and named it under the 4th?uncle because the land in Sg.Kerling were divided for the first 3 sons.

I left that house at aged 9, stopping schooling to assist my father run a sundry shop at Lajau. My daddy started that shop because he lost his job while working for another person whose shop was closed down. I learned to cook and collect dried fire wood and also buying and selling. Many months later my mum and all the other sibblings too left the Sg. Kerling house to join us after we move to Lajau. I told my mum I wanted to go to school. The following year, she sent me to school, and bought me a small bicycle.

In the same year Dad found another job, and we moved to Batu Arang , in 1955 after the Chinese New Year.

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Wood Stove made of clay: We had a double wood stoves made of clay which enabled you to cook and boil water at the same time, provided you light up ?woods under each stove. Those stoves were placed on a timber table, the top of which was filled up with clay of at least one inch thick. The fuel for cooking was totally made up of wood, coconut shells, and coconut leaves. Our breakfast was either pancakes, with coffee, or yam, sweet potatoes, or tapioca. Only after I had grown up had I found out that yam, sweet potatoes, and tapioca were very nutritious and they were not poor food as claimed by people from the West.

There were wild boars around our land. I saw them many times. There was a neighbour who lived about 600 meters away. He had a gun, and told us whenever we see wild boars to go and inform him so that he could come over to shoot them. He promised to give a portion of the wild boar to us if the catch was successful. One day i saw a mother pig, leading about 10 piglets from one location to another location. The mother walked in front followed by all the piglets in a single file. I did not tell anyone else because I did not want the piglets to be without a mother! I still remembered vividly how I felt when my own mother was hurt in front of me.

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My dad left school at aged 11. My yehyeh bought him a parcel of rubber land in Masapol and told him ?to managed it. He had a few workers to assist him and was able to produce several sheets of rubber everyday. Later on, with the profits he made, he bought another parcel of rubber land which was also connected to his existing land. Eventually he bought two more parcels of rubber land both also connected to his existing lands. In total he had about 36 acres of rubber land, with about 20 rubber tappers, all from Indonesia. These rubber tappers walked for a week from Indonesia to Masapol, spending the nights on the way in the forests, by lighting a fire at night to keep away wild animals, subsisting on wild edible plants and wild fruits.

This rubber estate was within walking distance from my 2nd?Aunty’s shop house. This shop house had two stories. All bedrooms were upstairs, with the kitchen and bathroom downstairs. There were two billiard tables in that shop.

At night, my dad would come to the open areas around the shop houses to sell his dried cuttlefish. The fish were roasted with charcoal fire and pounded on a wooden block with a steel hammer.

The rubber tappers were from Indonesia. These workers walked from their villages there to Masapol, taking over 7 days and nights, sleeping or resting on the way by lighting up fires at nights, eating whatever wild plants and fruits they could find on the way. The dried foods they could carry with them were very limited. The fires at night were to keep away the wild animals.

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