The Poor Farmer

This is a true story, written while I lived in a kampong (village) house in Kelantan, the strictest Moslem State in Malaysia. Nobody in the kampong spoke English, but I already spoke some Malay, and improved quickly. My little house had no glass in the wi

Kelantan, Malaysia, 1996

 

Adam and family returned late on Monday, and there were lots of people in the house all evening. I gave him the messages from various callers, including the two who wanted to test the Honda.

 

Adam told me that after the monsoon, which begins next month, he would like me to go to Kemaman with him to drive the cars back. He will give me RM100 per car when sold. It turns out that he doesn't have a driving licence! In Pasir Puteh he's okay, but on the highway in Terengganu it's only a matter of time before he's caught.

 

The rest of the news was no lorry, no house, no money from his J.B. house, not much of anything. But that's the Kelantan way. As my father would have said 'They aye take half an hour to be five minutes'. And if you get yourself all worked up about it, trying to push them to MOVE, you only end up bursting a blood vessel, while they carry on as usual. Better simply to cultivate the habit of patience, and cut whatever corners you can yourself.

 

On Tuesday we went for a drive in the white Honda sports car Adam had brought from Kemaman. At Bachok we had lunch at the beach, where Hamid (Adam's seven year old son) and I played boats with chunks of driftwood and coconut shells. He had the best boat - not fair!

 

Next stop on the drive was Adam's parents' house in a remote kampong between the ocean and the main highway. His mother makes and sells local herbal medicines. She even packages them in soluble capsules - Greenpeace colours - like antibiotics!

 

Following my normal habit, I took off for a walk through the countryside. The first few hundred yards of the footpath was tight going, where the jungle was re-taking control from the rubber trees.

Eventually I broke out to the padi area, where I walked along the earth dykes, though none of the fields has water yet. On the way I found some wild mint, which I gathered. I had discovered before that Malaysians in general don't know its uses, and therefore don't cook with it.

 

I passed a few cattle and water buffalo, grazing contentedly, before stumbling on a smallholder's wooden house. Poor country people in Malaysia are much the same as elsewhere, most hospitable.

The family offered me sweetcorn from their own crop, which was cooked to perfection. Since I had nothing to offer in return, I demonstrated how to use the wild mint when cooking sweet potatoes.

 

I then went for a walk round the 'property' with four of the daughters. The youngest, aged one year, was naked in my arms, while the second youngest held my hand. The farmer has seven daughters, and still trying for a son!  He keeps a few birds in cages, and has a trained monkey to climb the coconut trees and toss down the ripe coconuts. Sometimes he and the monkey hit the road on his old bicycle, and pick other people's coconuts for a small fee.

 

I could have wandered round the padi fields all day, but Adam had sent out a search party. They found the girls and me feeding a couple of cows. Adam wanted to get back before dark, as he was not sure of the lights on the car. It had pop-up lights, and one of them wouldn't pop up. He asked me if I could have a look at it when we returned. I seem to have a reputation with Adam and Zainal for being a fixer of things that have broken.

 

When we returned to Adam's house I spent an hour trying to fix the pop-up headlight which wouldn't pop up. I discovered that several teeth had been stripped off the cogged wheel that raises and lowers it. The only remedy for that was a new gearwheel, which is not affordable at the moment. So I cut a length of a small tree branch and wedged it open. Adam wanted it fixed because we were driving to the beach at one o'clock in the morning to buy fresh fish from the fishermen.

 

It was nearer two o'clock before the first boats beached with their catch. Meanwhile we sat at one of the open air stalls selling cooked fish, and ate our fill. As soon as the first boats grounded on the beach the bargaining began in the light of pressure lamps. We ended up with five kilos of good quality fresh ikan merah for RM20. That is forty percent of the price I paid at the central market in Johor Bahru when shopping for the restaurant. The smaller cheaper fish are half that price, but Adam wanted the best tonight. I noticed some small shark on sale also, and made a mental note. I like shark, partly because there's no mucking around with bones, but also because it's good to deep fry. Not that I say no to ikan merah (literally ‘red fish’), which is best chopped into steaks, and has no messy small bones.

 

We met up with some of Adam's friends at the beach, and revisited the makeshift stall for tea and chat. This was quite boring for me, since my Malay is not the best, and the way they speak it in Kelantan is very different from Johor Bahru. Somewhat akin to Cockney versus plum-in-the-mouth English.

 

Young Hamid and I went beachcombing with the aid of Adam's torch. The beach here was quite steep, so I had to keep a careful eye on him and the waves. An occasional larger wave would race up the steep part, and overflow onto the flatter area above, trying to catch the unwary. We found a few shells, but nothing to write home about. Shells seemed to be remarkably scarce on this particular stretch.

 

Following the conversation at the Tea House of the Kelantan Moon, we all crammed into the car and went visiting - at three thirty in the morning. The people Adam had been talking to were his cousins, and they had invited us back to their place in Selising for breakfast! 

 

By the time we got there it was after four o'clock, and I was supposed to go to Thailand today. The house was next to the mosque, entry gained by a gate in the mosque wall, through which the car could just squeeze with inches to spare. Part of the reason for the trip was to pick durian. Apparently early morning is the best time for this, I have no idea why. Nor do I like durian - the smell is enough to turn me off, whatever it tastes like. I tried some in Perak years ago, with a clothes peg on my nose. It tasted not bad, but even without the smell, I wouldn't walk very far to eat any for free.

 

Nevertheless I was enlisted to help with the picking, by torchlight. While we were at it, we picked a heap of mangosteens from one of the adjacent trees. I was reluctant at first, because it looked to me as if the trees belonged to the mosque. But Adam explained that his cousin shared the land with the mosque authorities. He also kept the grass cut and the weeds down, in return for which the fruit belonged to him - after the mosque's (roughly) ten percent of everything picked.

 

Breakfast was ready at five thirty, in time for me to receive an earbashing as the mula called the Faithful to morning prayer, via the loudspeaker fifty feet away. Adam's cousin doesn't need an alarm clock to get him up in the morning.

There was more chat over rice - and fish of course. By this time I was dying for a sleep, but it was not to be. Back on the highway, we headed AWAY from Pasir Puteh.

 

I asked where we were going, and was informed that we had to pick up a batch of Mother's herbal medicines, for delivery to several bomohs. I said in that case, could we please stop at the first coffee shop with curry puffs. I explained that they were not for me, but for my 'little friends'. At the coffee shop I bought eighteen small curry puffs, which raised more eyebrows, as they wondered what army I intended feeding.

 

At Mum's house everyone was still bathing and getting the sleep out of their systems. As soon as I had said my hellos to everyone, I took my bag of curry puffs and headed off into the jungle. It was now light enough to see where I was going without the aid of a torch.

 

 Twenty minutes later I was at the house of the poor rice farmer with seven daughters and no sons - yet. The farmer was already out in the padi, and waved to me as I drew close. I had timed things just about right. Breakfast was not yet prepared, being served after the first hour or so in the padi. So I produced my large bag of curry puffs, and was delighted by the reception they received.

 

It had worried me that these people fed a complete stranger, when they had barely sufficient for themselves. I was empty-handed that first time, except for the wild mint, which they could easily pick themselves.

 

Three hours later I was bleary-eyed on the bus to Thailand with RM100 in my pocket. I had told Adam about my back and hip, and we agreed it was better I go to Golok for the remainder of the time I had paid for.

 

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[W. Braid Anderson]

This is from the book
The Castaway's Diary by Braid Anderson
Now available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble etc
ISBN 978-1-907986-74-1