Trappings of rural/kampong life - "Balek kampong".

This write up is specifically targeted at readers, especially Malays, who are over 50 years old and whoever has lived in Malaysia (or Malaya then) over that period.

It is very romantic when people say, "Balek kampong", which may be directly translated as ‘going back to the village’.. or the rural. Yes, its nice to go back to the roots, the village, the rural, where you may meet all your relatives and old friends who grew up with you (be they having been in the kampong all their lives, or also like you, on a ‘balek kampong’ trip). See the old mango or rambutan trees, see the chicken pen, see the goats and the buffaloes. And of course the old surau or the mosque where you used to go (I am assuming that its a Malay/Muslim kampong). And probably the old river where you used to swim (or jumped down feet first from the branches of trees on the river bank into the deeper part of the water in the river) when you were a small boy (or girl - but girls in my kampong did not jump down from tree branches into the river) growing up in the kampong.

What comes to my mind today is, is it really that romantic to go back to the kampong? Maybe an occasional visit at a time of family gathering or celebration, at the time of illness or a death of close family member or a close relative, or at a time of marriage of a distant cousion. Its probably fun I suppose even to make visits to the kampong when the pressures of urban life gets into you. But would you really live in the kampong? Nowadays the kampong is quite modern with all the facilities such as piped water, electricity supply and telephone services. In some kampong there are even the rubbish (refuse) collection services provided, for a fees to the town council of course.

Recently I even thought about the kampong being a tourist attraction. Its a long shot but maybe its worth thinking about, even implementing it if there are enough people interested in the idea. But of course you need the finance, the organiser and the cooperation of the kampong folks to make it a success.

The romantic of living in the kampong has a history. Many Malays especially those born in the rural areas and probably also grew up in the rural areas. The kampong house where I was born looked like this. I grew up there till I was about 10 years old when I left the kampong to go to a school in town, return occasionally for terms break (semester they call it nowadays) and never to come back again full time after that. The house is no more there, its gone forever. It used to belong to my grandfather, where my grandmother lived after my grandfather died, and where my father and his brothers and sister gathered during festivities, and all cousions came during marriages, and during the time of the Emergency where we all stayed the night, to feel safe among relatives. Quite safe then, we were never interfered with despite our house being remote and Communist party member used to commute near our house on the way to attach the village headman house, which they never over run anyway even after so many attacks.

However let us be realistic about it. In the kampong, it was no fun to live in 50 years ago. You are remote, you are among a close community even though your houses are spread around. Each house used to be about ½ km on an average away from each other, connected only by narrow footpath through sometimes thick undergrowth, though the lucky ones especially near where the mosque is built and probably where the flimsy wooden community hall is built may be just about 100 m apart. The roads were not paved, as I said only earth footpath where during rainy season can be very slippery, and you may find small leeches waiting to stick on to you to suck your blood. And at night it was very dark, unless there was moon in sight, and you do not go about walking at night for fear of wild animals, or snakes or even scorpions on the path which you may step on (and be bitten by). In the day time you might see a few wild pigs roaming around, some time the whole family of wild pigs, or even a whole tribe of wild monkeys of all species. You have your own compound though, and most of these villages were on the riverine Yes, it was convenient to be near the river, for transport, for water supply, for fishing, and of course a place for washing and toilet. But we never build our houses so close to the river for obvious reasons. Crocodiles may climb up your house at night for example, or a flash flood may occur which will inundate your house, and drown everybody, especially during rainy seasons. And in those days we had a lot of chicken roaming about under the house, some may run into the fast flowing river, and where do you actually throw away your waste water? To under the house of course, which results in them going into the river, polluting the river and preventing you from washing your clothings in the river. We normally have our house about 100 meters away from the river, as precautions, and usually on a higher ground. And on the rivers edge we used to have the jetty, floating normally as you can never tell the tide behaviour, their ups and downs depending on the level of the water upstream of the river which are never of constant level, depending on the season - dry or rainy.

Of course you may build your house away from the river, like this. But in those days there was no piped water so you have to dig wells. And you could not dig anywhere, you need to dig where the water level is high, so most likely these are found near in valleys or padi fields. Thus resulting in houses being built, away from the river but nearer the padi fields. Why? For ease of getting water and at the same time to work on the padi fields. Same conditions as those near the rivers except that sometimes the houses are built on the ‘islands’ in the padi field. Thus if you were to go to padi fields you may find the ‘islands’, green patches with houses, coconut trees or areca nut trees, among the green of newly planted padi seedlings or the yellow of the ripe padi or when there is no padi yet in the watery muddy patches, though the islands are really on very dry part of the padi fields. How do you get there? By raised bunds in the fields in those days, now of course there are roads.

How do these people earn their living? They planted padi, for sale or for their own use, they tap rubber as there were quite a number of rubber small holders living in Malay villages, they rear chicken or goat or buffalo for their protein and the buffaloes also used to plough their padi fields. And sometimes they search for jungle products such as rattan or wild fruits, honey or even camphor to be sold to traders in town, which are normally only some km away. How do they go to these towns?. Other than by boat, they may walk or those rich enough and who can afford bicycles cycled to town.

Usually the folks die young. And the children usually go to the local/rural Malay school to get normal education, and the village Imam to get religious lessons; in the case of a Malay village its always the Quraan reading and the other basics of religious livings. Most grow up to be Teachers. Those lucky ones will go to schools in town, and most never come back to the kampong except occasionally. Someone in one discussion has sum it nicely like this:
So and so School has produced Very Clever & Creative Old Boys -- who work hard to become successful as businessmen, capitalists, professionals etc so that : (1) they can ran away from the problems they used to face in their old kampongs with poor sanitation, ecology and environment degradation and never bother to bring about paradigm shift in country planning for the better! (2) they avoid the feudal kampong or aristocratic life and now lives in hill tops [even condos] never again to be closed to COMMON people who are nuisance to them; and continues to perpetuate good old feudal system of they and us! (3) they turn away from imparting their less fortunate by their persistence in borrowed/imported knowledge unlocalised to the idiosyncrasies of the tropical conditions ! (4) they shirk from leading the masses by the scholarship in the more sacred affairs. Who wouldn't want to become Rich & Famous!
Very aptly worded.

There are also houses built on the beach, not really on but close enough in the coconut tree groves. These are mostly fishermen who need to go to sea when the water is calm, and who needs to pull in their boats on to the beach after arriving back from the sea. Very romantic on picture but these people lead a very hard life then. And mostly are enslaved by a system where the fish are ‘sold’ even before they go to sea, to rich folks on the mainland. These are actually the middle men who squeezed the blood out of these fishermen. The system works and thus its a vicious circle where they are interdependent on each other, with the middle men making the most profit. The system still exist today.

Hard though the life was then, the romance still continues. Come annual celebration, everyone heads out of town to "Balek kampong". A time will come when there is no more kampong to go back to. Its is now the 21st Century, and the old ways has to change to keep up with time for the race and the nation to survive.