Living in a rural setting exposes you to so many marvellous things – the natural world and the particular texture of small-town life, and the exhilarating experience of open space.
– Susan Orlean, journalist
—————————-
In the 50s through to the 60s, rural boys had to be contented with their surroundings as their playground and sources of entertainments.
My dad, in 1962, led us to live away from our longhouse in Kedap, Saratok by building a simple hovel about 40 minutes’ walk through jungle path from then newly established Nanga Assam Primary School. Kedap was then about the same distance downriver the school. But sometimes we young kids would feel intimidated by the journey that passed by the old community cemetery when commuting between Kedap and the school.
Our upriver hovel was situated at Bukit Tinggi where we had about 500 trees of tappable rubber to start with. Then further upriver, there was another small rubber plantation belonging to us too.
Then rural kids were left without toys, gadgets, cinemas and other entertainments the urban centres could offer to their counterparts. As such they needed to be constructive and creative to fully optimise their environmental attributes for entertainment, fun and most of education.
After all play is a very important aspect in education – this is extensively covered in Psychology of Education, a subject taught to trainee teachers in colleges and universities accompanied by theories by the likes of Sigmund Freud, B. F. Skinner, Jean Piaget, Ivan Pavlov, Abraham Maslow and many more.
In the rural setting where I was born and bred, it was a carefree rural environment where I befriended trees, plants, rivers, streams, hills and mountains from early childhood. They were part of me, I them. Shrieks of monkeys, howls of civets, deer and bears as well as different singing tunes of birds, croaks of frogs and many more jungle sounds were music to my ears.
From early childhood we the rural kids are trained to distinguish edible plants, creepers, mushrooms and others. We are taught about the necessary knowledge and secrets of the flora and fauna. We learn to live and move around in oneness with them.
We are familiar with the sometimes-unfriendly weather, scary environment. We would see slowly grey clouds in the sky spreading their skirts open, wider and wider, and soft rain begins to fall. It starts quietly and gently caressing the warm air, kissing all the dark corners of the day or night, slowly and later increases its tempo, changing into a driving, pounding storm, fierce and demanding, a fanatic beat in a steady savage rhythm, plunging down harder and harder, until it finally explodes in a burst of thunder. There are times when it would suddenly be over as quickly as it has started. These are phenomena of the ‘ulu’ (rural hinterland).
Streams and the upper reaches of Melupa River, a Krian tributary in Saratok, were my childhood’s favourite hunting ground. From the age of eight I was brought by my parents away from the longhouse and enjoyed the freedom of living at the edge of the jungle.
Being the pet of my parents, I was excused from rubber tapping duties and was left alone to traverse over the fast-following upper Melupa and its tributaries, especially that of Sungai Tapang stream and few other smaller streams nearby our Bukit Tinggi abode.
Fishing was my passion, especially using the fishing rod and ‘mansai’ (using a special woven basket to trap fish, crabs and prawns) which is essentially a feminine pastime. Play makes the child adjust faster to his environment, reinforcing his id and libido pertaining to the adrenaline of fright and fight, Freud points out in one of his many books. One of his quotes reads: “Unexpressed emotions will never die. They are buried alive and will come forth later in uglier ways.”
As young adults and living in the jungle, rural boys are free to roam and run, even indulging in a game of hide and seek in the width and depth of the jungles among trees and wild animals and sometimes unfriendly streams. This play is vital in shaping our sharpness in jungle tracking and looking for clues of directions.
That is why ulu boys are natural scouts and trackers and I think Freud scores highly in his aforesaid quote pertaining to the Iban boys, especially my Melupa contemporaries of whom one or two have been called home by the Lord. May their souls be blessed.
One of them, my late cousin Kimbui Bungin, was a constant fishing companion at the nearby Sungai Tapang. Over a period of four years we tried the tuba (tubai in Iban) fishing. In fact nearby our Bukit Tinggi home my father planted in abundance the poisoning tuba creepers.
Kimbui and I would pick a few and tried hitting the creepers at a certain stretch of the Sungai Tapang stream and made good harvest of the fish and prawns. The effect of tuba only lasts for one or two hours. After this, one can see the river creatures are back to live again.
When it came to fishing using the rod, I aimed big and tried my luck with the main river, the Melupa rather than going for the streams, apart from Sungai Tapang. There was this special pool Lubuk Muney down the Melupa just a short distance from our Bukit Tinggi home.
It was earlier named Lubuk Raran but changed to Muney after a Chinese trader named Muney who died of a gunshot was found floating and got entangled at the side of the pool. This happened before I was born but the tale continues – the suspect, a cousin of my father (may both their souls rest in peace) was detained by the British rule but set free due to insufficient evidence.
Below Lubuk Muney, I would try my luck at another promising pool called Lubuk Wuong named after a rapid (wuong in Iban language) below it. Once I caught using the rod a smaller version of the Ikan Semah that we called Ikan Tengas. This type of fish takes the bait at a flowing water and must use the green grasshopper as bait.
I remember it took me about at least five minutes to let it full bite and got hooked. It was the biggest fish I ever caught. On that day I caught at least 10 big fish at Lubuk Wuong and quickly went home and certainly pleased my grandma who was preparing lunch for the family.
Three days later I returned to Lubuk Wuong but didn’t catch any Ikan Tengas. However, I had to be contented with some big Ikan Tebalang, the greediest fish of them all but not as tasty as Ikan Tengas.
The 60s and early 70s were filled with many more episodes of fishing, hunting, farming, rubber tapping, seeking, hiding and living in the ulu but allow me to end this one here.
The views expressed here are those of the columnist and do not necessarily represent the views of New Sarawak Tribune.
