On this Merdeka week, Alexandra Wong reflects on her own Malaysian journey through a Malay kampung in Perak.

I’M always very careful about what I say around kids because I know they are highly impressionable.

Tell them one thing, and they believe it’s the gospel truth.

OK, maybe I was just one incredibly gullible kid (I still am). When an adult mentioned in passing that a nearby Malay kampung was crawling with violent people wielding machetes, and exclaimed dramatically: “Say or do the wrong thing, and they’d kill you!”, the idea lodged in my childish head forever.

Images of being bludgeoned by wild-eyed loose cannons, thanks to the images perpetuated by cheesy movies that was de rigeur on TV in those days, didn’t help either.

So for years, I never stepped foot into Kampung Manjoi, even though it was just minutes away from my house.

It remained that way until I reached the end of my first year in university.

Faced with the possibility of being evicted from my hostel, I had to be more active and earn the requisite brownie points to stay on. So I signed up for an activity that guaranteed a fair few – a student exchange programme called Baktisiswa.

I was the only Chinese in the programme. I wasn’t surprised. University was not exactly a bulwark of muhibah.

If in my secondary school years at Tarcisian Convent, Ipoh, I was part of a multi-racial bunch of giggly schoolgirls united in their mutual passion for “zero point” (a folksy kid’s game) and TVB serials, university was a whole different kettle of fish.

The simple act of walking into the canteen with my two best friends – a Malay and Indian girl respectively – attracted odd stares.

Our week-long student exchange would take place in a place I’d never heard of, called Selama.

As our bas persiaran barrelled down the highway, I found out from snatches of conversation that it was a remote Malay village in north Perak.

Creature comforts

Stepping off the bus onto the unpaved road, I trembled with excitement and anticipation.

Every evening, after the obligatory interactive activities, usually sports or gotong-royong, we’d huddle together to exchange notes.

Some of my “less fortunate” friends ended up in wooden houses with only a kerosene lamp.

One said: “I spent the night wondering if I would knock over the lamp and be roasted to oblivion without waking up.”

She shuddered dramatically for effect.

You see, while I was the only Chinese girl, not all of us were acquainted with kampung life.

Some of my varsity mates had spent their entire lives in cities and had never seen a live animal (other than the ones in our textbooks) or bathed in a river.

We listened with bated breath as one of the girls described her nerve-racking experience dashing to the river across the house for her bath, dressed in nothing but sarung.

“Sexy-nya!” I squealed.

“Sexy?” she rolled her eyes. “My teeth were ch-h-hattering, okay? The water was freezing! You’re so lucky, Alex. Did you know you got the most civilised house among all of us?”

I stayed in a brick house with a TV, a spacious living room that had sofas, and a bathroom nearly as big as my Ipoh bedroom.

Was I assigned the most modern house because I was Chinese? You know, us being puteri lilin (a Malay proverb for delicate damsels) and all?

Was it assumed that as an urban Chinese, I wouldn’t be able to function without my creature comforts?

I nodded agreeably like everyone else, but secretly, I was envious of my mates and wished I could exchange places with them. How often does one earn the bragging rights to tell other people, “I mandi sungai, yo!”?

Whatever it was, our cards had been dealt, and I had no grounds to complain.

My foster family fed me from, it seemed, sunrise to sundown.

Nasi lemak for breakfast.

Kuih talam for morning break.

Nasi goreng for lunch.

More kuih for tea-time.

Nasi lauk for dinner ... you get the picture.

No wonder my jeans were cutting into my waistline by the end of the week!

Whilst I couldn’t add mandi sungai to my track record, I chalked up a host of interesting experiences that were definitely alien, I’m sure, to typical city girls.

Like crossing a rickety wooden bridge while precariously membonceng (riding pillion) on a motorbike with THREE other people, i.e. the pakcik, his wife, kid AND me.

(My mother would have had a fit, I was sure! No, I’ve never told her.)

Like walking back in the pouring rain, three girls huddling under the umbrella, after an evening activity had concluded.

Strangers in the night

By evening, there was not a pinprick of light (they don’t have street lights like us city folks, get it?), except for our flickering torches.

I was whispering a silent prayer that they would hold up until we reached home when ... somebody let out a scream as our torches shone straight into the solemn eyes of ... what the hell was THAT?

It was a cow. Cows. A whole herd of them, to be precise. Holy mother of ...

“Jangan takut. Mereka manja.” (“Fear not. They are tame.”)

We looked downwards to the source of the calm, soothing words – it was my foster sister, a pipsqueak who was barely taller than my waist, and who had spoken nary a word, until then.

Our pint-sized chaperon took charge of the situation and, like a miniature Joan of Arc, proceeded to lead us cowardly city girls back to our homes, where, as usual, a slap-up dinner was waiting for me, courtesy of my mak angkat (foster mum) who was standing at the doorway flapping her hands in worry.

I walked down this memory lane in the course of doing research for a client’s book.

Invariably, I recalled my own journey, one that changed some of my perspectives of life in this country forever.

I developed a soft spot for bucolic villages and charming small towns, and spunky kampung children way before Yasmin Ahmad even started making her brand of Malaysiana movies.

And whatever vestigial fears I had of the kampung bogeyman, planted unintentionally in my head by some adult’s careless remark, were eradicated permanently by the hospitality and kindness shown by my foster family.

These days, I coast through Kampung Manjoi – where amok men with parang once ran wild in my head – without fear.

I can tell you where the best nasi campur stall is.

I can tell you which is the shortest path to Silibin (a be-saronged pakcik told me when I got lost).

I can even show you a popular food court where the operators serve dishes similar to those in Chinese coffee shops like tan chi (poached egg on toast).

Oh, and these days, when I see a cow, I don’t go running in the opposite direction anymore.

You see, my foster sister – the one who bravely guided us through an entire herd of cows in pitch darkness – was right after all.

We only fear them because we don’t understand them.

In that respect, people are a lot like that too, aren’t they?

Alexandra Wong (www.bunnysprints.com) loves being a Malaysian writer and enjoys feeding off the positive energy from enthusiastic readers like Yeo Li Shian, who contributed this awesome cartoon. Interested to do the same? Write to her at alexandra.lywong@gmail.com.

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