Aku budak kampung, kau budak kampung

Jan jan jala,
Jala itik jala ayam,
Berapa lubang kancil,
Seratus lima puluh,
Panggil Cik Gayah
Makan sireh kuning merah.

Went back to my kampong in Bera (used to be under Temerloh district) on Sunday afternoon and enjoyed 26 hours of fresh kampong air. Not to mention the grilled tilapia fish, masak lemak, satay ayam, kerepek pisang and tepung bungkus. Yummy… I love my kampong food. For a huge range of Pahang recipes, you can get a copy of Tg Puan Pahang’s recipe book (available at all major bookstores). It’s entitled Air Tangan Tg Puan Pahang. You can even get some Orang Asli recipes in there!

Other than eating (which took most hours of the 2 days visit), I rummaged through my mom’s things to look for an old photograph of my late father. I remembered the black and white photo of my late father holding a shotgun and standing beside a dead crocodile. According to my late father, he shot the croc at Sg. Triang. I couldn’t remember why they decided to kill the animal; I don’t recall hearing stories of villagers attacked by it.

I relayed the story of how my late father killed a croc to my eldest son, Waz1f not long ago. So, when we went to kampong this time, he insisted to see that photo. Too bad, I couldn’t find it among the many photo albums in my mom’s room. So, I showed Waz1f and Shawq1 some other old photos of their late grandpa. I spent the next half hour or so to explain to them most of the pictures.

As expected, both of them were so impressed seeing that their late grandpa was such a cool man. There were pictures of him among a herd of his cows at our kebun taken in the early 90s, we used to call ourselves ‘koboi’ back then and our late father – Haji Koboi. There was once, when we had about 60 cows of Brahman and KK breeding that the kebun felt like a real ranch. My elder brother was once being dragged by one of the cows that suddenly ‘naik angin’, that was the first and the last rodeo we had there. There were also pictures of my late father taken at his kebun tembikai, kebun tebu, kebun pisang and of course kebun sawit. I grew up and complete my studies with ‘duit lembu and duit sawit’, and so proud to admit that!

Being born and raised in the city (if you can call Bandar Kinrara a city, that is) my kids never had the chance to spend their afternoons running around in bushes, climbing pokok belimbing, ‘tiup pochong kat bawah rumah’ or get chased with batang leban. I was not surprised when they asked me,
‘Mak pandai potong pokok?’ , when they saw a picture of me pruning a row of pokok tebu. Maybe it would be good if I just get them to stay at kampong for a couple of weeks so that they get some first hand experience of kampong life, eh?

Besides my kid’s amazement, I was also amazed at how I’ve forgotten some of the words commonly used at kampong. Okay, let’s have some Temerloh vocab lesson today, yeay!

Kelakor – work.
Sample usage: ‘Apa kelakor nya anok Makcu Bedoh tu semenjok keluor Pusat Serenti ni?’

Chope – at the brink of something, usually table, platform, stage
Sample usage: ”Janganlah letok gelas kaca tu chope sangat atas meja. Kalau jatuh, pecoh… sapa nak nyapunya karang?”

Kecen – one eyed person (pirate like eye)
Sample usage: ‘Pencuri yang masuk rumoh Tok Empat haritu rupanya bukan budok Indon, tapi anok bidan yang kecen tu!’

Bochong – water container that’s made of aluminum.
Sample usage: ‘Kalau nak pegi kebun karang, jangan lupa bawok bochong tepi dapur tu. Mok dah isi air masok tadi.’

Okay murid-murid, sila buat ulang kaji. Minggu depan Cikgu Bedoh nak buat pop kuiz.