This is another childhood memory which I would never forget. Years back, when I was still very young, my parents often took us back to our village in Temerloh. It was a time to look forward to because kampung life was always full of excitement. At the kampung, we would put up at our grandmother's house, usually for a few days. You should see the house! It was a large and long wooden house with no electricity supply. Hmmm.. Now you can imagine how things were at night. The house was lit by only a few pelita and we had to carry them with us around the house. Therefore, certain parts of the house were kept in the dark when we shifted from one part of the house to another.
God, I remember sleeping alone in a room, totally in the dark! My mom took out the pelita thinking that I was already fast asleep! I was too scared to move an inch and kept to just one position! I recited all the duas that I knew until I finally fell asleep. I also remember how we would gather in the living hall and mom would relate some stories about the house. One which I could never forget was about the visit by an uninvited guest. She came late in the night , landed herself on the roof and let out eerie laughs. Then, she flew around the house and scratched the walls loudly....eee scary....Not just that, sometimes the roar of a tiger could be heard since the house was near to a jungle.
Another interesting thing about my grandmother's house was the toilet. It was neither inside nor near the house. Aaaa....You had to do your 'business' at this one spot in a rubber estate next to her house. Ha Ha! No walls, no water supply; just you and rows of rubber trees! It was like enjoying nature while business was being done! To clean up yourself, you had to walk back to the house which was actually a few metres away! Eee, I remember walking like a monkey back to the house! What an experience! Ha! Ha! I was lucky because there were no naughty eyes around. However, lack of facilities was never a reason to stop us from balik kampung. There were so many other fun and interesting things to do than to worry about it. For example running up and down the doorsteps like almost thousands of times, swimming in the river, climbing up trees, picking fruits like rambutan, duku, langsat and manggis fresh from the trees, taking evening strolls in the rubber estates, chasing after chickens and ducks around the house and also listening to the jungle sounds at night. How I miss those days...
Years passed and we seldom go back except for special occasions. Ever since grandma passed away, things have never been the same again. My grandmother's house has been rented out and we do not visit the place anymore. What 's left now are just memories.
