A Place Like No Other
Way back 27 years ago I was raised in a setinggan area not far from a place which is now developed into Pustaka, the pride of Kuchingites for their humongous public library. Back then, the lake nearby was covered with thick shrubs and secondary forest. And this forest is what make our existence became invisible, for what I remembered not many people would know a place called "Kampung Siol Kandis", the name given to our setinggan. To reach into the village itself would require a 5 minutes walk from the main road, and one would walk on a sloppy and muddy terrain.
Figure 1: The view of Pustaka
The interior part of the village is not exactly what you would expect. Most houses was built by wooden plank and roofed with a folded palm leaf. If I'm not mistaken, the village itself were houses of about 20 or more families during that day. Our house, was located the at the furthermost of the village. Therefore the walking distance can be very tedious when it was rainy. There, right in front of our wooden house, was a small sand field which used to be our playground. Those who grown up in Siol Kandis village would understand how much that field meant to us, it is the only place for us to gather and have fun 24/7.
Just a few hundred metre from our house, was a lake that was forbidden for kids, because we were told that it was rather deep, and was foolishly told that there was a "swamp thing" living inside. I still couldn't believe I bought that joke those days. But hey, we were kids and the imagination just runs wild. So we never went to the lake without parents supervision.
Most of the residents living in the village were related to each other, and that includes us, our family. I remember some of my cousin's house was located few houses away from where we lived. And there we would visit this one particular house, a house where my dad's aunt used to live. We call her "inik biak", which basically means "young grandma", a nickname given because of her younger appearance than her own ranking in the family tree, which is a grandmother.
There are few reasons why we loved hanging out at inik biak's house, besides her caring and loving character. She love, i mean really really love making "kuih" of any kind. Inik biak has her own stall not far from her house, which she use to sell her kuih. Besides her working son and daughter, which is my uncle and aunty, she sell those kuih to support their living needs. Sometimes, inik biak would spare some extras for her beloved grandchild.
(To be continue...)
