Days in the Water

I am delighted by the many very interesting reactions to Muséng Sejok. I loved them all, especially the place maps and persons long gone who came back to our midst. From the many delightful reads I feel I must do a very quick translation of Zulomar's description of his childhood in the water. I enjoyed it immensely as it is a narration of times now lost. I hope you will enjoy it too. Thank you Zulomar, and thank you all of you who have left your comments.

"Kalu ingak piyang ujang & mase boh jamang kecik2 dulu memang sedak mmaing air.

"Di Beladau Kolam kalu mase air boh besor memang sedak mandi ssunga - air keruh macang teh susu & memang derah. Ambe dengeng saing2 ppakak turung dari se kkalang pah tu ppakak peranyuk ikuk aruh air, naik pulok kkalang laing hok ddepang - stak Kkalang Pasor naik Kkalang Che' Ming, hok beraning lagi peranyuk sapa Kkalang Sekoloh. Naik pokok Rengah (pokok Rengas - pokok bergetah yg kalau kena boleh jadi kudis) pah tu terjung sunga dgn macang2 gaye - (silak2 buleh lawang penerjun Sukan Asia/Komanwel he he...). Kalu gatung tali di pokok Rengah buleh wak tali Tarzeng terjun sunga. Kadang2 ppakak lawang aruh derah sapa lenguh gi ttepi. Bowok tangguk buleh takak udang & ikang.

"Kalu air boh koho besor, air nnembok tebing sapa ttepi rumoh. Kawasang rendoh hok ade air jjadi tepak mmaing - papang, batang pisang wak jjadi rakik. Sapa kecuk bberuk abih kaki tangang - biru hherang sejuk ketor. Ade mase jugok jjupe ulor, kale jeking. Serung pulok bile pikir smula.

"Jamang budok2 dok mmikir bahaye. Kalu pikir smula muking dok beraning doh nok buak. Tapi ALHAMDULILLAH takdok hok mati lemah sebak mmaing air boh.

"Llening takdok doh hok mmaing air ggitu. Sunga pun jjadi tepak org bele ikang Talapia, Ppating & Baung dlm sangkar.

"Piyang ujang memang sedak makang ubi kayu/stele rebuh cicoh nyor, minung air kupi. Llening kalu musing ujang, kg. Kubang Jela & Banggul Tuan Muda banyok org jjua ubi ttepi jalang.

"Hmm....sweet memories."

"Going back to the rainy season and the floods during my childhood days it was a joy to be playing in the water.

"In Beladau Kolam during the big floods we loved to play in the river - the water was muddy like milky tea and flowed very swiftly. My friends and I went down to the river. Starting from one jetty we went down with the river's flow, and then we went up again at the next jetty downstream - we started from the jetty at the market place and then went up again at the Jetty of Che' Ming, the braver ones drifted on to the School Jetty. We climbed up the Rengas (gluta renghas) tree (the Rengas tree has a sap that can cause the skin to blister) and then we dove into the river in every style that we knew - (we could have competed in the Asian/Commonwealth Games diving competition he he...). If we attached a swing rope to the rengas tree we could have used it like Tarzan to dive into the river. Sometimes, together, we swam against the swift flowing river and retired to the river bank when we were worn out. With a landing-net we would have been able to catch some prawns and fish.

"If the flood water continued to rise, the overflow would go to the edge of the houses. The low lying parts now filled with water became our play areas - we used planks, banana stems as rafts. We played until our hands and feet shrivelled from the cold - we turned blue and had the shivers. There were times when we encountered snakes and scorpions. It gives me chills thinking about all that now.

"Children never thought of danger. If I think about it I don't think I'll have the courage to do all that now. But ALHAMDULILLAH (Praise be to God) no one drowned while playing in the flood.

"Nowadays they don't play in the water like we used to. The river has become an area for the farming of tilapia and catfish.

"The rainy season was a good time to enjoy tapioca/sweet potato dipped in coconut shreds, to drink coffee. Now during the rainy season many people sell these roots in Kampung Kubang Jela and Banggul Tuan Muda, by the roadside.

"Hmm....sweet memories."

To the Furthest Isles

At the dinner table with some very pleasant company last week, someone said something about Malay cakes that made me think of it as a perfect metaphor for the languages of the Nusantara. Malay cakes, said my perceptive fellow-diner, took a variety of shapes but they all tasted much the same. Now, this could be attributed to the preponderance of tepung or rice flour in our kuihs though three of my favourites, gula Melaka, asam gumpal (Trengganuspeak, asang gupa) and jala mas (jjala mah in Trengganuspeak and jjalö mah in the Kelantan lingo) bear not a trace of flour, not rice nor the other.

But what about our Nusantara languages that spread from the Philippines to the further reaches of Merauke?

When I began this blog many years ago I was fascinated by the title word kecek-kecek that I had to email a complete stranger in Indonesia to ask how they used the word and what it meant for them. To my astonishment it meant much the same as it did in Trengganu and Kelantan with perhaps a little extra pinch of salt added in some other quarters to give it the extra zing. And then there’s sa’ah which was Grik to me until my fellow blogger Tokasid pointed out [see, Comments, below] that in that region of Perak (Grik) it does much the same as se’eh does to Trengganu. And that brings me now to another fellow blogger, the handsome Clark Gable of Mermaid Isle (Pulau Duyong) that is quieter and much saner than the hub of Kuala Trengganu that is across the river. In his Comments [see below] Clark Gable said, inter alia,

"Ade kawang kite gi ke Papua New Guniea dengor banyok perkataang Ganu dlg percakapang hariang die ...mungking jugok dulu org dr situ stak bahase Ganu..guane gamok?"

"A friend of mine went to Papua New Guinea where he heard many Trengganuspeak words in their daily conversation...is it possible that they were the originators of Trengganuspeak..what do you think?"

In the winter of 1998 I caught the train to the university town of Oxford to meet a man named Stephen Oppenheimer, a doctor turned author whose brother R I used to know when I was holding another job in this fair isle. Stephen had just written a book called "Eden in the East" which gave me not a few shocks and more than a kick in the nether area from what he had to say about migration, genes and the languages of Southeast Asia. I shall cut the story short though and not take you through the hour long journey to the Dreaming Spires. This is what Stephen Oppenheimer says in his book: that great floods had transformed our part of the landmass into a long, thin peninsula while pushing out Sumatra adrift along with other bits of the broken jewels that jut out from the waters of the Nusantara. These calamities (there were more than one Flood) caused outward (not inward) migration to the furthest reaches of Austronesia as well as up north along the great rivers to Indo-China.

This may perhaps explain why in Papua New Guinea the word for breast is susu which is Malay for milk but we cannot take too much from there. What’s more interesting is that Oppenheimer, a medical researcher who went to Papua new Guinea to study the mtDNA picture in the blood samples, had this to say:

"The smallest group, found on the south coast of New Guinea, has one maternal clam...This may have originated among the Austro-Asiatic-speaking Aboriginals of the Malay peninsula and then radiated out to Sabah, India, Tibet, Vietnam, Korea and Siberia. Maternal clan 9 is also present on the south coast of New Guinea among both Austronesian and non-Austronesian speakers. Again, the nearest Old World cousin is a Malay mtDNA type from the Malay peninsula. A further five cousins are found among peninsular Malays and among Sabahans from Borneo. All these later links...suggest old immigrations that have become intimately mixed throughout the New Guinea coast and low-lying hinterland."

Now, when I see Mök Long Ttimöh with her face luminous in Bedök Muntöh Belok (lit. "Eel’s vomit face powder") just before bed, I know that that is the mother of the tradition that has spread almost intact to the further isles.

Oppenheimer, S., "Eden in the East - The Drowned Continent of Southeast Asia"; Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1998. ISBN 0-297-81816-3