Retire in the Kampung?

During the recent trip back to my hometown for Hari Raya Haji, I met an old friend from the kampung who is a petty trader in the town. Almost without exception, whenever I go to town to get cheap fruits and vegetables for the family before returning to Kajang, I would stop by his stall to buy something or just to say hello. This time I noticed he was no longer accompanied by his second wife. He told me she had died of diabetes and that he was now back with his first wife. As usually we talked about our family and life at our respective places. He asked me whether I had any plan to come back and live in the kampung once I retire. This is one of the frequently asked questions I get whenever I meet old friends from the kampung. I think I’d ask the same question if I were in their position. It shows how much attachment we are expected to have to our kampung although we’ve been away for more than half of our life. The expectation is I’d agree with the idea and thus prove that I still remember my roots. It is a simple question but answering it is never easy.

I am grateful that I was brought up in the kampung environment and able to appreciate the difficult life there. But to be honest, no matter how much nostalgia I have of the old days, I prefer the life I have now. I would not be able to feed myself if I was put back in the kampung again. I never learnt how to tap rubber trees although my parents made a living out of that. I used to help them collect latex from plastic cups, mix acid cocktail to solidify it and use the rollers to compress it into corrugated thin rubber sheets before drying. But my fingers were not delicate enough to cut grooves into the trees for the latex to flow. I would not know how to work the paddy fields on my own although as a boy I spent a lot of my time helping my folks to plant it. I used to cut grass for the family herd of cows but my fingers are now more comfortable punching alphabets on the computer. I have lost the limited skills I had of doing kampung work. It will be a struggle for me to have to relearn these skills again at 55 when I reach my retirement age.

I think kampung life is no longer the kind of quiet and peaceful life it was 20 years ago. Crime, which was almost unheard of back then, is now common because of the spread of drugs. It was OK to leave the door unlocked back then, but it would be foolish to do the same now. It is now not uncommon to hear of horrific news from a remote village of a drug addict son killing his parents because they could not give him the 5 ringgit to buy his next fix. And almost every village now has young men dying of HIV and AIDS. The drugs business, just like any other business facing little prospect of growth in the cities, has made great ‘progress’ in the last 20 years in penetrating the rural market where there are so many jobless young men able and willing to be potential recruits. With this menace, I wonder how much promise kampung life can bring to my young kids who will grow up to be teenagers and young adults when I retire.

Whenever I am back in the kampung I try to attend the congressional prayer at the village surau. It is so close to the house that I really cannot miss the azan. So there is really no excuse not to go whenever I hear the azan! Alas, there is no azan for every prayer time. From my brief observation, the only regulars are the imam and the bilal. It is the only surau in the village of hundreds of people but the rest of the villagers are nowhere in sight. The local surau is an excellent place to gauge where future generations will take Islam. I do not see any improvement in people on the ground living Islamic life although the leaders of the state have been preaching Islam for two decades. By contrast, based on the occasional visit to my local surau in Kajang, it is more lively with religious learning programmes and very well attended. Again I wonder what future would kampung life bring to my kids if I were to move back to the kampung after retirement. I guess the answer here is quite obvious.

This coming year, three of my four kids will be going to school here in Kajang. Except for the first one, all three were born here. All their life they have been here. Their schools, playground, favourite shopping complexes, fast food outlets, library and circle of friends are all here. Except for the occasional school holiday trips to spend a few days in the kampung, they lead a city life. I cannot think that one day they’d want to ‘go back’ to the kampung and spend their life there. For them, their home is here about 30 km from KL City Centre. And it would be odd if you leave your children in the city to go live in your kampung when you’re old and need their support the most. So the way I see it the option of retiring into quiet life in the kampung is probably not for me.

I think life in the city is more competitive and it pushes our children to be their best. During weekdays, most of their time is fully occupied with school, religious school and tuition. This leaves them with less time to indulge in negative activities. Although I am not really fond of rote learning, it is much better than loitering around, doing drugs or watching endless programmes on satellite TV.

It is said Kelantanese have strong feelings and attachment with their home state. They refer to non-Kelantanese as ‘orang luar’ and as far as I know no other state burn the stadium when they lose a football match! We speak unique budu dialect which other people make fun of. But I know many young men from other states would try hard to master Kelantan-speak because they would not want to miss the chance of wooing pretty Kelantanese girls! So as a Kelantanese, I would not want to be accused as a traitor. I love my home village but some of the people that I knew, the friends that I played with or my own family have either died, migrated to the city or moved and built their own family in other parts of the country. I will not forget my roots in the kampung whenever I go back and visit my parents’ graves. But I am not sure if I would want to live there after retirement, or be buried there myself when my time in this world is over.

6-dec-2009