Reminisce

I grew up in a kampung. Wooden houses with attap roofs. We, kids of the kampung would spend most of our days outdoors. There were trees to climb, chickens and ducks to chase, places to explore.

I remember my favourite tree to climb. It wasn't very high and had broad, wide spread branches. At the base of the tree is a soft "landing" patch - it's actually sawdust thrown there frequently and over time it became a nice soft patch for us to land on. The tree was behind the saw millers house, hence the sawdust. He'd pile up the sawed up planks beside his house and we used to hide there with our toy guns, waiting to "fire" at our friends.

There was this little pond behind someone's house. We used to chase the ducks who swam there. And then it was off to play more hide and seek or just run around the "padang" nearby.

There were no traditional Malay houses in my kampung but there were some not too far away and I think I've been in one before. Anyway, I've always been intrigued by the unique structure and wouldn't mind checking one out again.

Unfortunately, kids these days don't have the luxury of such experiences. It's become too dangerous to play outside or go exploring. And we've been invaded by concrete jungles. To explore nature, we'd probably have to pay to explore the zoo or butterfly farm, etc. Luckily for Sean and Aidan, there's a kampung nearby and we go to a warung there for breakfast sometimes. There are lots of chickens, ducks, cats, and all sorts of trees to see.

My parents love to teach Sean and Aidan about nature and when they go for walks through this kampung and the surrounding oil palm estate, they'll bring back rubber seeds or an oil palm kernel or two. Once on the way to the beach, they stopped by a "sawah padi" to show the boys "where rice came from".

So....what do kids do these days? A whole thriving industry has emerged to help parents with that question (and to lighten their pockets too!). Toys are so "canggih manggih" these days and arts and crafts are all the rage. I tried arts & crafts with my boys recently. I taught them how to make a letter holder using paper plates. They had such fun and hung it up proudly for mummy and daddy to "post letters to". And post we did. I opted for cute notes and stick figure drawings (hey, art ain't my strong point!) while Jason took the easy way out and printed photos of him and the boys and dropped that into their letter holders.

Yeah, if you put your mind and energy to it, there's lots kids can do these days...indoors. As for me, whenever I pass a small kampung road, I can't resist the urge to explore. But most of the time I don't, unless Jason's with me. The world really isn't what it used to be. *sigh*