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on my last pulang kampung, i accompanied my father to the place of a moderately famous dukun or witch doctor. we went there to seek for further treatment for my mom. yeah, mom allegedly suffered a black magic attack which caused her to cough and cough and cough endlessly. it had been like that for the last three years. she started to suffer that illness when the big earthquake rocked our kampung in 2006. well, i don’t see any relationship between the earthquake and the cough, but some people around me have another say. you know, they think the earthquake is the perfect time to plant that illness to my mom’s body with the help of a particular jin whose master is the bad witch doctor who has been ordered by someone who does not like my mom (or our family) to black-magic her. my father never tells me who the culprit or the very person who hates us is. i cannot speculate either. but from past experiences, the case of my grandfather for example, the baddies were those close or distant relatives of ours. the motif varies from lust, wrath, greed and envy. i will elaborate this further in my other future posts.
so, we went there after maghrib. my father always takes me with him for this kind of venture because at night, where all of vices begin to wake alive and creep to the streets, i am his boy. you know, i was raised both as girl and boy by my father. moreover, i am considered as stronger than my other siblings. another reason why we have to go there at night because usually during the day, the witch doctors in my kampung are ordinary farmer of labor. so, they will only begin practicing after maghrib or after dusk.
so off we went driving our pick up car heading to the north of our kampung to the bottom of the merapi moutain. the road was steep and windy. there was a bit rain as well so there was nobody on the street but us. before, starting his car, father asked me to buy two telur ayam kampung or local chicken eggs. for this kind of occasion, broiler chicken eggs can never match the magical prowess of thoset of the ayam kampung). after obtaining the eggs, we started our journey in silence. i had no mood to start any conversation with my father. it was so cold.
in 30 minutes we got to the witch doctor’s house. it was a modest house. my father, with me trailing behind him, went directly to the dining room of the house. it had its own door so we did not need to go through the main door. there, we were welcome cordially by the witch doctor and his wife. there was also another patient there, a dark young man in his late 20s.
my father sat near the door while i took my place in the corner of the room next to that dark young man. the witch doctor (i will address him with antan (grandfather) for the rest of the post, ok) looked surprised to see me. he said, “ah she is the copy of her mother”. yeah i look like my mom when she was younger of course. his wife was in agreement with him and said, “she really looks like her mother”. it was a warm introduction session. and i responded them cheerfully. i learned that they had known my family for such a long time, i mean my father and mother, since their childhood. he kept asking how was the cousins or nephews or in laws, whom i did not really know, to my father. we also discussed about the recent galodo that hit my kampung a week before. the men chatted while smoking the famous dji sam soe cigarrettes. the room was full of dizzying smoke coming from the burning cigarettes. i almost fainted because dji sam soe had such a strong scent, the combination of indonesian best tobacco and clove. antan was also busy coughing in between his cigarette smoke blowings. outside, the night crept slowly while the cicadas and other nocturnal insects started their nightly basis natural concerto.
before long, my father asked the antan about the development of mom’s treatment. the dark young man was still there . knowing the ritual by heart i handed the two telur ayam kampung to the antan. the wife of the antan whom i called nenek (grandmother) then went to the kitchen to retrieve a saucer. after getting back to the dining room, nenek gave the saucer to antan. he took one telur ayam kampung and placed it on the saucer. he then twisted the egg and waited until it stopped spinning. once the egg stopped moving, he took the egg and cracked it open so the content fell to the saucer. he took a small spoon and inspected the yolk of the egg. after a while he told my father that the bad stuff that caused my mom to cough endlessly was alrealy out of my mom’s lung. in other words, my mom’s treatment has almost completed. he also asked my father to look for various herbs of which names were only know to my father’s generation. i have no idea whether that so and so leaves ever exist on earth. father told me to write the prescription down on a piece of paper (it was the other reason my gather took me there: he could not write well).
since we brought two eggs , my father asked antan about what to do about that remaining egg. he also informed antan that mom’s coughing was not getting better. antan answered that my mom could take it as her medicine that night. i always love to see witch doctors when they perform they shomanship. they have many distinctive antics, you know. like this antan, he took the egg and put it in his right hand and wrapped it with his slender but hoarse fingers. moments later, he would concentrate to his hand, close his eyes and recite (or mumble?) his mantra. he handed the egg to me and told me to process the egg the way he wanted it. yeah i need to stir the egg with air tajin (when you cook some rice you need to put some water, rite? you need to wait until it boils, rite? nah, air tajin is that boiling water. ah, is it my limited knowledge of this language or is it english which can’t bear the burden of other cultures. it’s so difficult to translate this word correctly). he told me not to forget to add some drops of air limau sundai (juice from a family of citrus which i don’t even know how to call it in Bahasa Indonesia) to the potion.
after another cigarette sessions and light chit chattings, my father excused us. he told the old man that he needed to rise early the next day since he needed to sell our recent potato harvest in the market. while arising from his seat he reached into his pocket and took a rp. 20.000 ($2) note. yup, it only costed us 2 dollars for such treatment. some other times, according to my past experiences, the witch doctor even only charged us with some pack of cigarettes: he did not want money. i remember his wife ushered us to the dining room door and soon we found ourselves driving back home.
on the way home, father broke the silence by (re)telling me about how difficult it is to live in a kampung. he meant how people still resort to black magic to deal with disputes. he also told me how sometimes mom went overboard with her remarks or opinion which probably offended someone. well, mom is like me (i am my mom’s daughter then). she will never back off if her right is violated. I tried to ask who this offended person might be. as predicted, father refused to tell me.
sigh. it is disheartening to see my mom with her endless coughing. Her every night is those of sleep deprived nights since she can’t breath well. I’ve suggested that we should see the real doctor immediately. but, you know she shunned this idea since she thought her illness is not a medically healed disease. i am not the staunch supporter of our outing to the witch doctor’s place. that old man couldn’t even heal his own coughing, so how he is going to help my mom. but at least, she is on medication right now.
the thought that my mom has been black-magic-ed, to me, is not also a sound one. i don’t believe it at all. what i know is mom was diagnosed with bronchitis three years ago and what she needs is further treatment from a specialist doctor in the hospital. That’s it.
I ‘ve tried to discuss with my father about taking mom to a doctor. Basically, he agreed with me but he insisted that we should complete this traditional treatment first before seeking any help from a bronchitis expert. Well, I have no more things to say if this is the case.
yeah that’s the rule of the day in my kampung. if you are sick, you go to the witch doctor first. they will tell you to look for this and that and 0h-my-god-so-difficult-stuff-to-find for your medication. you will only go to see a doctor if the shaman’s prescription is a complete failure. as a result, when you see your doctor, your illness has reached its final stage that it is hard for you to recover.
Hope next week i manage to persuade my mom to go to see her doctor.
yeah folk galodo is my mother tongue for massive flood accompanied with huge amount of mudflow. in short, it is a disaster and it kills. in my entire life, i’ve survived three successive galodo.
my first galodo is when i was 12. it was right after our family dinner. me and siblings were sprawling on our home’s second floor when i heard thunderous voice on the street. so, i stretched my neck through the window to find out what was happening outside. then i saw a massive amount of water flow ferociously on the street dragging all kinds of materials along its journey down to the sea (in the morning after the water had subsided i saw dead bodies of dogs and snakes). soon, the flood covered all over the area and entered people’s home; mine was not spared.
after learning about this grave situation i run downstairs and shouted to my father that there was flood coming. my instinct told me to do some necessary measures. the first thing i did is to open the wardrobe and saved our school uniform, report books, certificates, my text books since the next day was the second day of my final examination to graduate from elementary school, our home and land legal papers. i bundled those stuffs in a piece of cloth and strapped it to my back. i was ready for everything and more than ready to evacuate. my father run outside and set our three dogs free from their collars so they could save themselves if things turn worser. my mom was perplexed. she panicked so badly than she suggested to my father to evacuate to the south following the flow of the water instead of climbing the higher ground in the north of our home. she got very emotional and scared to death. i remember the first thing mom did when she learned about this galodo is to take my 1,5 year old fifth sister from her swing and strapped the sis to her body. yeah, i guess that’s naturally a mother instinct.
the situation was getting worse as the night wore on. rain kept pouring intensively without a slight chance to stop and there was more water and mud. it was so wet and cold. you know i was such a small built girl at 12 (now i am still short) and the mud had reached just slightly below my waist. i could not swim; none of my family could swim. My father opened our back door and asked me to jump to the mud and walk to the higher ground 100 m from our home. my mom and my other and my siblings followed suit behind me. while father, went to meet the alerted youth in the crossroad and organized some work to dredge some main ditches to tunnel the flood water so it could subside immediately.
however, that night the nature refused to subdue to our will it seemed. despite the youth and man folks had broken their back to save the day, water and mud kept coming dragging whatever force standing before them. the newly dredged ditches could only be little help. it was a bit scary for me since it was my first experience to be in such situation. but as kid i could not stop my innocent imagining, despite living as a one-nite refugee, that i would be seen on tv interviewed by reporters about this disaster. yeah kids they are always innocent.
that night we, the mothers and children, slept in a refugee camp (it was not a camp actually but a home of one of the villager which happened to be located several meter higher than the flowing water). as a kid i realized that living as a refugee was not fun at all. i could not sleep without my blanket but where on earth would I find my blanket at that place. so, i started a little adventure of touring back to my home, without my mother’s consent, defying the fiercely flowing stream to get to my blanket. luckily i managed to complete my mission and proudly presented several blankets to the refugees. i hoped everybody would thank me and say, “how nice and brave delvi is”. but, my mom rewarded me with her long nagging about how fool i was to do that stupid trip and endangering my life for my blanket. she was so mad because she worried so much when i went missing for my blanket-fetching mission. she thought she would never see me again. yeah mothers, they are always like that, don’t u think so?
in the morning, the water began to subside and it had stopped raining. thank god there was only one casuality on that galodo. that old man was crossing the bridge when the water came. For the second galodo of my life the story of the dead victim is even ‘funnily’ grimmer. the viction, a man, was peeing or defecating (m not sure ok! but that was the rumor) on the bank of the river when the big water came. we were so sorry for his family and his pregnat wife. his remain was found the next day, stiff and blue. i still remember his stiff , black and blue fingers and expressionless, lifeless face.
yeah disaster always brings tears. some people wail for the lost of their loved ones. i wept because none of my chicks and duckies survived (as a kid they were my most precious belonging you know). other people lost their spirit to see their soon-to-be-harvested paddy fields wreaked havoc by the galodo.
well, disaster always means lost. just like what had happened to the people of situ gintung. my heart goes to them. i know their lost, and i know how they feel. Hope they will recover soon.
as usual, i went home last weekend. in my kampung there was no interesting news to rant about. life was idyllic as usual. everything but time passed by so slowly. however, my kampung was beautiful as usual. It was consoling to my soul to gaze to the mind bending limitless vista of green and golden paddy fields from our home’s second floor. looking up to the north you would see the magnificent mount merapi, an active volcano which was protected by a mighty tiger roaming the forest tirelessly and showed himself out when something bad would befall the kampung (that’s what my late grandmother told me, Ok!). in the morning, mist would cover the majority part of the mountain, so you could see nothing but a giant shadow against the backdrop of the rising sun. when day wore on, the mist will disappear and you could see three water falls clearly. They were beautiful. Back home, we called those water falls as sarasah (literally means source of water). I was told that no mortal had ever set their foot at those sarasahs (i never believe in them). Then, far to the west, you could see the legendary singgalang mountain…..i think i should stop exoticizing my kampung now. I’ve got something more important to tell here.
Well, on my last homecoming, my kampung folks (including my mother) began to open an account that i’m not married yet. yeah everybody knows that at this age of 26 i’m husband-less. i have no problem with that, but those around seem to problematize it.
Everyone seems to pity my mom on the fact that she is son-in-law-less. last week, I, who’re dolled up and dressed to kill since I had a class to teach before, prompted a moderately big fuss in the market where my mother opened her stall. my mom’s colleagues started with questioning how i was, where i worked, when i left malaysia etc. i entertained their question cheerfully and everybody was happy. but, when an aunty started questioning about how many kids I have to my name, the big fuss began. everyone suggested that I should get married since i’ve got everything: i’ve finished my study; i’ve got a ‘thousands-will-kill-for-it job; i’ve reached (or passed ?) an (over) mature age to be husband-ed.
whenever confronted by this situation, i choose to play safe. It’s useless to argue with them the way i argue with my peers back in padang. they won’t just understand it. usually, to save my ass from further public embarrassment i said, “why don’t one of you act as my match maker?”. then, everything was settled and everyone was happy: promises uttered; prospective bachelors mentioned; good lucks wished.
During the hullabaloo of her daughter’s husband-less-ness, mom sometimes defended me, but at other times she collaborated with her colleagues. One time, in my defence, she told an aunty, who sold her entire tomato harvest to my mom, i was a big girl and knew what was best for her. yet, last week, she began to ricochet what her market colleagues said on the previous day. i chose not to confront my mom on this. i would zip my mouth and go about my business or simply drop the subject by switching the topic to my kid brother’s development in school until she got tired lamenting and hurt since she saw me having no interest in this subject.
i tell you folks, definitely I won’t die a virgin; never had i entertain such an idea.
but, the thing is i don’t feel like marrying anyone right now. it does not mean that nobody wants me or fancies me. you’re dead wrong if you think that way. i’ve got a list of admirers here whom i never really put great interest in them. Some of them even once called me in the dead hour of the night just to tell how much they missed me. why am i not interested to them? i tell you that their mortal mistake is they think they can owe and control me. their other deadly sin is they can never catch up with my dissenting mind. they belong to the mainstream which i detest to death. how am i going to consider him as my spouse if that guy keeps bragging that valentine day is the culture of the christian and we should not celebrate it because it will deviate your iman or faith. (i don’t celebrate valentine day either, but not because it comes from the christian culture). i think i can’t stand a day to spend with such a micro-minded person. how am i going to live with a guy who accuses the chinese for the poverty of his brothers and sisters with the same skin color. i hate racist, he should’ve known it. how am i going to love a guy who eagerly tells me that a perfect woman is a woman who stays home raising her children dutifully. ah, delvi is not perfect then. my mom is not perfect then: she leaves home for market before dawn and comes home after dusk every day. it’s my job to look after my five of siblings. yeah, since i was 8 my day always started with doing the laundry, washing the dishes, preparing the breakfast, ironing the sibling’s school uniforms up to checking their PR (homework). It only stopped when i started college few years ago. It’s no wonder i could not ride a bicycle and just know how to swim. i’d got no really time to play around when i was a kid.
if only one of them (or more) could share or at least understand my visions, my dreams and my thoughts, it’s me who will be after them.
sigh. of course i can never talk this way to my mom’s colleagues coz they won’t understand it.
i can always speak the language of feminism or marxism or postcolonialism or other isms but i am still a gadis kampung, a village girl. as a gadis kampung i have to bear with all sorts of consequences of being a gadis, a woman so to speak, and a villager. living a life as a villager is never easy since you have to comply with so many unwritten laws, commonly called as adat, which are so confining especially for us woman.
for my case, things are more complicated since my parents send me to school so i can learn new things. as a consequence, my worldview is completely different from my peers, who mostly have already had two kids right now. i say it is a good thing. but, it is not good either. the result of my schooling is a delvi, who knows how to speak her opinion out. i say it is not good because this delvi is not preferable in my kampung. this delvi is a threat to the status quo ruling my kampung. “we have to be very very careful with this delvi”, that’s what they have in their mind.
m not making a story here. for those with the kampung background must understand the situation m living in. the word change (for the better) in a kampung is somehow forbidden. u will shake the entire foundation of a kampung life if you utter that word. changes are not meant for orang kampung (villagers), that’s what my peoples always teach their children. “we want life as usual”, that is the tag line. “we prefer this old way to that new (which is not necessarily bad) way”, a next door aunty told me. as a result, those who want changes yet unable to challenge the stiff adat and its strong proponents opt for leaving the kampung for good. me? i choose to return but…
this delvi, she could not watch her blabbering mouth during his three days stay in her kampung. she was not kampung wise. yeah i was home for the last three days nurturing my longing for home cooking of ikan asin (assorted salted fish) and super spicy kampung chili paste (see, how kampung my taste is he… he…. he… he).
it was dinner time. the youngest sister of mine recounted the incident taking place in the only stall selling coconut in our neighborhood. that afternoon she wanted to cook gulai nangka (jackfruit gulai). for that cause, she needed coconut milk. so off she went to that stall just to get disappointed. that stall would not serve ordinary buyer, who just needed one or two coconuts, like my sister. they only served the big fish. she had stood by the stall for sometimes calling the owner of the stall but no one emerged. she told me it was not her first experience to be ignored in that stall. as a result, gulai nangka was not served in our table that night.
mom said, the coconut seller behaved that way because she was the only one. mom made her point. but to me, the seller was not fair. she was being arrogant. so, i jokingly made a suggestion that we should start selling coconut as well. the name of the stall would sound ” kelapa for rakyat jelata” (this shop sells coconut for layman), i opined. my family laughed but my father:
“delvi!!!!!!! you should be careful with your mouth. do you want to vomit blood like your mom’s father? do you want to die with the upper half of your body turns green like my father. we live in a kampung delvi and i know it’s never easy. if they cannot get you with the lahir way (non-supranatural way) they will get you with the bathin way (supranatural way).”
every diners was silence. and i had no mood to confront my father. he was right anyway. he was right that behind the serene paddy field mesmerizing your sense there is danger lurking behind the bush. he was traumatized. many of his family member died because of some very weird illness. well, tales of one dies vomiting blood; or scorpions and centipedes coming out from one’s stomach; or one’s abdominal is full of sharp material like syringes and broken glasses are my childhood stories before going to sleep.
so, in my kampung people still practice (black) magic. believe it or not but it is there. well, i saw some; i heard some; i once involved in some. i tell you folk i have the pedigree to be one of the greatest shaman in my kampung. this shamanic blood came from my father’s family. one of my grandmothers once prophesied that one should not get slapped by my left hand or get kicked by my left leg. they were “berbisa” (poisonous, lethal) i was told. i just need to “isi” (charge with magical spell) those two organs to be more powerful, she encouraged me. i just need to be polished a little bit more, she told me. i think the whole world is lucky i am not left-handed.
but that’s not the point of my posting today.
my point is, those in power or the status quo always have ways to curb freedom of speech. on a kampung level like my case, they use black magic to scare people from voicing their opinion. on a state level, they use secret service to silence dissents. for example, in malaysia, the country where i once studied, they use ISA to keep people silent. on the global level, the use “war on terror” slogan to shut your mouth.
see, being different is never easy. being outspoken is not easy either. m i right?
but i prefer living behind bar to suffering some black-magic incited illness. i tell you folk, finding the cure for that illness is a completely convoluted business. where in the world would you find a black chicken? the feather, the claw, the…everything must be black. how would one find a rusty nail from a sinking ship? where on this earth one would find a red bamboo shoot. i don’t want to eat a whole boiled chicken with its feather intact like what my father must do when he mysteriously fell seriously ill when i was five.
be forewarned guys, freedom of speech may cost your life. but being silent may cost your life too. so speak up!!! you’ve got nothing to lose though.
