Huh? Tak faham. or I am so confused!

Wanted to add a couple of pictures and clarify. We will be on vacation 2 weeks with my family and then return to the kampung for 3 more weeks. We are not ready to go home just yet.

June 12, 2008

So before we head off on our last hurrah here in Malaysia, we wanted to post a little more about our experience in the kampung. Once again, I have decided to stick to anecdotes rather than deep thoughts.

If there is one theme of our life in the kampung it is complete and utter confusion. We never know what is going on, when it is going to happen, or what the heck is expected of us. Part of this is due to the language but much of it has to do with the fact that Ben and I are really completely clueless by Malaysian cultural standards. This leads to many strange and awkward situations that are simply impossible to remedy due to our poor language skills. So our friends are left thinking we are hopeless on our own and we spend our days wondering what is going to happen next – did we promise to go to Temerloh with Abang Mi, are we supposed to meet Joe at the store, was that food for me? It certainly makes for some entertaining stories, although I am not sure they are as odd, funny, or interesting to other people as they are for us. I will share a couple anyway.

May 26, 2008

A few nights ago, Ben’s bomoh suggested that Ben receive a ‘traditional’ leaf bath first thing in the morning to help relieve the stiffness in his body. The leaf bath is a very common traditional treatment in the kampung. It is usually used for women during their forty-day confinement after giving birth to help warm and tighten up the body again. However, it is also generally prescribed to ‘soften’ the nerves and encourage smooth blood flow.

Abang Mi, Abang Joe, and Sofi, all seemed clear on what he was recommending and eagerly jotted down the seven different types of leaves needed for the leaf bath. There was a rowdy discussion about where to find each of the leaves – oh, that grows by the river, that we have near the house, I have not seen that one in a long time, maybe Mak Cik Moder knows where to find it. As usual, I only half understood what was going on but pieced together that sometime in the next few days, the search for leaves would begin and I would be shown how to give Ben a ‘leaf bath’.

Nothing was mentioned again about the bath, until two days later when MakCik Moder appeared on our front porch with an armful of leaves. She dropped them on the porch and went in search of a few more. When she returned, we picked the leaves from the branches and put them in a pot. She then told me how to conduct a ‘leaf bath’. You boil the leaves, let them soak over night, warm the water again in the morning, and then pick them up in clumps and massage the body with the warm water and leaves. She demonstrated the massage on her legs, saying picir-picir (pinch-pinch), over and over again. Later that day, Rahimi repeated the instructions and by the afternoon, I had been told how to conduct a ‘leaf bath’ at least a dozen times. But still, nobody believed I, the simple-minded village idiot, understood the instructions and in the afternoon, MakCik Moder came over to the house and took the leaves she had given me earlier in the morning. Huh? Why is she taking my leaves?

About 15 minutes, later she came out and got me and led me to her kitchen to see how to BOIL leaves. I said, "oh, okay I see now, I boil the leaves, and then let them soak them overnight" but I still went home without the leaves. They were brought over later in the evening and I was trusted to continue on from there. Or so I thought.

As just about everything we do is broadcast to the entire village in a blink of the eye, the news that Ben was going to have a ‘leaf bath’ this morning had spread far and wide and no one was going to pass up the chance to see the white guy get a ‘leaf bath’. So at 7:30 in the morning, our good friend Abang Mi arrives with his wife and two nieces. Following closely behind them is MakCik Moder. Ben is just pouring his first cup of coffee, when this group of eager spectators arrives, and anyone who knows Ben, knows he is really not to be messed with before he has finished that first cup of coffee. They all unabashedly enter the house and start reminding me of how to conduct the ‘leaf bath’. Then, they start in on Ben – go get dressed, do you have shorts, you can wear a towel, it feels really nice, you will enjoy it… At first, Ben is dumbstruck. "What the hell are all these people doing here at 7:30 in the morning? Do they really think they are going to watch me take a bath? There are four women in the crowd. What is going on?" But as they continued to sit and wait, undeterred by his obvious discomfort and growing impatience, his tongue began to loosen and we came close to an uncomfortable early morning encounter. Luckily, I was able to convince everyone that an audience for a bath might make Ben uncomfortable and I felt confident that I understood their instructions and could conduct the ‘leaf bath’ myself.

That was enough at least to clear the house of women but all were still uncertain I could handle the bath on my own so it was decided that we would let Abang Mi at least demonstrate to me how exactly I should picir-picir Ben. Man, I could see the steam comimg out of Ben’s ears at this point but he stayed quiet, went into the room wrapped himself in a towel, and sat down on a stool in the bathroom and allowed Abang Mi to show me how to massage Ben with the ‘leaf bath’. After about 1,000 reassurances that indeed I understood and could manage on my own, Abang Mi reluctantly left us on our own and set out to tell the village about the white guy’s ‘leaf bath’.

May 28, 2008

Today was our first English class with the kids in the village. We arrived at the library at 9:45, a little early for our 10AM class. When we got there, the two librarians ushered us in and told us we could go into the back room where all the kids were. “Okay, but the class is supposed to begin at 10AM shouldn’t we wait? Wait a second, all the kids in the back room are like 6 and below. I thought we were doing 4th grade and above?”. I did not actually speak these thoughts out loud. After a year and a half in Malaysia, I have learned that it’s impossible to learn anything through direct questioning. It is just best to go with the flow and wait and see. So that is what I did. I sat down with the kids and figured I would start to wonder what is going on at about 10:15, since I also knew that we were on Malaysian time.

As we waited, the front room, where Ben and I planned to teach class, began to fill with a half dozen women dressed in matching green baju kurang. They sat at the tables, read the newspaper, pulled out notebooks, and seemed to be settling in for awhile. “Huh, who are these women? The adult class was last night. Are they having a meeting here? Do we need to go somewhere else?” I did voice these concerns to the librarian but unfortunately, I did not understand her rapid fire Malay. So it was back to waiting.

My patience finally paid off. At about 10:15, the library began to fill with kids ranging from 9 to15 years in age and as they settled in, some semblance of a class began to take shape. Ben and I wrote on the board, the kids introduced themselves in English, and it seemed, as usual, that things were going to work out after all. Of course, there were a half dozen women in the room, the librarians and their friends were talking loudly with one another in the corner, and an endless stream of spectators flowed in and out the open door throughout the class.

I could actually go on and on with stories like these. It really is amazing how deep the differences in cultural norms and expectations are. We asked the kids in class the other day when their birthdays were and almost all of them had no idea. We asked what their favorite animal was and they looked at us as if we were crazy for having a favorite animal. Even if we were fully fluent, we would still fail miserably at communicating in Malay. That said, somehow we all get along real well. They forgive our ignorance and we accept that 7:30AM drop bys are the norm, and we all retire to our houses at night shaking our heads at how strange Malay/White Person culture is.

All right, I am seriously done now. We are heading off to Sabah (Borneo) with my Mom and brother, who arrive on Monday. I can’t tell you how excited I am to see them. We have quite the final adventure planned so I am sure we will have some good stuff to share when we return in a couple of weeks.

Take care.