16 Dec 2008. Still here in Kepong, KL. Last Saturday, I went with Tony Tan, Julia Tan and Patrick Guna to Kampung Lumut at the Lenggeng-Broga area near Mantin, less than two hours from KL. We were joined by Raymond and his wife from EDF & Man, a prospective donor corporation for Habitat Malaysia.
We went to the house of Pa Aru, who belongs to the Orang Asli tribe. He has been trying to repair his 29-year old house, which belongs to his mother-in-law, and he needs help from us in Habitat. His mother-in-law passed away a few years back, but his father-in-law is still alive. He occupies a shack at the back of the house. More than 10 members of three families live in the crowded two-bedroom house.
Pa Aru has three sons, aged from 8 to 16, all of them studying. This is quite unusual. Usually Orang Asli families do not send their children to school on account of distance from their settlements. Most Orang Asli settlements have been pushed to the interior villages because developers have encroached on their land for which they have no legal titles.
Pa Aru must be around 40 years old. You can see around his house evidence that he is not as laid back as the other families of his tribe. He has practically cleared the land near his place and planted bananas. He says this is for "testing." He speaks little English, which is also unusual. He must have completed his primary schooling somewhere.
He brought us to a slope in the nearby hill where water flows incessantly. This spring is the source of water for the village. He wants to divert water to a fishpond where he can grow fish and sell this in the town. In that way, he says, he can pay Habitat the monthly repayments for the planned renovation of his house.
On the way back from the hill, we took another path. He showed us an unoccupied, dilapidated house. He also wants the house repaired so his son and his family can move out from the crowded house to this place. He says he needs help in putting a proper kitchen and toilet and in fixing the wooden floor and walls. Pa Aru says he can work on it, too, being a skilled carpenter. But he will pay back Habitat for the construction materials.
It rained while we were in this second house, a Malay house, by the way, with the posts and the wooden materials used, the wide windows and the porch. We did not see his neighbors although there were similar houses around his place. Must be because of the rain.
Tony and I left Julia and Patrick in the village where they were interviewing Pa Aru's family for the required household profiles. We were in a rush for another meeting in another township, with a Malaysian lady named Helen Lee, who is based in London and lives only for three months in a year in a big house.
She is in her early forties and speaks with a British accent, having lived in London for more than 20 years. It was the first time we were meeting her. She had called the office once or twice asking for an appointment. We came instead to her place. She had prepared lunch for us. It was past 2 pm and over lunch, she took about her vision.
She wants to convert the house into a showcase for bamboo handicraft but the house has to be renovated first so it can show how bamboo could be used in an existing house such as this to combat climate change, a cause she is passionate about.
Two worlds, this one and Pa Aru's, on a Saturday that we had to live through. The Orang Asli family wanting to be part of the modern world with a house made of bricks and that of a lonely ecological warrior who wants to put on reality TV how her house could be transformed into a showcase for bamboo technology, which the Orang Asli tribe has been building houses with for centuries.
Two worlds on a Saturday gently interrupted with a little rain which we have to link somehow in this program to help provide decent, safe and secure houses for the multitude. Talk of a day providing another reason to be alive and well and active through a week-end.
