Kelor’s Long Walk To School by Alena Nadia

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The second audio essay in our Suara ((( Pembangunan ))) project is by Alena Nadia, titled “Kelor’s Long Walk to School”. In this essay, Alena takes us into the soundscapes of her mother’s memories growing up in the 1960s-70s “Kampung Sira, a small Bidayuh village nestled within the greenery and hilly terrain of Siburan in Kuching, Sarawak”. Kelor’s moving and vivid accounts of her younger years and her yearning for an education were set against the backdrop of the Konfrantasi movement in the midst of Malaysia’s birth as a new nation.

Alena’s essay highlights the challenges to acquire an education during that time for families who could not afford it. Nevertheless, her mother’s burning desire for the same opportunity as other children took her to great lengths to gain money for a pencil, an exercise book, an eraser and crackers, and eventually on that long walk to school.

In our conversation, Alena reflects on the emotional dimensions of these family stories which are shared between her, her mother and her aunt:

There was a lot of tears…doing the interview and listening back to it many times. They both would cry with me at different times because my aunt also, she only …went up to (school until) Form 3…So my mum is actually the only person in her family to finish education, (and) went all the way up to college, diploma level.

For Alena’s family, education as a vehicle for development has enabled social mobility across generations, and for family members to see possibilities in each other. Through the sharing of memories, Alena observes:

I see parallels within my own story and my mom’s story…I think the lesson that I’ve learned from her is that you should never give up, especially when it’s something like education which can actually improve your family’s quality of life…She was like a role model for her cousins and that generation. And for her, I think personally, she just wanted to make sure that no one else that came after her went through whatever she went through.

Suara ((( Pembangunan ))) is a collaboration between Dr. Aizuddin Mohamed Anuar (Lecturer in Education, Keele University) and Zikri Rahman (Programme Coordinator, Pusat Sejarah Rakyat) and is funded by Faculty Research Fund (FRF) 2023-2024, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Keele University.

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[Narrator:] For many years my mother shared snippets of her life, bits of information in

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passing. The fifth of nine children my mother was born on May 11, 1964. She was to be

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named Carol anak Ranjun however spelling mistake by the registration officer

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in charge had left her with a name that she for the rest of her life perceived

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as less savory and that was Kelor anak Ranjun. My mother grew up in Kampong

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Sira, a small Bidayuh village, nestled within the greenery and hilly terrain

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of Siburan in Kuching, Sarawak. When she was growing up she often dreamed of

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going to a land far, far away from her home as life is not easy here in the mid-1960s

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and early 1970s. [Carol:] “At that time life in the kampung was so hard that there

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was no proper sanitation. We either go to the jungle or the river nearby to

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ease ourselves and sometimes I find it difficult because as a girl I feel that

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we have to hide ourselves you know sometimes we have to go to the big tree to

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ease ourselves.” [Narrator:] The early years of my mother’s childhood were interesting, to say

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the least. One of her earliest memories involved uniform bodies entering her

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village to distribute food and medical aid. For many years, she could not make

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sense of why these strange men were here in Kampung Sira. Being so young at

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the time she did not realize that she was born at the height of the

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Konfrontasi tensions. In fact, the year before she was born in April 1963, a police

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station was seized in Tebedu, which is about 40 kilometers away, further south from

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Kampung Sira. It would set the backdrop for tensions in the region for years to come.

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in 1972, before our state government launched what was deemed a Vietnam-style

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civic action program. Going down on the ground, the campaign was said to be

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partly patterned on American operations in Vietnam and on the Sarawak

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insurgents’ own methods with officials insisting that, and I quote, “there will be no

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Vietnam here”. [Carol:] “I remember when I was I was young and once a week I would

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hear helicopters landing in the football field. I would run out, you know, when

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I hear helicopters coming and I would see the people in uniforms bringing

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like I heard like medical supplies and the people in the kampung got

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sick. They will have to treat those people, you know. And when I was about seven

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years old, I really wanted to go to school but my father said no to me. My father came

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to me and he said I cannot go to school because he don’t have money to send me to

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school. I was very sad. I would go out every morning, you know, to see the children

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walking to school every day for two weeks, you know. Every morning I would, I would

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cry. Nobody knows, you know. I would- I was in my sarong and I would cry looking at

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the children going to school. I asked myself when when I’m going to school. I was so

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sad. ‘How do I go to school from here?’ You know? Then one day, I decided to ask my

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eldest brother. I said to him: “I really want to go to school but how can I go

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to school when I don’t have pencils, you know, I don’t have clothes?”. But then I

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decided that I don’t need- I don’t need dress- I don’t need anything. I just need to

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wear a sarong. I’m going to school but the most important thing: I need money, some

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money to buy my pencil, my book and my biscuits, you know, my crackers. I need that

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to go to school so the next morning, early in the morning, at around 5:30 to 6 o’clock

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at around 5:30 to 6 o’clock, I and my brother we went out into the jungle to

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tap rubber, you know. We tap the rubber

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and then we collect some rubber scraps. Took it to the shop after that, and

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sell it. And it costs about sixty cents at the time you know one big, one big, the

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bakul. The shopkeeper give me sixty cents and I use that money to buy one

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pencil, one exercise book, one eraser and four pieces of crackers biscuits, but then

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I ask myself: I need water, I need drinks, you know, for myself. So that late

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afternoon, I decided to go to someone’s coffee garden yeah

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I collected the the coffee shoots you know and I went back home. I boil the

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coffee shoots and add in sugar on it. I just experiment at the time, you know,

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whether I can drink or not, you know. I want to try on the taste so it was nice, you know.

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I was surprised, it tastes nice like coffee. So the next day early

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morning, I boil the water. Ready- I’m so excited going to school, now that I have

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you know, I have pencil and all that. Erasers and my books are ready, you know.

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So I made myself a drink and I put in a bottle, big bottle to

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take to school. Add in sugar on it, you know, I was so happy, you know. So I

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went to school around 6.30 and then 6.30 I walk. I was wearing sarong.

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I can’t remember if I have a bag but I

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have plastic bag to carry all my my belongings and I walk to school with my

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sarong and my sarong was torn here and there but I couldn’t care less about my what

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I’m wearing. I care more about going to school and being with other children, you

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know. That was my my intention so I walk to school everybody wear proper you

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know wear school uniform. Some of them they have shoes on but I

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don’t have shoes but I don’t bother about I don’t have shoes. I just

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follow the crowd and then comes… When I reached school, I was late for two weeks,

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the teacher accepted me in the class and then there was the principal calling

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the children for, you know. Every Monday we go for assembly and during the

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assembly time, I look at people’s shoes and clothes and bags. You know, so, I feel

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a bit down looking at what I’m wearing. I enjoyed school actually, you know, even though

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I can only read when I was in Standard 5 because at that time, there was no

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electricity. You know, at night in the kampung, if you don’t study in the daytime,

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you don’t look at our books in time and in the day time. At night, we

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can’t see much it’s dark. You know, if people got- I don’t know if that time

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time got torchlight or not but there’s no torchlight. They used something, you

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know, to burn the fire and then you can get a light. You’d have kerosene but sometimes

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you can’t afford to buy kerosene. So at that time, that time was total darkness

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in our house.”

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[Music plays]

Perjanjian Malaysia 1963: Penelusuran Cabaran dan Kesan Terhadap Sistem Pendidikan di Sarawak (1963 –1973)
https://jurcon.ums.edu.my/ojums/index.php/JBA/article/view/1832
Satu Sejarah Pendidikan Masyarakat Bidayuh di Sarawak Sebelum Tahun 1963
https://jurcon.ums.edu.my/ojums/index.php/JBA/article/view/1623
Confrontation and Insurgency in Borneo, 1960–90
https://www.jstor.org/stable/26740056
Coping with Change: Rural Transformation and Women in Contemporary Sarawak, Malaysia
https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Rural-Transformation-and-Women-in-Contemporary-Sim/0bedc5d3ae55fbfbb17af85941c965d6801cbf97

Credits:

Episode created, written, produced, and edited by Alena Nadia

Special thanks to Dincy Ranjun

Voices:

Narrator: Alena Nadia

Interviewee: Soraya Carol Abdullah

Music and Sounds:

Free Sounds Library

Link: Village Sounds Ambience

https://www.freesoundslibrary.com/village-sounds-ambience/

Link: Stream Sound

https://www.freesoundslibrary.com/stream-sound/

Link: Water Stream Sound Effect

https://www.freesoundslibrary.com/water-stream-sound-effect/

Link: Gunshot Sound Effect

https://www.freesoundslibrary.com/gunshot-sound-effect/

Link: Warning Siren Sound Effect

https://www.freesoundslibrary.com/warning-siren-sound-effect/

Link: Short School Bell Sound Effect

https://www.freesoundslibrary.com/short-school-bell-sound-effect/

Link: Children in School Sound Effect

https://www.freesoundslibrary.com/children-in-school-sound-effect/

Free Sound

Link: Day Time Sounds in Malaysian Jungle: https://freesound.org/people/paulprit/sounds/619264/

Link: Marching.wav

https://freesound.org/people/WebbFilmsUK/sounds/200321/

Link: Helicopter Landing And Idle:

https://freesound.org/people/Fission9/sounds/693866/

Link: village crowd active people children kids shouting throaty motorcycles pass dirt1 kid banging plastic bottles together Putti, Uganda, Africa 2016.wav

https://freesound.org/people/kyles/sounds/406935/

Link: Water dripping on metal.wav

https://freesound.org/people/deleted_user_2104797/sounds/166324/

Link: coffee.aiff

https://freesound.org/people/sukaton/sounds/12808/

Link: Water, Dripping, Slow, A.wav

https://freesound.org/people/InspectorJ/sounds/271334/

Link: 00274 walking through tall grass 1.wav

https://freesound.org/people/Robinhood76/sounds/59313/

Link: Small Coins Drop 4

https://freesound.org/people/TheKnave/sounds/435614/

Link: bare foot on a summer path