Avet Vagari: Post-Vacation Blues (and other hues)

Back in Kuala Lumpur, lounging around HQ before it was time to head back to our respective centers, my coworkers and I mourned the end of our vacations. It would soon be back to the same old routine, and though I was missing my students (some of whom I hadn’t seen in nearly two months), I admit that I was wishing for a few more days seaside. We had a brief meeting on that first Monday back, and the next day I hopped on a bus back to Tapah. I did a little grocery and school supply shopping, and then (possibly with a melodramatic sigh), I boarded the same old bus (but with a 50 cent price increase, which outraged me far more than it should have) to the village of Batu Tujuh. I was a little nervous because I hadn’t been able to get in touch with anyone from home, so I wasn’t sure if there would be someone waiting there to pick me up, but I know there is usually someone around who can drive me up the mountain, so I crossed my fingers and got off the bus at the little shop that marks the village. Crossing the street, I immediately spotted Apak, and couldn’t help but grin. He’s one of the ones who has been gone since the middle of November, and I was so glad to see him, especially when he – like most Semai, usually reluctant to show emotion – grinned back, gripped my hand and said “how… you… holiday?” There were several other people I knew gathered around the shop, and there were smiles all around, friends asking how I was, and when I had returned. I was somewhat disappointed to learn that Apak wouldn’t be sticking around – he was only in town to buy a few supplies before heading back to the farm in the jungle – but he gave me a lift up the mountain, where I met one of his daughters, Jawani, and her 9-year-old son, Deni. The three of us said goodbye to Apak, wished him a safe trip back to the farm, and headed back home. All glumness about the end of vacation vanished as we made our way through the village to our house, as students and friends came to greet me and welcome me back. Deni, Jawani, her sister Nani and I, alone in the house with the rest of the family at the farm, had a nice, quiet evening – munching on some of my favorite jungle foods, and watching Jurassic Park.

To be honest, I didn’t do much in the way of teaching that first week back. It turned out that Jawani and Nani were some of the only people in the village – and they’d only come home to be here when I arrived. With so many empty hours, I was a little bored, but the weather and my surroundings cheered me up. I knew the rainy season had to be drawing to an end (it seems like it’s been raining forever – just about every day since October) but that first day of sunshine blew me away. I sat almost the entire day out on the porch, shocked that no clouds rolled in as the morning turned to afternoon. The sky is so outrageously blue some days, it actually stops me in my tracks on my way to the shower. The mountains beyond the river are so beautifully green with the sun shining, and on top of that, the close of the rainy season also means that the fruit trees are starting to blossom. We’ve got lots of gorgeous deep pink flowers lining the paths of the village, and the rambutans are turning dark red. Soon, I expect to be woken up in the morning to the smell of durians coming up from the villages below, and maybe even find some on our breakfast table.

The second week, a few more people returned, as the public school resumed (although it was supposed to start again that first week, the terrible floods that rocked the east coast of the country postponed their reopening nationwide). I managed to get my entire children’s class together, for the first time since before my New Zealand trip, and most of my two illiterate classes. I still haven’t managed to collect more than a handful of my advanced students, but I’m feeling hopeful about the upcoming third week. We had a couple rainy days, but the sunny ones are starting to outnumber them.

This past weekend, I went up to the farm with the family. I’ve been there just once before – back in September, Elma and I spent two nights there. They’ve since built a new house, right in the middle of the rice field, whereas the old house was quite a ways away. The rice plants (hill rice, I’m told, that grows on hills rather than in swampy marshes like I imagine rice growing) are enormous – stalks as tall as I am (in September they were only a couple of inches high and Elma and I had to step carefully so as not to crush them) with many small pods clustered at the top of the plant. They look like wheat plants, and if not for the beautiful mountains of Perak that surround the field, it could be Kansas (I imagine… I’ve never actually seen Kansas). The rice almost ready for harvesting – Amek and Apak say maybe in the next couple of days, after which time there will be a massive celebration in the village. Interspersed with the rice are deep red-purple flowers. I asked Amek’s daughter Ella about them, and she told me that she doesn’t quite remember the story, but it’s along these lines: Semai legend says that once a man fought with a village, so the spirits turned him into a paddy field, with his different body parts transformed into various plants and vegetables, so that he would be helpful to the village. The flowers represent his blood, pumpkins are his legs, etc. For this reason, Semai tradition requires that that all paddy fields have these other plants as well – it’s forbidden to plant only rice.