Ramadhan in Trengganu

I don't know how it is now, but spending Ramadhan in Trengganu was a lot of fun to me. Perhaps it was because I was a child and need not have to worry about what to cook for iftar. tee hee.

The beginning of ramadhan is marked by the sound of the cannon (from the top of Bukit Puteri?). The sound would usually be followed by someone or other saying "hoh! Esok Posa" (hoh, tomorrow we start fasting). I guess the end of the fasting month would be marked the same way, but I never know because we were always somewhere else, either in Merang, where my dad's side of the family lives or in Besut, where my mom's side of the family lives.

Iftar (the breaking of fast at sundown), during Ramadhan was almost always done with special fare, though not necessarily with Trengganu food. My mom's offering during ramadhan would include western dishes like Chili Con Carne, beef stew, these meatballs with peas eaten with bread, and spaghetti bolognaise, things she doesnt normally cook throughout the rest of the year. Once in a while we'd have malaysian food like rice and noodles, but it's those special dishes that we look forward to (and still crave for till now) every Ramadhan.
Hm.. was there any special food that Trengganu folks eat during Ramadhan? I'm not sure.. as far as I can remember, the food was great throughout the year, so I can't recall anything special for the month of ramadhan. Except maybe for Air Nira and Nekbat.
Air Nira is the nectar from palm flowers. Expert climbers would climb up a palm tree, cut a bit off the flower and hang a container of some sort to collect the dripping nectar. The collected nectar is sold by the roadsides at small wooden stalls, and my dad would not fail to stop if he sees one.
Nekbat are these tiny oval shaped cakes made of flour and eggs, I think, and it is usually served cold in clove spiked syrup sauce. They are cool, soft, creamy and sweet at the same time. Just the thought of them makes me drool. Unfortunately I couldnt find any the last time I went home.
The above 2 items are available throughout the year, but somehow we only have it during ramadhan, perhaps because they are considered to be quite indulgent food, and we could only have it as a reward for fasting.

I started learning to fast when I turned 7, I think.
Like all kids, I started fasting for half a day first, breaking my fast at noon instead of sundown. After awhile though, you get tired of the taunts "Posa yang yok, pagi pagi bukok puyok" (fasting you're not, early morning opening the pot) and you would try to fast for the whole day. Achieving this was okay when school is in session, but when the school holiday starts and we go back to my grandmother's place where all the other kids are also on holiday and they ask you to come out and play and you play all. day. long, it's quite a feat to keep yourself from breaking your fast. I must admit, there were a few times, after a session of rounders or deghghak (walking around) somewhere, I would come home and sneak a drink from the payyang koko (the brown earthen vessel) at the foot of the green steps of my grandmother's house (Sorry, Papa! *sheepish grin*). The cup may just be a chetong made out of rusty milk tin, and the water may just be un-cooked well water put there to be used to wash your feet before you come into the house, but at that moment, it tasted like the cool nectar from heavens.

I loved going back to my grandmother's house during Ramadhan. Aside from her ttuppat sutong (Stuffed squid) and the numerous friends I could play with, there was also Malam Tujuh Likur, probably the highlight of a child's life in the month of ramadhan. "Malam Tujuh Likur" is celebrated on the 27th night of Ramadhan. During this time, most of the houses would be busy preparing eid cookies and the night air would be filled with the sweet smell of baking. People would begin decorating their house for eid, by hanging lapu nynyeceh nynyembor (them twinkling lights), if you can afford it, or just the pelita, lanterns made out of milk tins filled with turpentine and a piece of rag or string as a wick. You'd get to try on your raya clothes for the first time. You'd get to walk around with your friends with lanterns, either the milk tin kind or the storebought paper ones with a birthday candle, to light your way while you deghghak meghata (walkaround everywhere).
Fireworks haven't been banned yet when I was growing up, so we would also light the skies up with them. There were the long thin ones that shoot multicolored balls of fire (together we would all count out loud how many there are), there were ones that would release a parachute at the end of the explosion, and then there were milder ones- like the hand held bunga-api (sparklers), or those shaped like a snake and would leave a crumbly ash in a coil when it goes out (macam ubat nyamuk). For those of us that can't afford fireworks, we would go around, lanterns in hand, and look for ppurong (Coconut shells). We'd stack them up on a pole (erected by an adult for that purpose), then when we've covered the whole pole, an adult would light them up in a tower of bonfire. Doesn't sound like much now, but at that time, it was like the best fire show ever. I guess there's a tiny closet arsonist in all of us.

I wish my kids could experience all this, but unfortunately the environment nowadays is different from what it used to be when I was growing up. I would never let them walk around in the dark on their own, unless it's in the compound.
ah.. the good old days. *sigh*

The House in Batu Buruk

Having finished reading Growing Up In Trengganu by Awang Goneng, I am inspired to write down my own memories of my home state. I will be posting these writing under the category/labels "Trengganu Jam".
I only really lived in Trengganu till I was 8 years old, because we moved away then, but we always went back to Trengganu during the school holidays. So I guess you could say that I did grow up in Trengganu, coz a lot can happen (and did happen) to a child during the holidays. Even though I actually spent more time out of Trengganu than in it, in my heart, I had always been, and always be a Trengganu girl.
My memory is a little bit like swiss cheese when it comes to my life as a child in Trengganu, so bear with me. Perhaps some of you can correct me or help me clarify the blurr bits.

I will start with my earliest memory, living in a house in Batu Buruk.

From what I can recall, the wooden house we lived in in Batu Buruk was either painted white, or a very pale green. I remember it had a long corridor that led from the living room to the other rooms and the kitchen at the back of the house. I remember this because I once roller skated down that corridor and could recall the sound the wooden wheels on metal shoes made on the uncarpeted wooden floors. Along the corridor there were long doors that open out, with railings to prevent naughty little kids from falling out. I remember sitting by the doors, with my legs dangling outside through the railing, watching birds on the pokok terajang and the next door neighbours' brick house with the lovely dahlias.

I must've been about 4 or 5 years old, because I know I haven't gone to school yet then. I spent most of my days sitting at home waiting for my KakLong (eldest sister) to come back from school and show me the latest thing she learnt. When she comes home, I'd follow her around, sometimes to watch her play, sometimes to her Qur'an lesson, where she'd also bring the day's leftover rice and dried out coconut scrapings in a plastic bag to a neighbour's house that has a lot of chickens. The neighbour would give us some coins, and we would by tit bits from a small store, also on the way to the Qur'an lesson. Our favourite were these plastic packets that sometimes had fish crackers, sometimes candy canes but always a golden bangle (which was of course, not really made of gold). We'd break the bangle and straighten it out and use it as a glamorous pointer for our Qur'an lessons.

Weekend mornings I'd follow my KakLong to buy roti canai at the shop on the main road. We'd walk across the huge field in front of our house, through some bushes, then up a slight incline where we would emerge at a small lane at the side of the roti canai shop. We'd go to the front of the shop to make our order. Sometimes we'd bring with us some eggs, to be added to our roti canai. While we wait for our order to be fulfilled, I'd watch cars pass by and look beyond the other side of the road listening to the sounds of the South China Sea waves crashing onto the beach of Pantai Batu Buruk. When we got our order, we'd walk back the same way, sometimes bumping into other people who use the same path to get their roti canai.

The field in front of our house was a curious little thing. Once it rained really hard for many many days, and filled our whole compound with water, including the field. When the rain stopped and the rain receded, the field did not dry up. It became a pond instead, and there were even fish in it. It really amazed us then how fish could've gotten in there. My sister and I made up theories that maybe there were fish eggs that had been lying dormant in the ground and all that water had coaxed them out. Somehow it never occurred to us that fish might have been swept into the field during the rain, and was trapped there when the rain stopped.

I don't remember watching any TV when I was living there. Most of the time we were playing outside in some rok (bushes). We picked mmuting (kemunting - something like berries), played tag or just walked around and theorizing on how ponds got filled with fish. Children are left to their own devices most of the time and we were allowed to roam free, with or without shoes. We knew to come home when it starts getting dark and we hear the azang ggarek (the call for prayers at dusk). Once, I missed my cue to go home and I reached my front door only to find that it had been locked. I had to duduk ccokkoh (sit doing nothing) in the dark by the door, listening to the noises of the crickets and ungodly creatures outside and the noises of preparations for dinner inside. I was finally let in, with a lesson learnt for life.

When I started going to kindergarten, we moved out of that house to another house in Bukit Kecil.
Every time we drive on that road leading to Kuala Trengganu via Batu Buruk, I would peer behind the buildings by the side of the road and try to identify that house. Unfortunately I could never tell which was the house I had fond memories of.