Our Little Flash House on Saint's Hill

Off Grid House

    After a month of holding our breaths

    In a small rented unit at the rear of a stage house
By the brook in the valley
Which served as a natural boundary
To the school football field.
Up on the hill yonder

Ma found a trusty builder  

Who constructed a one bedroom structure
A hundred metres from the gurgling stream

Which flowed from the abandoned tin mine
On a TOL* patch of land

The builders pulled the weeds and levelled the earth with bags of sand

Then they marked the sections – the family area, the only bedroom, the narrow kitchen and the ‘sky roof’ bathroom

And poured sacks of cement

Mixed them with water and spread as floor

Next they assembled and erected the wooden frames, posts and walls

And finally, a silver zinc roof as its crown

Voila, we have our very own little ‘flash’ house in a wink!

When clean water gushed from the pump

Ma bought a huge porcelain water pot

With a fierce dragon

Draped around its circumference

We carried plastic tubs and pails

To wash our grubby faces and limbs

As the sun set

We got ready for supper and bed

Ma lit the wicks of the kerosene lamps which brightened the living room

And cast long shadows into the bedroom and beyond

When dawn broke

Ma warned us of the slippery moulds near the old well

In the common backyard

Mid way to the wooden steps down the slope

To the ‘tiny hut’ over the clear water of the rushing stream 

Where crafty shrimps hid behind huge boulders  

And dodged our hand-held flimsy nets

While we ignored the quarrels from the Bawean** barracks across the bank

Along with the mutterings from the Nyonya*** ‘dulang’ washers, head-bowed and covered with layers of rough cloths and straw hats  

We got to know our new neighbours

They were from different states -

Kak Ani, Abang Man and their son Din hailed from Betel Nut Island,

Kak Shimah, husband and sons moved west from Turtle Beach,

Pak Hekam sailed from the Land Below the Wind,

And Mak Fauzi ferried from across the Straits.

On most mornings, we would hear the ‘knock, knock’ on our front door

Followed by a hearty call “O, Bet!”

From Din, Kak Ani’s toddler,

With a pacifier in his mouth and a ‘stinky pillow’ in his arm

Mid mornings, Ma and Mak Fauzi would chat for hours

About safe hair dyes, Minangkabau dishes and the Japanese Occupation

Pak Hekam made sure nobody slips and falls

By cleaning the mildew from around the well

And we would all rush to the rescue

Kak Shimah’s husband

Whenever he struggled with his seizures.

Then came the fierce monsoon season

And the brutal tropical storm which brought our walls down

T’was sad to leave our little flash house on the hill

Plus the neighbours’ idiosyncrasies

For the cold flat

By the industrial zone of Section 13

* TOL - Temporary Occupational Licence
** Bawean - an ethnic group from an island about 150 km from Surabaya, off the coast of Java
*** Nyonya - a broad term used to refer to Chinese women

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/14820856-building-our-house