Jale-Jale, Cari Make

"ORE Kelate ko, ore Sia? (Kelantanese or Siamese?)" Tumpat, about 40 minutes' drive from Kota Baru, is where 75 per cent of the Thai community in Kelantan live. "Mek, yang hok makan pulut tu (the pretty lass eating glutinous rice there)," a gentleman points out a Kelantanese, when asked.
Generally, the Thai women wear blouses and long skirts while Kelantanese women prefer their kebaya and kain sarong. The men are not as easily identifiable.
There are 23 Buddhist temples in Kelantan, the three biggest being in Tumpat. They each host a giant statue of Buddha - seated, reclining, and standing.
We ask to see the Poh Than Thit (spiritual teacher) at Wat Phra Buddha Bharaameedharm Chamruslok (which means Temple of the Light of the Buddha's
Dharma Enlightens the World) but are told he is taking a nap.
"You can wait or you can come back tomorrow morning. But there are prayers in the morning, he may not be able to see you," says a 40-something man who is tending to the trees around the temple which houses the sitting Buddha.
"Are you a Thai?"
He just smiles.
"Go find the other temples. The standing Buddha, yang hok tidur pun ada (also the reclining one). Then come back and talk to the Poh Than Thit.
"Remember, when you go in to see him, you have to take off your tudung (headscarf), your cap also... to show respect."
There are others waiting to see the Poh Than Thit.
Kelantan was an administrative region of the Thai kingdom until it was ceded to the British in 1909.
The then Kelantan Sultan had to make offerings of ufti or Bunga Emas to the Siamese Government every three years. The Bunga Emas was crafted by the best goldsmiths of the time.
The reclining Buddha at Wat Phothivihan, located 15km northwest of Tumpat, is one of the largest in South-East Asia. It is 40m long, 11m high and 9m wide. The temple took six years to build and was completed in 1979.
Tumpat's famous beach, Pantai Sri Tujuh, is meanwhile the venue of an annual International Kite Festival, where the wau bulan is a perennial favourite. The festival draws participants from as far away as Europe and Japan.
And the town is also synonymous with traditional boat-building. The master boat-builders pass down their secrets from generation to generation.
In the past, the prows of the boats often took fascinating forms – for example, the shape of a bangau (cattle egret) or a garuda (a demonic birdman, which is a remnant of Hindu influence during pre-Islamic times). These served a talismanic purpose, to ward off evil spirits.
But the Tumpat district is an agricultural region. Small villages dot vast tracts of rice fields and tobacco plots.
The Thais in Kelantan are mostly farmers, and they have been working the land for generations.
Kijau says she is “Kelate belako” (all Kelantanese), probably by virtue of her having been in Kelantan all her life. Her husband's name is Emong, she says, and together they work the tiga keping (three pieces) of land leased from a Chinese towkay for RM10 a year. Each "piece" is about the size of two medium-sized KL bungalow lots.
"Tanam tembakau sikit, kangkung sikit (we plant some tobacco, some water spinach)," she says, as she uproots some weeds from the tobacco plot. The passing mail train breaks the silence of the day.
It is noon but the couple continue to labour in the sun.
"Panas bagus. Kalau hujan, tembakau mati (Hot is good. If it rains, the tobacco will die)," Kijau says. She and her husband have been working since 7am.
They take a break for lunch and return to the farm at about 3pm to work until "bila hari dah gelap (when it gets dark)."
Tobacco farming is not the main crop of farmers in Tumpat, with Grade One tobacco leaves (dried) fetching RM15.80 a kg and wet leaves 80 sen a kg.
"Bila petik, dapatlah 200kg (we can get 200kg per harvest)." The wet tobacco leaves are sold to the towkay.
Leaving Kijau to her tasks, we head towards town - and the marketplace.
Thirty-five-year-old Kak Yah ("nama dalam IC Siti Jaharah," she says) helps her husband, Husin, tend their Sup Perut (stomach soup) stall in front of the market. We are told Husin is a Thai.
A bowl of soup is RM1.50, a bit pricey by Tumpat's standards. The perut (actually cow's udder) is shredded and "tastes like soto without the rice cubes", according to photographer May.
"Dah lama berniaga di sini ... about 20 odd years, (been in the business for a long time)" says the mother of seven. Her youngest child is 11 months old. The oldest, an 18-year-old boy, sells newspapers and magazines nearby.
Husin has lots of harta (property) in Thailand. "Whatever he makes here is sent home," says Kelantanese friend, Wai.
"Go check out the market," Kak Yah encourages. "There are many things there."
Old makcik beckon, addressing us, flatteringly, as "mek". They sell buah keranji (Dialium platyspalum), etok (roasted shellfish), ulam buah kerdas and ubi keling. Most are acquired tastes.
"Mari mana? Cari gapo? (Where from? What are you looking for?)" one asks.
"Jalan-jalan, tengok tempat (walking about, looking at places)," I reply.
"Oh, Jale-jale, cari make," another makcik responds, referring to TV3's Jalan-Jalan, Cari Makan eating out programme.
They burst into raucous laughter: "No one comes here for sightseeing."

Taking The Slow Lane

"Welcome to DTAC - superior network throughout Thailand. Call 1800 for local assistance. Have a pleasant stay!" announces the short message on my cellphone.
Have we wandered into Thailand? Not quite.
The election is over, life has returned to normal and it feels like a good time for a drive-about - in the slow lane. And where better than in Kelantan.
So it is that we find ourselves heading towards Pengkalan Kubor, one of two Kelantan towns at the border with Thailand, when the phone beeped the message from the Thai cellular operator.
The other town is Rantau Panjang, and the twins - by virtue of their being only about 1km from our northern neighbour - have come to acquire a certain attraction among Malaysians from other states. One can take a ferry across the river to Tak Bai from Pengkalan Kubor, or drive into Golok via Rantau Panjang.
The mention of Golok might evoke grins among men, but Pengkalan Kubor
and Rantau Panjang are happy they have evolved into the shopping "capitals" of Kelantan.
Before we left Kuala Lumpur for Kota Baru, Kelantanese friends had warned that retailers in the state maintain three sets of prices for their wares: the local price, the returning-Kelantanese price, and the "orang luar" price.
"The traders can easily tell the shoppers apart. It's advisable to go with a local, if you want the best prices. Just let your friend do all the talking for you," says Wai.
"That aside, haggling is the name of the game, and don't be bashful about it," he adds.
"If she asks for RM10, offer RM5 as that would be the price she'd sell to a Kelantanese. In the end, you'd probably pay about RM7.
"One thing you have going for you is that there are so many shops...shop-hop, by all means."
Shoppers come by the busload
Notice that Wai used "she" to refer to a Kelantanese trader? Well, most, if not all, of the traders in the marketplace or bazaars are women.
Most outsiders assume that Pengkalan Kubor got its name from the Muslim cemetery next to the Malaysian Customs and Immigrations checkpoint. But a more colourful lore of the name's origin is that spirits captured by bomoh and held in bottles were tossed into the river, thereby turning it into a "graveyard".
On weekdays, the little town is a sleepy hollow, where an early afternoon siesta is the only respite from the heat and humidity.
"Kak silap time datang (you've come at the wrong time)," says 25-year-old Zaharah who tends to a "Barbie Doll" and "Spiderman" stall.
Her sister's stall next to hers sells hair accessories but is closed for the day. "Dia tak niaga hari ni. Tak ramai orang (she's not open today. Not many customers)," she adds.
It's different at weekends, she says, as shoppers would descend upon the bazaar by the busload.
"We get people from as far as Johor Baru and Singapore. They may go across to Tak Bai, but things are still cheaper here," Zaharah says, as she leisurely fans herself.
Zaharah hails from Gua Musang. She is married to a local who works in Kota Baru. Pengkalan Kubor is a mere 45-minute drive from Kota Baru.
The Barbie Doll and Spiderman goods she hawks are from South Korea and Thailand. "We tell our supplier what we want and they send it over."
She doesn't have a shoplot at the bazaar as the rentals are too high, she says.
Does that mean her prices are lower? "Tengok keadaan (depending on situation). Sometimes we have to sell cheap because we want to clear the old stock.
"Hok ni berapo riyal kat Kuala Lumpur (How much does this cost in Kuala Lumpur)?" she asks, holding up a pair of embroidered Barbie jeans.
She's selling them at RM35. the same item goes for easily over RM100 at KL's swanky complexes.
Asked about the three-tier pricing, she says: "Sapo dok ghoyat gitu? Harga semua sama (Who told you that? Prices are all the same)".
We offer RM25 for the pair of jeans, which will fit an eight-year-old girl, pointing out that we are also buying other stuff which add up to RM300 already.
She won't budge. "How about RM28?"
"I am not making a profit here. I can give you at RM34," she says, taking the jeans from me and putting in into a plastic bag to signal end of discussion.
I turn to May, and admit I'm really no good at this. And paid up.
Then it is off to Rantau Panjang, about an hour's drive from Kota Baru, where it is reputed to have better stuff at better prices. Of course, there is also the option to drive to Golok.
It is curious to find so many vehicles with Thai-plates all over town. Are there as many Malaysian-plated cars in Golok?
And you can't tell the locals and foreigners apart - unless you are a trader, of course.
"The Thais shop for groceries here. Its far cheaper," says Sabariah, "macam dalam cerita Kassim Selamat tu (like in the Kassim Selamat movie)", referring to characters in P. Ramlee's classic Ibu Mertuaku).
"They drive here, buy the goods and bring them back to Thailand."
Kak Sabariah sells ornamental items like candle holders and potpourri bowls. She sources the goods from Thailand.
"Nampak macam boleh buat bisnes. Akak buka kedai ni lapan bulan dulu (It looks lucrative. I opened this shop eight months ago)," she says.
"If there are many people, say, a tour group, I can give really good deals. I can clear my stock and order new supplies."
But business is slow today.
"Weekends are busy. School holidays even better. And the weeks before Raya, we get many people buying household items for their homes."
The chartered tour buses normally travel overnight and reach Rantau Panjang in the morning.
The tourists then just spend the whole day shopping before hopping back on to the bus for the journey home.
Why Rantau Panjang? Well, it offers shoppers a myriad of stuff – clothes (Adidas, Nike and Levi's), watches (Rolexes and Guccis), sunglasses (Chanel, Dior and Versace), handbags (Louis Vuitton and Fendi), food items and toys - at unbelievably low prices. The catch? They're fakes.
When leaving Rantau Panjang, we are curiously stopped at the Customs checkpoint.
The officer asks how much we had spent for all the things that had filled up the boot of the XC90. The tax to be paid is normally 10 per cent of the value, she says.
"Just pay RM10," she says, "and show this receipt if you're stopped at the police checkpoint up ahead."
The police wave us along. Customs and police checkpoints? Are all people who visit Rantau Panjang assumed to have crossed into Thailand as well?

A Track Unpaved

"THE roosters didn't wake us up. Hawa Ismail did. She beckons us to go get breakfast, quick! Kelik gi doh... nanti habis (Go now or else it will be finished)."
The bilal at the nearby masjid had just called for the morning prayers.
"Bangun doh, Dani (Get up, Dani)," she nudges her 21-year-old granddaughter Nurdania Jamri, one of her 13 grandchildren.
It is not often that Dani is back in Kg Kemubu, Dabong - "somewhere between Gua Musang and Kuala Krai".
True to Hawa's words, breakfast is all sold out by the time - 8am – we arrive at the market. "Hok stesen ado lagih (there's some left at the station)" a lady tending a stall says.
Breakfast is either nasi kerabu, the blue rice with condiments, or nasi berlauk, rice with a choice of a piece of beef or chicken.
There is roti canai, of course, "but who comes all the way to Kelantan for something he can get in Kuala Lumpur, yes?" Dani says.
At the railway station, seemingly the kampung's social centre, she buys four packets of nasi kerabu priced at two riyal (two ringgit) each.
It would be one riyal elsewhere in town. She picks up a loaf of bread and a can of sardines too. Some of us are not used to having rice so early in the morning.
Hawa - known as Mak Nik among the elders and Mak Tengah among the young ones - has lived in the kampung for 50 years.
At 77 ("I am as old as Mahathir [former Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad"]), Mak Tengah no longer moves around as freely as before. "Lutut ni hok jem (The knee is jammed)." She uses a wheelchair.
When her eldest daughter Halimah Awang Seman and son-in-law Mustafa Husain go out to work on the family's orchard, Mak Tengah is left alone in the sprawling four-room house (which is currently undergoing extensive renovation).
She commonly stations herself at the front door, and jokes with Dani that she should be called chairman of the jawatankuasa pintu (door committee).
"She's lonely. She sits there and calls out to people who pass by. Everyone knows everyone else here.
"The womenfolk, the ahli jawatankuasa pintu (door committee members), will drop by and keep her company from time to time," says Dani.
Within hours of our arrival, almost everyone in the kampung is aware that Dani had brought friends from Kuala Lumpur for a visit. Stepping out of a Volvo XC90 didn't quite help us blend in either.
The drive into the village was kind of an adventure. The 10km stretch to Kg Kemubu is still a dirt road. It had seemed endless.
"I am 35 years old. I remember the road being like that since I was 10," school clerk Farid Mustafa says. Farid is Halimah's son and the only grandchild of Hawa still staying in the kampung. Halimah and Mustafa have seven children.
"We've heard countless promises and pledges but we've yet to see it done (having the road paved). And it's just a short stretch," says Halimah, who was only five years old when the family moved here.
It's hard to tell the colour of Farid's Wira (it is blue) under all the red earth.
"My father told mom that we can come here every month if the road is paved," Dani laughs, recalling the tiff her parents had over balik kampung.
Her father has just bought a Naza Ria.
Hawa and her late husband, Awang Seman Yaakob, moved to the village half a century ago. They were among the first to be relocated there.
"Lari dari komunis, kerajae suruh mari sini (Fled from the communists, the Government asked us to come here)," she says.
The village now has basic amenities. When electricity first came in 1974, supply was only from 7pm to 7am. It was 20 years later, the same year Awang Seman died, that the kampung had 24-hour supply.
There's only one Telekom Malaysia's public telephone. "Rosak doh," calls out a passing motorist who saw us fiddling with the telephone. "Panggilan kecemasan sahaja (Emergency calls only)."
And forget your cellphone, there's no signal - except maybe on Gunung Stong, where the kampung's water supply comes from. By the way, the water is refreshingly cool.
Mustafa says he requested for a line a very long time ago but has yet to get any response from Telekom.
"Development projects stop at Dabong. For reasons known only to the authorities, we are forgotten," laments Mustafa.
Dabong is a slightly bigger village. It is about a kilometre from where the highway takes a turn into the 10km dirt road that leads to Kg Kemubu.
Some of the houses in Dabong, including Mustafa's, have satellite TV connection. Those without Astro have TV antennas as tall as coconut trees.
The nearest town is Gua Musang or Kuala Krai, about 98km away. Both are accessible by train too. In fact, most of the villagers use the mail train to get to the towns to do marketing and banking.
If the cost of petrol is any indication, things are a little bit more expensive in Gua Musang than in Kuala Krai and other towns in Kelantan.
It costs a sen higher than elsewhere in the state, which in turn is 3 sen more expensive than in KL.
Dani says her mother and the other daughter of Hawa, Siti Khadijah Awang Seman, used to take the train to school, "but only for a while, before she moved to a school in Pasir Mas".
These days, schoolchildren mostly take the bus. The day's first mail train, No. 84, arrives at 7am, if it is not delayed, says Fauzi, a KTMB staff on duty.
There are six mail train services a day to Kg Kemubu. The last arrives at 5.35pm.
The express train does not stop here but at Dabong, which is about half an hour away.
"Kalau miss trip pagi, kami pergi sekolah naik keretapi. Tapi lambat lah (If we miss the bus, we go to school by train. But we will be late)," a Form Three student tells us.
Kg Kemubu has only a primary school. The nearest secondary school is in Dabong. By bus, students would have to catch the 6.30am service, failing which the next bus comes at 7.30am, and they would be late for school. The ride takes half an hour.
The majority of the villagers are self-employed. "Buat dusun, kerja kampung (estate and village work)," says Mustafa, who tends to his own and his family's durian orchards. He estimates the 400-house village's population at about 1,500 people.
They leave the house for their orchards after the children go to school.
"We'll buy breakfast. It's cheaper to buy than make our own," Halimah explains as to why breakfast is sold out so quickly on most mornings. Those who remain at home are the housewives, young children and the elderly.
Hawa doesn't have any problems if she needs assistance. She has only to holler at whoever passes by, and for a few sen in tips, kampung boys will run the errands.
In the early afternoons when it gets hot, the village children head for the river. They all seem to be very good swimmers, getting to and back from the opposite bank with ease despite the fairly strong current. It is not a short swim.
The people are warm and highly hospitable. Mustafa and Halimah apologise for not being able to provide us with better food. She offers to cook us lunch of ayam kampung before we set off for Kota Baru but we declined, having had a hearty breakfast.
We have an open invitation to visit again, especially during the durian season, which is sometime in August. Will the road be paved by then? For our newfound friends, we do hope so.

The Pioneers

The wooden building, which has obviously seen better days, is as old as the Federal Land Development Authority (Felda) itself. It houses the office of Mohd Imra Mohd Pinni, manager of Felda Lurah Bilut in Bentong, Pahang - the very first of the agency's schemes in the country.
The structure could easily be mistaken for a Klinik Desa although most of such village clinics in Pahang are now pink-coloured double-storey structures.
Outside, the walls can definitely use a fresh coat of paint - even if the only choice is pink. And someone should get rid of that artifact from a different era - the three red buckets (stenciled "API") of sand hanging from a wooden stand, which were virtually the extent of firefighting equipment in many government buildings. Maybe not. They are reminders of simpler times.
Indeed, the office is today almost a museum with its old equipment, photographs and documents all kept in mint condition. Time does seem to have stood still for it - which in contrast is certainly not the case with the scheme that it oversees.
Significant progress and development has been achieved by the 45-year-old scheme, the signs of which include a secondary school - a concrete building erected 31 years ago - in front of the office. There is also a row of shophouses and the Petronas station owned by the scheme's cooperative, while nearby a mosque and two temples - one Chinese and the other Hindu - reflect the multi-racial composition of the scheme's participants.
A number of the pioneer settlers and their children are now also proud owners of sprawling bungalow houses, which are a far cry from their first homes when they arrived at the257ha scheme in August and September 1959.
That batch of 400 settlers in the first of Felda's 276 schemes to date were selected from different parts of the peninsula. They came without their families and were put up in long houses.
The road leading to the scheme is now asphalt-paved and well-maintained, no more need for Land Rovers and wagons pulled by tractors, like when Kamaruddin Mat Doaa first arrived.
The scheme's 65-year-old village head remembers well the day he reported as a settler to the office. He had travelled the whole day from his village in Sungai Manek, Telok Anson (now Teluk Intan).
"Nak hidup susah masa tu. Nak makan pun seksa (Life was tough then, even getting enough to eat was hard)," he says, of his early days at the scheme.
"We had to clear the land by hand. And we gotong royong (work together) to put up the living quarters so that we could bring our families to join us."
Kamaruddin was 20 and unemployed when he received a letter, dated Sept 17 1959, informing him that he was successful in his application to become a settler in the Lurah Bilut Land Development programme.
He was asked to report to the new settlement in 12 days, together with 29 other successful applicants from Telok Anson.
Specifically, they were all told not to bring their families until later.
Kamaruddin had not informed his parents, or his fiancee Halijah Montak - then only 14 - of his application or the interview he attended with the Settlers' Selection Committee. He continued to keep them in the dark even after finding out he had been accepted and would soon be leaving the kampung.
"The interview was easy. The panel asked me two questions: whether I could swim and if I could handle an axe. I said yes to both and that was it".
And so among the bare necessities that he was to bring on the journey, he made a point to pack an axe. There was one luxury he allowed himself though: a gambus, the traditional string musical instrument.
"That day, I left the house when my father was performing the Subuh prayers. I didn't want him to know, but he found out somehow and he was there at the train station to see me off," he says.
Kamaruddin and the rest of the group took the train from Telok Anson to Tanjung Malim where they transferred to a bus for the remaining journey that took the rest of the day.
"I had never gone out of Telok Anson before. The others too. It was a very winding road and by the time we arrived in Bentong, we were all sick. Then there was the ride in Land Rovers and wagons into Lurah Bilut."
Launched on Jan 1, 1958, Lurah Bilut was initially managed by the Lurah Bilut Land Development Corporation, which was formed by Felda.
The corporation provided all necessary agricultural equipment to the settlers. It also supplied the building materials for the settlers to build their own houses.
Only when the houses were completed, did the families join them.
Each settler was allocated a little over 10 acres of land - seven to be planted with rubber trees, three for an orchard, and 0.25 for the house.
The records show that Ahmad Hussin, born in Pasir Mas in Kelantan in 1901, was the first settler in the scheme. He arrived at Lurah Bilut on Aug 2, 1959. He died on Feb 10, 1984. Of the 400 pioneer settlers, 60 who are still living.
Today, Lurah Bilut hosts 616 families comprising first, second and third generation settlers - 400 Malays, 169 Chinese and 47 Indians.
When the scheme was first launched, conditions for participation were quite straight-forward: the applicant must be a Malayan between 21 and 50 years of age; does not own land of bigger than two acres; belongs to a big family; is physically fit; and has no criminal record.
Even then, "peraturan tak ketat (procedures were not strict)," Kamaruddin recalls, as he got into the scheme without meeting some of the criteria.
Of the 29 that came from Telok Anson with him, 14 dropped out within weeks and returned home because they found it too tough.
Kamaruddin did return to his kampung - two years later. To get married.
"Actually it was a requirement to be married and that the family must join you. I was only engaged when I came here. The scheme officials were starting to ask a lot of questions as to why my wife had not joined me. So I returned home to get married."
Kamaruddin and Halijah never had their honeymoon. "The henna on my wife's fingers were still red when she joined me to work the land," he says, with a little laugh.
Rubber trees take seven years to mature and there was a lot of work to be done, especially to protect the seedlings from mice. Felda paid each family $2.90 a day until the rubber trees could be tapped.
"It was all an experiment. We were the first, we didn't have anything to go by, all trial and error. The officials were also only former military personnel, not agriculturists."
And the settlement was heavily guarded as it was at the height of the communist insurgency at the time. Curfews were imposed as well.
"You know the buku tiga lima (the `555 notebook')? We bought groceries on credit. There were two cooperatives. You'd see a stack of the buku tiga lima on the counter."
Sugar was 35 sen a kati, flour 25 sen a kati and rice RM1.60 a gantang, Kamaruddin says.
Basic amenities like piped water and electricity came much later. Water was piped into the scheme in 1960 but only to a roadside tap to be shared by several households.
"You'd see reels of hose linking the main pipe to the houses. You get quarrels among families, all fighting for water." It was only in 1964 that water was finally piped into individual homes.
Electricity? Its 24-hour supply came only in 1981.
"We could have gotten electricity earlier but we rejected the proposed 12-hour supply. Why should we settled for that?
"Yes, life was tough, but we had some fun too. For example, the gambus was put to good use in the evenings."
His father was a bandleader, and at Lurah Bilut, Kamaruddin and other musically inclined settlers set up a band called Sri Melor.
"Zaman pop yeh, yeh (pop yeh, yeh era) ... we would perform in small villages. Whenever the late Sultan Abu Bakar visited us and nearby villages, we were asked to perform," he recalls. Kamaruddin also plays the accordion in the band.
Regrets?
"None," Kamaruddin says, adding that he never once considered giving up and going back to his kampung.
"Life in my own kampung was also difficult. At the end of the day, at least I can proudly say the land that I worked on with my bare hands is mine. My most satisfying moment was when I was given the title to the land in the 1980s," he says.
Maybe one.
None of Kamaruddin's four children, born two years apart, has stayed to work on the land with him. Daughter Azizah, 43, is a housewife now living in Cheras, Kuala Lumpur, while sons Roslan, a Universiti Malaya graduate, Rosli and Rosdzi are an assistant headmaster, a policeman and a film production company staff respectively.
Kamaruddin and Halijah have 10 grandchildren, and "none of them also wants to take over from me".
Imra, the scheme's manager, can understand the children's decision. The 15th manager of Felda Lurah Bilut since its establishment, which included two Caucasians and one Chinese - is himself a Felda settler's son.
He was in Standard One in 1965 when his father moved the family from Kelang to Felda Suharto in Tanjung Malim, Perak.
Today, none of his brothers and sisters is interested in managing the family plot, he says. "We hire other people to work the land. We saw for ourselves how difficult it was for my father."
Imra says it's hard for the first generation settlers in that "on the one hand, they want their children to take over but on the other, they don't want them to suffer the way they did".
"They went through such hardship to make a living, they don't want their children to go through the same thing."
These days, Kamaruddin's originally allocated three acres of orchards are planted with oil palm, which takes only three years before the fruits can be harvested.
Most settlers also no longer do the harvesting themselves. The work is contracted out.
"They've become more like landowners," Imra explains.
A kg of rubber (dry form) is currently priced at RM4.82, and latex at RM1.70 a kg. "It's 60:40 - 60 per cent to the contract workers and 40 per cent to the landowner. They (the settlers) come and collect their share from the office."
"Harus pada adat (inevitable), they (the children) will not come back," Kamaruddin says.

Back To The Roots

For the last couple of decades or so, Ahmad Farid Jaafar has watched with disappointment and no small measure of sadness how agriculture has declined as a sector of the economy.
While manufacturing and services go from strength to strength, agriculture has long stopped being considered an "engine of growth" for the country, and therefore not overly deserving of vast resources being devoted to its development.
Hence farms have increasingly given way to factories and golf courses, and farmers' children have moved into housing estates and got jobs in offices and on shop floors.
Even the country's only agricultural university, set up in 1972, has changed its name from Universiti Pertanian Malaysia to Universiti Putra Malaysia.
So when the Ministry of Agriculture was recently renamed as the Ministry of Agriculture and Agro-based Industry to mark a renewed government emphasis on the sector, Farid was excited.
Farid, 40, had written to Nuance and introduced himself as "a vegetable farmer in Raub". That he belongs to a new breed of Malaysians who are working "with" the land - well-educated individuals who choose to live the Malay adage tak rugi berbudi kepada tanah - was immediately clear from his impeccable English, and the fact that he contacted the magazine (on a different matter) via e-mail.
Subsequent correspondences yielded an invitation to visit his "vegetable plot" in Kampung Lepar, 11km outside the former gold mining town of Raub; and revealed that he is a commerce graduate from Australia's University of New South Wales.
Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi's move to make agriculture a mainstay sector once again could not have come at a better time, according to Farid.
It is one thing to note that the agriculture sector was the third largest contributor to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) last year, and quite another to see that it actually accounted for only 8.431 per cent of the GDP, compared with services' 56.36 per cent and manufacturing's 30.09 per cent.
This was an erosion from between 15 and 20 per cent 20 years earlier, while the country's food import bill has ballooned to as high as RM13 billion a year, compared to exports of only about RM7 billion.
Still, at a volume of RM19.453 billion last year, the sector's total output was a creditable 5.5 per cent increase over RM18.438 billion in 2002.
Farid did not go into farming blindly. He did his research and then about 10 months ago converted 1ha-odd area from the 4ha piece of land he inherited from his grandmother into a vegetable farm.
He invested RM50,000 in the project, the bulk of which went to fencing up the area to keep wild animals out, with monkeys and wild boars being the main pests. He bought seeds from a shop in Rawang, employed two foreign workers to help him.
The plot at the Raub-Benta trunk road is planted with chillies, lady's fingers, long beans and angle loofah (petola), which he supplies to the weekly market in Raub.
Some friends have suggested that he plant fruit trees. Maybe later, he's decided, as the gestation period for that kind of venture can be quite long.
"I was with some accounting firms before, and also worked with my former civil servant father who opened his own construction business. And I dabbled in several businesses myself until I found this," Farid says.
He had come to meet me and photographer May in Raub in a 30-something-year-old red Mini.
"My grandmother left me the piece of land. I had to decide what to do with it. So I did some research, visited some vegetable farms and became convinced that there is money to be made from this."
It was a big decision, given that he wouldn't have had much problem landing a high-flying job in the city.
As explanation for exchanging a plush air-conditioned office with the heat and toil of farm life, this father of three simply said: "I like getting my hands dirty, I enjoy being in the open. Furthermore, it is a business. Whatever I have learned in university can be applied here".
When in school, he had aspired to be a pilot, Farid says, but that was not to be as he wore glasses. Who will doubt his vision now, when he says he sees farmers in Malaysia becoming increasingly well educated, and will adopt modern methods to help bring the agriculture sector to greater heights?
"You have to look at how to maximise utilisation of the land - mechanisation, proper planting techniques, etc. With support from government departments and other support agencies like Fama (Federal Agricultural Marketing Agency), we can make it."
Government agencies have a big role to play, not least in research and development activities, and in the dissemination of information on the latest technologies and techniques in agriculture, Farid adds.
"Of course, the farmers or would-be farmers must themselves be prepared to face the challenges of modern, commercial farming.
"Everybody involved must recognise the demands of the market, and for a start, government agencies have to understand that no programme can be successful if from the point of view of farmers, the activity is not worthwhile, that the returns are not sufficient.
"Only when this is achieved, when the farmers are convinced, will there be the spillover effects, the flow of all the other benefits to society and country."
He is expecting a visit from government officials later in the day: "They've asked to see the operations". Hopefully, he will be able to help put things in a proper perspective for them.
A 1ha plot is fairly comfortable operation for a small family but Farid wants to show that the activity can be undertaken on a larger scale.
He has plans to expand his venture, in terms of plot size as well as crop diversification, meaning going into high-value produce like lettuce and broccoli.
Farid has also started talks with owners of the land adjoining his, and as production increases he has entered into a marketing contract with Fama.
"I need a minimum 20kg per crop and I can sell it to Fama ex-farm price. Fama will market it at the wholesale markets."
The insecticide-free vegetables are ready to be harvested within two months of planting.
"We have not found any need to use insecticide so far. Our problem is actually pests like monkeys. The fence does not keep them out.
"We use firecrackers to scare them off. We've contacted the Department of Wildlife but they suggested that we deal with it ourselves, maybe trap the animals."
As for manpower, two workers are sufficient for now, but when he expands his plot to 6ha, he will need an additional six foreign workers, and he has submitted the application for them to the Immigration Department.
"There is a lot of idle land in the area. The problem is clearing up the area. It is a lot of hard work," says Farid, whose own plot is surrounded by such unutilised land, which is overgrown with jungle-like vegetation.
"It's all private land... with owners. Over there, it's owned by a former high-ranking government official," he says, pointing across the chili field to the rear of the farm.
Farid's venture is also a breakthrough in one other aspect. Vegetable farming is traditionally pursued largely by the Chinese in Malaysia.
Malays in the rural areas, meanwhile, are mostly rubber and oil palm smallholders, and also padi farmers.
Their population seems to be declining as youths leave the villages and family land for jobs in the cities.
Farid hopes that more Malays will follow his example and return to their roots. He now calls Kampung Dong, 4km away from the farm, his home. "The house was my grandmother's too. I live there now with my wife, Azlena Mohd Zain, 37, and two of my children, son Azfar, 7, and daughter Atirah, 5."
Eldest daughter, 10-year-old Farah, lives with her maternal grandmother in Kuala Lumpur.
In between tending the land, Farid does freelance accounting work for friends who own businesses.
The remaining land he inherited from his grandmother is a durian orchard.
"It flowering now. Come back soon and we can have a durian feast," he offers.
For the time being, as a parting gift, he fills plastic bags full of long beans and ladies' fingers for us to take home, and says: "Last night, we had ladies fingers cooked in asam pedas for dinner. It was awesome!"