My Onyang.

I got this photograph from an old passport Haji which I found among old documents .Her name was Hajjah Maimunah bt. Ahmad . She was my great grand-mother . She died in 1968 . She was more than 100 years old when she died .I was not at home when she passed away because I was then studying at the College of Agriculture , ( later named UPM )Serdang . My family did not inform me of her death for fear that it would affect my studies .

My great grand-mother hailed from South Kalimantan , Indonesia . She was from the Banjar clan and she could speak only in her mother tongue . She came to then Malaya in the 1800s with a group of people to escape the Dutch atrocities who then colonized Indonesia . She came with her son ( my maternal grand-father ) and some relatives . They landed in Bagan Datok , Perak and settled down there . They planted and cultivated coconuts ,fruit trees and some vegetables . Her son , my grand-father married my grand-mother , a local and they had a daughter ( my mother ) and a son ( my uncle ) . My maternal grandfather passed away long before I was borned .

When I was a kid I used to hear stories from my great grand-mother of her early life in Kalimantan .She told me that her neighbours were the Ibans and she used to see human heads hanging on poles infront of their long-houses . But they never disturb her and her families . She also told me of the atrocities of the Dutch and how they used to raid and ransacked her house looking for those who were against them . She told me her family came to Malaya on a tongkang ( a ship using wind as their power to move ) . During the Japanese occupation of Malaya she was also not spared from having to face great hardships .There was not enough food and she had to plant and depend on tapioca,sweet potato and yam for food which she planted . She was almost in a state of phobia because each time she heard the sound of aeroplane she would hid herself under the ' mengkuang ' mat . Those days being a naughty boy , I too used to scare her by telling her that the Japanese had landed again.She would then told us to be quiet and insisted that we too hid ourselves . She also told me that she performed her Haj twice . The first was on a tongkang which took 4-5 months to get to Mecca.The second was on a steam ship from Penang which took only about 2 weeks .

My great grand-mother was a very hard working woman . She never kept herself idle for she was always busy in her plantation . There were all sorts of fruit trees and vegetables that she planted . Practically we did not have to buy anything for our food . She was also a shrewd business woman . I remember I used to follow her to the pasar minggu where she sold her goods like tapioca , sweet potatoes , yams ,chillies ,vegetables and fruits like jack fruit ,mangoes ,rambutans and jambus which she collected from her plantaion . She was also a great cook . I used to have my second meal from her kitchen . ( She had her own kitchen even though my grand mother stayed in the same house ) . One incident that I cannot forget till today was when I ran away from home to follow my great grand-mother on a bus to her home a few kilo meters away . I was then only clad in an old sarong seated in the bus with her . I just smiled when the rest of the passengers laughed at me . Since she could only spoke in the Banjarese dialect to me , I then became quite proficient in the language . Today , I could hardly utter a word of it .

Those were the great years with my great grand-mother . I pray to Allah so that He protect her and she be among the faithfulls in Heaven .