The Crookedest Street

Circumstances dictated that I was not able to use my plane ticket from England to Malaysia in 1990. I had to further stay on in UK for a forthnight or so. I did not complain for it was a blessing in disguise since I was given the normal stipend.

I was in Leeds for six months attending two 3 months Short Courses at OEU of the University of Leeds. The two Short Courses were conducted concurrently. The first 3 months Short Course was the ELT Course designed for me to follow whereas the second 3 months Short ELT Course, a Teachers-Trainers Course, was especially designed for 6 Sabah teachers-trainers. Since I was tasked to lead the home trainers-trainers courses, I was especially requested to further stay on for the British Council sponsored Trainers-Trainers Training Course. That must have entangled my plane ticketing schedules so much so that I was given a paid holidays in the northern hemisphere for a good half a month. The real reason, though, was not revealed to me. I did not really want to know.

I decided to pay Grace a visit in San Francisco, USA. From Leeds I had to send my Passport to London for some important clearance. On the day I had planned to leave Leeds for London, I received my Passport through the post. I based myself in Earling at Fiona’s as I applied for my Visa and booked for my return air ticket. I had to go twice to the American Office to get my Visa. I had to line up as early as 3.00 o’clock in the morning and the queue was so long that it went around the outside of the big building. People queued on the road. When I came to the Officer in the building and presented my passport, I was told to come the following day. When I presented myself the following day, I was given back my passport with the appended Visa for multiple visits without much questions asked.

My return plane ticket on Pan Am was not immediately available but I was assured that it would be waiting for me at the airport the following morning. When I tried to collect it at the Pan Am counter at the airport the morning I was to leave, I was told to simply queue up for the boarding check and the ticket would be rushed to me as soon as it was delivered. Not all things was quite right for me that morning. An airport security personnel must have walked up to me and slapped a yellow self-sticking ‘security check’ sticker on my handbag without me realising it. A very professional non-intermediating check followed. I was very pleased to have talked to professional people of authority.

Very much later, when I narrated such happenings to my professional friends at home, they laughed and told me that in such a case I really fit the the role of a drug dealer, well-dressed, traveling light and alone. Whatever it was coincidence could happen.

Grace and friends were waiting for me at San Francisco airport terminal. Tiru, purportedly a student, a black, was the driver. Grace was surprised I took the Pan Am. One Pan Am went down in Scotland a few months previously. My first day in San Francisco was spent walking down the street, surveying, so to speak, the nearby down-town. I bought a few postcards to send to Jimmy Taylor in Leeds, England. I brunched alone at a Vietnamese Restaurant. The food was not appealing. A middle-aged foreign woman came to ask me for money, a donation. When I grunted my disapproval she literally ran away as fast as she could. I thought she was genuinely hungry or she was an illegal new-comer. In the evening Grace brought me to get a couple of jeans. She also brought me to see pictures, the latest in town. Everything in USA is done through the queue … the queue in buying of cinema tickets was so long that it started from well outside the cinema itself. When we settled down finally I asked Grace why there were so many beep sounds in the course of the conversations. It was my first time hearing so many beeps in a stretch of a few minutes. Grace told me of the American’s speech…so many words were used which might not be suitable for public consumption, e.g. swearing words, etc. On another evening Grace brought me to dinner. Typical in a busy place, we had to stand up outside to wait for a table vacancy. People waited to be seated. They did not simply grab a vacant seat.

Tiru had a car and he drove us to see the effect of the San Francisco earthquake in recent times. The road flyers which collapsed on each other, was still there to show to tourists. The timber fencing over a grassland was moved apart for about a couple of feet out of angle. We also drove passed the farm…the vineyard so famously featured on a TV series. We also went to the lookout of the Pacific Ocean to see the humpback whale from a distance. We saw a few curved up the distant water, sportingly waved its gigantic tail and really sprout water off its head. Near the look-out place, there was a pine tree which was peculiarly shaped because of the effect of withstanding the consistent strong wind blows. We also saw a mountain of cockles shells stacked for some purposes. I was also brought to see a group of some gigantic pine-trees by which a highway passed through.

During my stay in San Francisco I was still guarding my diet, just because of my diabetes. Grace prepared me one basin of salad. She kept it in the fridge and went to work before I was up for the morning. She rang the house at mid-morning to tell me of the salad. When I looked at it, I thought it was not tasty. It had all sorts of leafy things, including mushrooms. When I finally tasted it I found out it was not bad, in fact it was very good. The salad vinegar was the magic agent.

Grace brought me round to see the Japanese Garden and a closer look at the Golden Gate bridge. We took a few photographs near the bridge. We also took a tram-ride to the historical Fisherman’s Wharf and took another ride down the most crooked street of San Francisco…The Crookedest Street. Grace brought me for some snacks at a restaurant far up a tall building, not far away, perhaps, from her work-place. She paid for them using an in-house charge card.

I could not remember all the things I had bought, but I had a good luggage when I went back. Grace sent me to the airport and went back. She must have hired one of her friends with a car to take me to the airport. I arrived safely at Heathrow and based myself for the night at Earling. That evening we went for dinner, Mathew of KL, the heir to the Coca-Cola dynasty from the Island, Fiona and myself. I used my Travellers’ Cheque to pay for the dinner. It was a good dinner. The next morning, I headed for Heathrow for KL, nearly missing the plane. When I arrived in KL, I found out that I had missed my connecting KL-KK flight. I requested Departure to put me on the next available KL-KK flight. It was a good feeling to be accorded one’s wish. I thought it was because it was the last and a midnight flight. What more, I thought it was, again, not a capacity flight. At the airport taking the same flight was a workmate, Encik Hadis. We had not seen each other for a good six months. We updated each other of happenings in the office, in Sabah and of the Sabah political scene. It was Election Day in Sabah the following morning. When I arrived home and after a short rest, I went to cast my usual vote at St. Joseph’s Primary School in Penampang.

Sweet Babagon Pineapples

Although Babagon Pineapples has been popularised far and wide in Sabah as well as in Kuala Lumpur, no entrepreneur dare start a pineapple juicing or canning factory. The most popular non-feasibility reason cited by leaders and Government representative was the unsteady supply of the raw materials, rendering the setting up of the enterprise rather uneconomical. There are actually not less than approximately 1000 acres of pineapples plantation in the upper Moyog region, engulfing kampungs like Kampung Moyog, Mongkusilad, Kibunut, Poropok, Babagon, Sangai-Sangai, Nounggon, Rugading, Tintap, Borot, Timpoluwon, Manansawong, Sungoi and Timpango. Although pineapples fruit seasonally there has been a Government agency recommended technological knowhow to enhance pineapple fruiting. The harmless to human fruit-enhancing commercially-produced whitish tablet is dropped into the budding centre of the pineapple plant. If the pineapple plant was big enough and capable of fruiting then signs of a fruit would appear in a couple of weeks or so.

If ever a pineapple juicing or canning factory was to be set up in Kampung Tintap area, the basic infrastructures for such a business enterprise are now set in place; a near-good narrow but sealed yet crooked roads, an almost-reliable electricity supply, fixed TM telephone lines connections and a reliable almost-FOC, clean water gravity supply. In the present the apparent lack of incentives from both the Government as well as the Corporate Sectors to pineapple farming the pineapple-farm small-holders plant pineapples for incidental cash-crops for local consumptions only. They are also planting pineapples, not for the fruit-for-food of it, but also for the fruit-for-Chinese-religion-prayer use. There are about 2,000 young pineapples crown coming out of the Sweet Babagon Pineapples area every 15 days cycle. Since it has been talked about and popularised by those impressed first-time buyers and by the Agriculture Department personnels, the grandest dining tables the sweet Babagon Pineapples have ever reached, it has been said, were the former Prime Minister’s and his other ministers’ dining tables. It was also said that it had also reached the shores of one of the Middle East nations, Bahrain.

Sweet Babagon Pineapples are not only reputed to be sweet but they are in truth sweet. Some pineapple sellers try to dupe their buyers by claiming and naming their pineapples, Babagon Pineapples, irrespective of the place from where they had earlier obtained their pineapples for sale. This tactic is often ignored by the buyers for they could be considered a sale strategical gimmick. Buyers who know Babagon Pineapples can easily recognise the looks and general shape of the Babagon Pineapples.

Another factor which may demotivate entrepreneurs in setting up a pineapple canning factory in the Babagon area is the bulky size of the Babagon Pineapple. The standard factory slicing machine would slice the pineapple into two halves, normally discarding the bigger and better half. A pineapple juicing factory, therefore, may be the most suitable choice. If such an incentive to serious pineapple farming is created, one could bet one’s last Ringgit that every available land plot would be planted with pineapples. Both sides of the sub-JPJ standard Babagon-Timpango steep, narrow and crooked road would be decoratedly-planted with pineapples. An imaginary welcome arch immediately after the Moyog River fording section of that Babagon-Timpango Road would be strung with yet another streamer welcoming intending visitors...“Welcome To Pineapple Country!”

Taking Kampung Babagon as the central location, the other kampungs producing this particular land produce, Sweet Babagon Pineapples, are the kampungs within the approximately six kilometers radius. They are not grown only in Kampung Babagon itself. Sweet Babagon Pineapples, therefore, has become a brand name for the sweet pineapples but no one should claim its exclusive ownership as a promotional trade brand.

Tintapland was applied for from the State Government of Sabah and the NT status land title was released in 1977. Its total area in acres was only 9.55 acres after its originally applied for area had been sliced two times to give others shares of God’s land. It has always been planted with pineapples, the Sweet Babagon Pineapples, ever since.

When the land was first applied for from the State Government, there were two interferers, so to speak. One person who had earlier asked for permission to squat on the land pleaded for a small piece when it was being surveyed for the title release. He was given a slice of approximately just over an acres. Another person, a Government officer working for the Land and Surveys Department, helped himself, so to speak, of more that 5 acres from the same Land Application piece.

This high ranking officer of the Lands and Surveys Department submitted his land application overlapping the very land I had applied for. I was told that there was no prove that I had previously applied for the said land. I could not take no for an answer and saw to it that the District Surveyor at that time referred to and make a search for my land application from old files. I did not ininsuate that my land application was purposely hidden nor did I give an inkling that I was going to report my loss to the newly established ACA at that time. The big fat closed file was pregnant with unattended Land Applications all of which were signed by my father, KK Emmanuel Tangit Kinajil. It was a rule rather than just a mere custom that Land Application submitted by individuals for Government lands within the jurisdiction of a particular Ketua Kampung (Village Chieftan) must be ascertained and signed by that Ketua Kampung. There was a coincidence or was it good spirit-led? When that big fat extra-ordinarily pregnant file was opened at random, at the same time the District Surveyor confidently saying, “..you see, nothing...nah ..”, the file slowly opened at the very land application I had submitted very much earlier in the decade. The District Surveyor sounded embarrassed and grunted, “…uh!..uh!...” I siezed upon the opportunity to request rather than demand for an immediate follow-up actions which could well be translated into the issue of SP (survey permit) and ground survey.

That high ranking officer, an Executive Officer of that Department, who happened to be a distant cousin-in-law to me, only then came up to me discretely and asked to be given a small slice. I was very angry that I was given a raw deal…treated in such a way… losing precious time at that office. At that time, I was a secondary school teacher at SMK Kota Kinabalu, which was housed at Sabah College. In my processes of getting my way with the District Surveyor, one ‘iron’ man in that office, scolded me as I was argueing constructively, at least for me, with the District Surveyor, “Aiso nopo ka bo gia diaha’ nga’ aiso no!”, he almost shouted at me. (If he said,’nothing’ then there is nothing!) I ignored him and dismissed him as a very negative man. He came from the same kampung as me and known well to the family. I thought there was an inside conspiracy of something to purposely lose my bona fide submitted LA so that departmental personnel could quietly help themselves should I abandon my search for the LA. If it was a purposeful conspiracy then the initiator had picked up the wrong intended victim. I tried to forget the whole episode and agreed to give that ‘LA overlapper’ man a small slice. At that time Government surveyors were responsible of surveying all LAs. So the Lands & Surveys Department surveyors under the instruction of the District Surveyor who had found my particular LA and whose office was next door to the ‘overlapper’ Executive Officer, surveyed my land. The surveyors, puportedly under instructions, gave him a very big slice of my LA leaving me with only 9.55 acres.

In 2004, during the drought season, smoke was everywhere and affecting visibility on Sabah roads. The official Government advice rather than warning was that there should be no burning of any kind so as not to aggreviate the smoky sitiation. But it was during this time that the area sliced out for the EO was cleared and burnt down by his brother in law, whose wife was the EO’s sister. Understandibly, as a high-ranking officer whose coming to possess a piece of well-argued overlapped piece of LA land, did not want to risk his position by putting the piece of land under his own name. It was put under his, at that time, minor sister’s name. The brother in law created a big hill of a fire in clearing the +/- 5 acres. Mike, my neighbour, suggested I cleared the rest of the hill area during the dry spell and using the same unorthodox method. It was a smaller remainder of about 1 acre. All I said was, “OK, go ahead”.

Within the month the rest of the hill was ‘yulbrienered’. There was a good cause for a punitive compound for a few individuals. The Health as well as the Environmental Protection Departments could have instituted something!

Earlier, in the early 1980, the cleared side of the hill was planted with RM1,000-00 worth of pineapple suckles. Each suckle was 25 sen and there were an additional 50 suckles given as extras just in case some chose not to really make it. Therefore, not less than 4050 pineapples were initially planted on the eastern hill part of Tintapland in early 1980. They were the sweet Babagon Pineapples. There was so much pineapples, the plants and the fruit, so much so that one who was closely connected to the pineapples would not want to look at the planted pineapples and their fruits at that time.

No Post or Car Tyre!

Once upon a time the Big Boss of a factory in a fast developing country in Asia was exploring possibilities of new potential markets for his shoe factory newly designed shoes. At their normal Monday morning staff meeting the boss asked everyone to keep quiet for a period of time to ponder and think as to what the factory should embark upon to expand their shoe-market.

After that silent morning prayer, so to speak, the boss asked every member of staff to dish out their contributions. Rapporteurs were at hand to minute down every detail of the discussions. Finally the boss, at the end of the morning staff meeting, decided and said, “Based on our discussions this morning, I want to send you Encik Singkolomutaitaitingaudikoput to that part of the African Continent to find out the marketability of our shoes there. Take your time, be prudent and find out everything. Come back and report to me direct.”

Encik Singko, as he was accustomed to be called, requested two other members of his Department to come with him. He asked his secretary to request the Travel and Ticketing Department of their factory to prepare their return tickets. By their tickets they had 2 weeks to perform their assigned duties.

When they arrived at the African country they were assigned to go to, they were very surprised to find out that no one used shoes in that country. “Appallingly primitive”, they blurted out. They traveled all over and found out that the situations were the same. “Truly a waste of time! Who ever suggested expansions here”?

When they came back, they reported to their boss. All three of them were very enthusiastic in seeing their Boss’s reactions on hearing their reports. All three of them went in to their boss’s room. Encik Singko said, “Boss, all the three of us went on that fact-finding mission. We found out that no one, really no one, used shoes there. The whole population was not in the habit of putting on shoes. There was no point for us to expand our trade to that country. It’s a waste of time.” The boss thanked them for their findings.

The boss send another person out to the same country to find out about the same thing, the marketability of shoes there. He told him to come back and to verbally report to him directly. Only two people went on this trip. They had open return tickets. When they came to that country, they were very enthusiastically surprised for all the people they saw and talked to did not use shoes. “Great potentials,” they blurted out. “This is the chance of a lifetime. We should introduce shoes to them or they to shoes! Big ready market!” They returned immediately and made their verbal reports to their boss. Their boss thanked them for their findings.

“Do You See Any Planted Poles?”

“No, there is none, no standing post, pole or stick anywhere for miles. Maybe there is none at all in the whole desert!” they answered.

A pack of dog went out into the desert to look for their master. The desert was hot and even well-trained k-nines could get lost. Tracks were hard to last, in fact, they did not stay long or just for a little while, if at all they tried. The desert wind was strong and it blew continuously, consistently, giving tracks no chance to register. The sand was flat, it fact, it was so flat that it was as flat as a level playing field for many miles around. There were no plants, no bush, shrubs or trees. There was no sand dune. There was nothing any taller than the flat sand itself.

So a few days went by and finally the dogs came back one by one. Dog No.10, Godoot, did not appear. Everyone was waiting for him for he was the pack-leader, the top dog. “We got to go and look for him,” Goboi said. “Be wise, give him a few more hours,” Linggoi advised. When they have exhausted their last ounce of hope, they organized a search party consisting of professionals but one, a priest, a doctor, a scientist, a trained vet and a teacher. The other one in the group, the ‘but’, was Kuk, a Form 2 student.

The search party made preparations for the journey. Each one of them packed their own necessities. Kuk had the lightest knapsack. He wanted to travel light. He did not bring a toothbrush, he did not bring a comb. He did not want to be slowed down. He wanted to travel light. The other members of the group had pints upon pints of drinking water with them. Some of them even brought a few cans of siss! (cans of beer. When the ring is pulled off the can, the sound made was “siss…”, thus popularizing the replacement and hiding name of the real stuff). The professionals were literally heavy adults with different heavy metaphoric baggages they have always carried along with them.

To their expected horror they found Godoot on his back, motionless, staring at the sky. All four legs seemed to point at something above him. The doctor went to work straight away and established that the cause of the death was blood poisoning. The other professionals conferred as to why he was staring skywards…heavenwards. The priest had no theory. He assured them he would perform the last rites for Godoot. The scientist suggested that Godoot’s peculiar dying position was a red herring and had no bearing as to who or what poisoned him. The vet concurred with the scientist but the teacher said, “Wait a minute a sec, not just quite…let’s hear what Kuk has to say.” They all turned to Kuk.

“Father, Docs and gentlemen, sorry for I am still young. I do not claim to equal myself with you all. I was entertained, really, to hear you all arguing as to what or who poisoned Godoot. I am sorry to tell you, he poisoned himself.” The scientist was very interested to hear that. That was one avenue he was in fact thinking about. He called for the attention of the others and asked Kuk to continue. “He was poisoned by his own urine,” he said. Everyone, including the learned scientist said, “But how? But surely, he must have been so thirsty that he drank his own urine!”

“Do you see any posts, poles or car tyres around”? Kuk asked them. They answered that there was none. They said that there might be none of those things in the whole desert. Kuk said that all male dogs had the habit of easing at a post, pole, car-tyre, fence, tree-trunk, wall, bush or anything higher than the ground. There was none of those things in the desert. He could not ease himself. He held fast to his habit. He did not want to let it go. He rather died. He died for his principle…the lifting up of the right leg so that he could better urinate the tree-trunk and establish a mark of his territories.

“Stupid dog!” they whispered softly, fearing Godoot would hear. Kuk heard them whispered sofly and smiled his reactions discretely. “Who’re more stupid”?

Don’t You What What Me!

Kadazandusun parents tend to speak to their children in a language other than their own. If they know how to speak English then the tendency is that they speak to their children in English. If they do not know English then Malay would be their choice. If they were educated in the Malay medium schools, then they would be using a reasonably standard spoken Malay when they speak to their children. If they do not have much or any formal schooling at all then they would use a sub-standard Malay, the colloquial version that they might have picked up all along their pathways of life, so to speak. Their sub-standard Malay is almost unintelligible to themselves because they would Kadazandusunised certain words of the Malay language that they don’t know. Any Malay words that they do not know or which they cannot remember at any particular point in time while speaking would be automatically replaced by a Kadazandusun word which, to them, has a similar meaning. For example, when a typical kampung Kadazandusun mother wants to call her young daughter to be still and to sit down near her grandmother, she would say, “Mali siini osong, diam-diam bo gia, duduk siini dakat Odu’ kau”. (Come here dear, behave yourself, sit down near your grandmother”). She could have said proudly using her own language, “Ka dohiiti Osong, tumoronong no bo gia, indikau hiiti’d doros di Odu’ nu.” Another mixture of words, or rather, language, typical of a Kadazandusun elder’s spoken Sonsog language to a minor is as such. “Oyo’, tulung dodu’ tutuk ini pinang”. (My dear, help grandmother pound this beetle nut”.

English educated Kadazandusun parents tend to use the English Language when they speak to their children. To them the ease of using the English language is so convenient so much so that English becomes an auxiliary language to them. But when they speak to each other, the father and the mother, they would normally be using their L1, otherwise they use the Malay language. Even if the English educated parents are of the same race, they would still be using English when they speak to their children. In another scenario, when the father is the one who knows only but a very limited English, he wouldn’t dare using English when he spoke to his children. He would use English only when he speaks to his wife and only when he has previously downed a few cans of beer. When that happens then the comparatively harsher language tend to come out first. If he is lost with words, an intended communication would end up something like, “Don’t you what what me!”, or, “You this arud!”

When it comes to the English Language, only the capable in the English language parents speak English to their children. The English limited parents could not to use English the way they adulterate the use of their spoken Malay when they speak to their children. When they have not learnt English and their living environments were not rich in English, then they would not play the fool with themselves.

Why is this tendency of using other languages apart from one’s own language so prevalent among the Kadazandusun people? Such a question has been asked not only a few times but so many times, so much so that no one expects it to get an immediate answer. The possible answers are in theories as no one really knows the real answer, not even the users themselves. It has been theorized that the parents are happy and proud that they know how to speak Malay or English. They want to further train themselves to speak Malay or English by making use of their children as their training tools. Could this be the real reason? Perhaps but quite unlikely for they speak, for example, English to their spouses only when they dare to do so.

Another theory is that they want to train their children to use Malay as a communication tool before they go to school. They know that their children will have to use Malay when they go to school. Could this be a reason? It is doubted. Even when there were no children around, their pets would be talked to in Malay, for the parents who are not proficient in English and in English for those who are at ease with the English language. The Malay they use is far from being the standard type used in schools. They are perhaps proud that they know how to speak a language other than their own. They could be of the opinion that when they speak Malay, or English, they are considered by others around them as people of some standing in society. How can such foolishness be still present in the mentality of the Kadazandusun people? What would the Kadazandusun Language become one thousand years from now?