Enjoying Another Person's Memories

Saturday morning Angeline appeared at my office to invite me to join her as she drove Kevin, St. Joseph's Home's soon-to-depart intern, to see Kedah. Kedah is the neighboring state and the "rice bowl of Malaysia." Angeline had lived in Kedah, outside Alor Star, in 1971. It was her first teaching job. Midafternoon we passed the school where she taught and place she lived (over a coffee shop). As she talked about small town life she repeated one of my favorite observatons ns "you never see anyone, but they all see you."

I arrived at St. Joseph's at 1:30, expecting to leave immediately. But this is Malaysia - so lunch first. We left about 2:30 and took the ferry over to Butterworth (the mainland portion of Penang). One of the first standouts of our "guided tours" was the evidence of a defunct runway. It ran across the highway and cars had to stop for take offs and landings. Throughout the trip Angeline, whose field is social work, told us stories the children and her trials and tribulations in working with Malaysian social services. She added to my knowledge of Malaysia's government and politics. Money dominates who gets what from the bus contracts to political party nominations in a way that is much less subtle than I am used to.

As we drove along I heard about the changing landscape. Rubber plantations are now palm oil plantations, shopping centers, or housing developments. While rubber tappers have to be skilled, the palm fruit requires no skill to pick or process. Along the way we saw a lot of padi. Rice production is increasingly mechanized. So hand planting of padi only occurs on the smallest plots. Angeline added to the conversation by singing a childhood ditty "planting rice is not very nice."

We stopped at an archaology museum . What I found particularly interesting was the information on a nearby candi (a Buddhist temple) which was first excavated in the 1930s. Next we headed to Gunung Jerai, but we were stopped as we neared the peak. A recent rainstorm had caused a landslide making the rest of the road dangerous. We saw a number of hikers (perhaps better described as "strollers") walking down. So perhaps Doug and I can explore the mountain further depending on how our time goes.

We stopped for dinner at Alor Star (the same hotel I had stayed in during the Chinese Cultural Assembly). Dinner was definitely better than breakfast. Then back to Penang. I said good bye to Kevin who is headed back to the University of Montana and a December graduation.