GO AND FLY KITE

WOWED OVER WAU


Hidayat and Bazli with thier wau
Kampung girls waiting to fly thier kite

With teachers in the kite-making committee
Studetn smust don sarung kampung style for the photo shoot
That's Fahmy who helped me a lot with the competition


A group photo with the class form/subject teacher is a must

Extra points if they can drag the teachers to take photo with them

The sweet damsels of Kg Layang Abang Melayang
We helped Mercy Relief Organsiation to raise funds too
MRO merchandise sale for humanitatrian aids

Samuel with his students who did the kite

Our top winning group busy decorating their kite

Students from India also took part in the kite-making

The Korean girls showing off their henna painted hands

Giving some help to the group

You have got it right, young man

The wau is coming into shape.....good job boys

That's it! Use more paper to cover this frame

We all had fun with the kite-making

A job well-done folks!

GO AND FLY KITE

"The mark of a good kite is one that rises quickly and remains flying, no matter what the whims of the wind may be."

Don't call yourself a through-bred kampung child if you have not climbed any guava or rambutan trees, played fivestones, rounders, kuti-kuti, chapteh, jelong, kelerek, tarik upeh, marbles with 'homes' dug from the hard soil, ground chongkak using tamarind seeds or fallen into black murky longkang water while learning to balance on your dad's bicycle twice your size, and....and..... flown a 10-cent tracing paper kite with glass string you made your own.

Growing up in Kampung Melayu at Jalan Madrasah and Central at Jalan Kasturi, was one of the best moments of my lice....errr...I mean life though my hair was also full of lice during those time. Wrappimg my head with a kerosene-soaked towel would terminate their crawling and sucking of blood from my head and eradicate the itchiness of these blood-suckers caused.

There were no sex discrimination games in my kampung and that meant we girls would not be spared from being 'hantam and kutied' like mad by the boys when we lost the challenges or games. I used to reach home at twillight almost daily with swollen knuckles, bruised knees that ended up with keloids the size of 50 cent coin or a dress smelling of a dead rat from falling into the black longkang water when I lost my balance on the bike.

My reaching-home-late routine also meant getting endless scolding and beatings from my mum who would rather that I stay home and look after my younger siblings. That's the unwritten rule of being the eldest in the family which I did not strictly adhere to. I was always on MIA and a total failure. Mum gave up on depending on me at last and gave me the ORD.

I not only used to fly kites during my kampung 'daze' but also made my own glass string to fly them. You need to pound pieces of glass finely to have that extra 'oomph' for your kite string. We just couldn't wait for the soya sauce bottle to have its last drop. We need to act fast to put it aside otherwise the bottle would be sold to the karung guni man for five cents each. My aunt's mortar and pestle used to disappear mysteriously whenever she needed to make some sambal belachan. She soon realised that we would also disappear unannounced whenever she asked us about her rudimentary tool for pounding the sambal.

My cousins and I did not want to cross into her path of wrath if she discovered that we were the ones who had been playing hide-and-seek with her favourite mortar and pestle. She would beat the living daylights from us if she found out that we were the ones who had been using that cooking utensil to pound the glass pieces. Must I also mention that our thighs would be left with blue-black marks with her 360 degree pinch on our juiciest flesh with her superb manicured long nails which could double up as screws if you run short of any?

The glass powder was poured into an empty condensed milk can while 'air khak' would be added to it. Over some rocks, I would build a small fire to melt the two ingredients in the milk can. Once the mixture had liquefied, a spool of white string would go into it, and I needed to make sure that every part of it was covered with the 'air khak' mixture. A stick was used to stir the mixture too so that it would not settle too quickly. The next step got to be done fast. While still hot, the spool of string had to be taken out and gone round from trunks of trees to be dried. This was also the dangerous step to carry out for my fingers would definitely be cut and criss-crossed by the sharp-edged string.

Why do you need sharp glassy string to fly a kite? When your kite is air-borne, you would want to bring your opponent's kite down and let it nose-dive from the blue sky. Your razor sharp string is one way of ensuring that you could cut the life-line of your opponent's kite mid air and bring it down to earth in a rude shock. Your kite would then fly like the king of the sky at the same time manouvering safely from other kites which would want to cut you dead. Only your skills and sharp string could save the day for you. The whole village would proclaim you as The Kite King and the title would be yours if your kite remained as the lone survivor in the air. The proclamation is important for your ego and hard work even if you have to end up with bleeding fingers from drying and flying the glass-coated string.

Kite flying season was also a sad time. Young children would get knocked down by vehicles when they crossed busy roads blindly trying to capture the 'cut' kite which had to make its descend suddenly. The kite and the child might both end up lying on the road, injured, mangled or at times unable to be 'revived', flown or air-borne anymore. They lay still and stiff in the middle of the road. The life of the child was lost over the thrill of clutching a cut kite worth only 10 cents.

I organised the 'Wau Making Competition' in my school recently to bring the good old kampung days back again to our concrete jungle and to inject some fun into school life. The students were wowed by the wau kite-making for they had fun making their own kites and decorating them as well. The pictures will speak a thousand words.