A strong wind blew strong and furious in the night and mum wondered what would be the outcome. She would close all the wooden shutters and check for any leakage on the first floor. The kitchen area with a good roof had to be checked too because the upper part of the kitchen wall had open slats designed by grandfather. Wind could blow through them but not rain. the kitchen had two open air vents one of the spaces was for for bicycles and our stone grinder, where we spent a lot of good time grinding rice to make kuih. In those days we could not buy powdered rice flour from the shops.
The other air vent had our concrete tank for rain water. Our gutters had to be strong and constantly repaired to bring all the water to the right places.
The next day, dawn came reluctantly and mum went out to check the aftermath of the storm. The garden was soggy with some two inches of rain water and our beautiful papaya tree had come down with all her fruits. There must have been like 23 of them, big and small. Mum was looking forward to eating them one by one as they ripened on the tree!!
So with a heavy heart, she went out with her basket (bungee) and collected some of the slightly yellow ones first. The salvaging would wait for a while as she had other things to do.
She told us to keep the fruits near the stove. Later she would go out to pluck the others. The tree could not be salvaged.
We were not business people so we did not sell our vegetables or fruits to any one. Mum gave away some of the green papayas and we sent a few by bicycle to our aunts. We were blessing others even when a disaster struck. In those days we had not learned how to make pickles with the green papaya or even Thai style salad.
Some were ripened in the next few days. However we ate the green papayas in several ways. Cooked in soup, fried with ikan bilis and even sauted with some kicap.
Like our Foochow pioneering forefathers, we did not waste any of our food.
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