Pulau Kerto : Mosquito Net

10,10,2021 is my mother's 96th lunar Birthday. The Lunar calendar date is 5th day of the 9th Moon which she kept as her REAL birthday throughout her life. So all of us must remember our Lunar dates and especially her Lunar birthday. She would chuckle and said that the Gregorian calendar was so inaccurate. 

In Pulau Kerto, Great Grandmother and my mother would have slaughtered a chicken and made the usual birthday soup for every one to enjoy, but in particular, to help mum passed her birthday. That was the Foochow traditional way. It was also the only time she would enjoy a drumstick in her mee sua. That was once a year. Normally my mother would let others have all the pieces of meat with their noodles.

Kerto is an old Malay word from Sibu meaning mosquito larva. I have fond memories of Pulau Kerto where I was born.

During my childhood, before I started Primry school, my parents, my two siblings and I lived in the manager;s house of Hua Hong Ice Factory together with my great grandmother, who had bound feet. She walked slowly and was light footed but I could always hear her footsteps because we had wooden floors and I had a very strong sense of hearing.

It was a comforting sound, her gentle and slow foot steps.

One remarkable memory I have of living in the house over there, across the river, was how my mother would put the two of us girls on the bed, inside the mosquito net whenever guests came. We had to stay inside, and keep quiet while the elders talked and enjoyed their chit chat.

So we imagined the mosquito net as our "prison". We never thought of it as our safety net, in those days. But again, at night, I remember how my Ngie Mah or maternal grandmother, and my mother would come and kill some mosquitoes flying inside the net, before we went to sleep.

The mosquito net also kept us warm. Cold wind blowing on our bodies would make us sick.

We small kids must not hear what they were talking about.

The elders were always serious and I never heard them laughing.

Photo by Freda Chai, with thanks.

Great Grandmother would never encourage any one to bad mouth others, as that was part of her Methodist upbringing. My mother came from humble background and she would not dare laugh at any one. That was a trait she had all her life - never to laugh at others or to look down upon others.

Most of  the elders who came over to our island home, came by their little boat which they might have rowed themselves or by their husbands who came to mill rice and to speak to my father. Or they came with t he Ice Boat and if so, they would spend the night with us, and leave the earliest by the Ice Boat the next day.

For some, they would make the river crossing for my father's birthday, or for my great grandmother's birthday. They would bring with them a chicken which they have reared in their backyard.

Our Ice Boat delivered ice blocks to Sibu customers early in the morning and came back before lunch. The clerk would have done some business transactions by then.