Diary: A day in Chow Kit 1

JAN 27 — The kids have been really receptive to the Book Project. Every week, plus minus 15 of them, all would come to the workshops facilitated by Nursalam and volunteers like Sheng, Yana and myself. The Book Project is going to be written by the Nursalam kids, and photographs illustrating the book will be taken by them too. Sheng and his fashion industry friends have been very supportive: they donated about 50 disposable cameras for the kids to use.

The kids had different learning levels. They ranged from two years old to 13. Some of the older ones had very rudimentary writing skills; seeing them painfully craft a letter of the alphabet was eye-opening. An “A” that was written looked shaky, belying the author’s confidence in his penmanship. How we adults take our education for granted.

Reading a very short story written by a young girl, who said she liked butterflies because they were pretty and loved by everyone, unlike her, was one example of a heartbreak for us volunteers. Another wrote of how she regretted not making up with her best friend after a silly fight in school, before she died. Then the other day, we taught the kids how to do simple mind-mapping, which they took to. We mind-mapped ghosts (Pontianak! Toyol! Gigi taring! Ada darah!), cats, school, and … “keluargaku.”

One of the boys drew “branches” on his mind map: Bapa tiri; Mak garang; rumah kecik dan kotor; mak tak masak; saya tak pandai.

But it was the photo walk we took the kids on which educated us about their lives. You would think that they would be wary of adults who walked in and out of their lives; who couldn’t care for them, and if they did, were not able to function as “proper” parents, but they opened up. Yet they allowed us a peek.

We’ve all been to Chow Kit before for various reasons: me on my jamu trail; my friends to buy sundries and groceries. We have passed it late at night, after a night out. Chow Kit was just another dot in the city. However, seeing it through the kids’ eyes changed our perspective on life in some of the more notorious areas in Kuala Lumpur.

One afternoon we went on a mini-adventure to Chow Kit. Z, who was about five (six?), kept taking photos of everything. He sprinted here and there, taking photos of signposts, mannequins sporting the hijab, food. T was the group leader, while A, who was about seven years old and wore a lopsided tudung, started telling me about her former life in Sabah. F could be from a mixed marriage: her hair and features denoted African descent, though for all we knew she could be African herself. We had heard of stateless Nigerians stuck in KL; stolen passports and duped into coming to the Promised Land.

Chow Kit at six in the evening revealed atypical Malaysian citizens. A pony-tailed and buff man walked around showing off his tattoos, holding hands with his rather rotund girlfriend. (Or a favourite sex worker? Was he a pimp?) Women with orange hair bargained with traders, and bundle shops had migrant workers browsing in them. Designer jeans, stolen, used or fake, were sold at RM5 per pair.

We arrived at a quieter street. Transsexual sex workers had begun plying their trade. One of the kids, to my mortification, went up to one and asked casually, “Eh pondan, kita nak buat buku. Boleh tak kita ambik gambar?”

“Asalkan ini bukan untuk Utusan, tak pe. Hello, you kakak budak-budak ni ke?” one of them asked.

She was one of the more feminine-looking ones. I wondered how many Mercilon pills she had swallowed. [1] Her friend, who had walked away and refused to be photographed, had very muscular and hairy legs. Another transsexual a few metres away looked bitter. Her legs had open sores. Within minutes, what looked like a Bangladeshi man, approached her and they disappeared into the recesses of the building.

“Kakak! Saya nak ambik gambar tokong Cina tu boleh ke?” Z asked, pointing to a small red Buddhist shrine.

“Eh Z tak leh lah! Haram! Kita orang Islam, mana boleh ambik gambar tokong!” one of the girls scolded.

A whispered to me: “Kita tak boleh amik gambar tokong tu… pasalkan, orang Cina ni banyak puja hantu. Kalau kita ambik gambar… hantu Cina ikut kita balik ‘umah.”

“Kak. Rumah saya dekat. Nak jemput datang OK tak? Boleh jumpa mak saya!” T invited.

I’d been warned before: that the kids were smart and knew how to tug on a person’s heart-strings. They’re not stupid, these kids. They knew that adults outside of their community wanted to hear and see about their “downtrodden” lives. Was I being taken for a ride, I thought, as I was extended an invitation to “beraya” with one of the children’s families?

The flat I visited seemed like a longhouse of flats next to each other. We passed one with an IDU (injecting drug user) passed out on the floor, with his syringe by his side, and one of his legs poking out of the front door. A man came up the stairs with a transsexual and disappeared into the flat above.

T introduced me to her family who consisted of her parents, grandmother and grandaunts and an uncle. They smiled and turned back to watching television, which was showing nothing but static and muffled sounds.

“Seronok-kan tengok programme Raya?” T’s mother beamed at me.

I do not watch or even own a television, but that encounter still shocks me to this day. All they saw was coloured static dotting through the screen, and sounds which veered from soft to loud emanated from it. And yet they were glued to the television. In my romantic moments I think perhaps they pretend that the static is actually people. A show which may make them forget about their dreary lives.

The reality for us now is to deliver a book. And that I’ll write about for another time.

[1] transsexuals swallow BCP — birth control pills — regularly as the hormones “turn” them into “women”.

• The views written here are the personal opinion of the columnist.