Firewood in the canal

We worked for about 2 weeks, 7:00am to 6:00pm everyday, gathering what we needed in the woods. My dad estimated that we had collected enough firewood for a lorry-load and sticks for a good twine-climbing support, therefore prepared to move them out of the woods.

He cut some long pieces of raw rattan which were twinning round the trunks of huge trees. We carried the logs, the sticks and rattan on shoulder and moved them out. It took us about 1 1/2 days, we were slow because my father was a very easy going man, when I felt tired or bored I would wander away to catch fish or snails in the streams or to look at the trees or to study the insects.He did not bother me and went on to do the task on his own, and would take a rest himself now and then.

Outside the woods was a canal which led to the trunk road where a lorry could access. We lined up the logs side by side along the bank of the canal. The logs were of equal length and formed a very neat line. Father laid the rattan on top then used nails to string the logs up to form a raft-like structure. He nailed 3 strings of rattan on each log, 1 on each end and 1 in the middle. It looked solid, or so it might seem.

When done, we slowly slided the "raft" of logs into the canal. And it floated! I started to understand why father discarded the hard wood because it would sink in the water. He nailed one long piece of rattan to the head of the "raft" and guided it down the canal when it started to drift downstream. My job was to use a long pole to push the body of the long snake-like raft away from the bank, so that it would not get stuck in the mud bank.

After about an hour travelling down the canal, the head of the raft was caught in the mud bank at a bend. Father tried to jerk it free using the rattan, the rattan suddenly snapped. The body of the long "snake" started to curl, with all my might I tried to straighten it but in vain. You can not imagine the power of the water until you tried to go against it. If the raft were left to hit the bank, the rattan would snap or the nails would be dislodged. That would be a mess, we would have to start all over again to restring the logs.(Raw rattan are brittle, they are tough and resilient only when dried.)

I could not bear to watch the expression of despair on father's face, so jumped into the water to pull the head of the raft free. Then with one hand pulling the raft and swam with the other hand as quickly as possible to straighten the body of raft. Father who was stunned seeing me jumped, recovered quickly and used the pole to keep the body of the raft straight. I remained in the water and led the raft along until we reached our destination- the trunk road.

Father who was silent until now, spoke to me,"good thing you know how to swim!"
From then on, he would never scold me and my brother for swimming in the canals again, and it was unconventional in our village!

In the woods

When I was a child, everyone in the village used firewood for their cooking in the house. Those well to do families bought firewood from lorry drivers but those of us who could not afford would have to gather our firewood from the woods outside the village.

My father brought me along to gather firewood in the woods during one of the term school holidays. We cycled there. We left our bicycles at the fringe of the woods and went inside on foot.

We went to the woods for two purposes, one was to collect firewood, second to cut some small plants for building support structures for twines like long beans to climb.The ideal ones should be of the size of a thumb.
After walking for a short distance, we started to search for suitable plants. We did not collect small twigs like firewood sellers in fairy tale books do. We chopped trees with trunks of 1-2 feet diameter wide. We would then saw them into round logs of 4-foot lengths.

Suddenly my father exclaimed," look, that tree will be a perfect beam for the pig style!" I look at the direction he was pointing. There stood a tall, straight tree not far away. The tree was very near to the fringe of the woods, not very deep inside, I wondered why it was not chopped down by someone until now.
Father was excited because he was planning to redo the roof of our pig style for some time already. Now he found his perfect beam.

After admiring the tree for a long while, Father felled the tree and trimmed the leaves then carefully placed it at a safe spot by the path. We then continued with our search for suitable firewood. Not every tree in the forest is suitable to be used as firewood. Some tree are too hard and heavy and will not catch fire easily. Some trees will give out a lot of smokes. Some will emit strong stench. We were looking for wood which were easy to cut, easy to catch fire, give out little smokes and did not emit bad smell.

We managed to fell a few suitable trees and we used a big saw to saw the tree trunks into even lengths. The saw we used was a big one about 5-foot long, with a handle on either end. To saw a log, the saw would be placed perpendicular to the log and one person would stand on each side of the log.When one person pulls the saw, the other will help to push it, and vice versa.

We stopped work at around 5.00pm and got ready to go home.Of course, we did not forget to carry with us the straight log we fell early in the morning to be used as a beam for the pig style. We started to head for the border of the woods. But strange things happened, we could not find the way out. We were going in circles, it was getting dark by the minute, and the log we carried felt heavier and heavier.

Father was chanting quietly to himself because he did not want to alarm me.Yet we were still making circles in the woods. Finally we brought the log back to place where it was felled and laid it by the stump. We started out again, this time empty handed. Within minutes we were out of the woods already!

The next morning Father brought with us some "kueh" and fruits. The first thing he did on reaching the spot where we worked the day before was to put the kueh and fruits in front of the stump of the log we felled and burned some incise. We both prayed and asked for forgiveness from the tree stump. We believed it was the residence of the guardian of the woods - the "Datuk Gong" who was a Muslim. We annoyed him by uttering the word "pig" in front of him.

We continued our works, and we did not encounter any more strange thing after that. But as a precaution, we avoided using that path again. We cleared a new one and used it for the next few days to get the place where we worked.

Until today I still can not find a logical explanation to what happened that day inside the woods.