As a kid I wanted to learn, to improve, and to get on. I loved reading and writing as a child, and even before I went to school I would look at my older brother and sisters’ books and try so hard to work out (or imagine) the meanings of the words in them and copy them over and over again.
In my early pre-school days I was forever plaguing my parents to teach me to read and write properly, and it was not until many years later that I finally realised why they would always smile and encourage me but never actually teach me anything academic. When the penny finally dropped it just increased my love and pride for them. What lovely people they really are.
I was closest to Heri, my older brother, during my childhood. He is two years older than me and he seemed to be everything I wanted to be. He could run faster than any of us other boys in the village, climb trees better, swim further and quicker, had more friends and was the one that the whole gang of us wanted to emulate.
For me he also had one other quality: kindness. He was such a nice guy to be around because he was always kind and friendly to everyone, and I don’t just say that because he was my brother. He never picked on anyone for being smaller or weaker or anything, the way that most boys do, and he never excluded anyone from playing with us but instead he made sure that everyone played properly together. He wouldn’t tolerate any bullying or being mean, and he wasn’t averse to using his fists if he thought that was the best solution.
I guess I regarded him as my hero even then.
I was close to my other two brothers, Yudi and Steffan, but as they were younger than me, I was more interested in being with Heri as much as I could. Steffan and Yudi didn’t seem to mind as they were very close to each other, and my four sisters all seemed happy enough to hang out together and not bother us boys too much. Yes, we were a happy enough sort of family but not really much different to most others in our village.
In those days, and perhaps even now to some extent, villagers didn’t have much expectation in life. It was just sort of assumed that everyone would have a basic sort of education and then go forth into adulthood in much the same way; males would become farmers or very small business owners within the village, while girls would get married, usually by the age of sixteen at the latest, and perhaps work in the fields or, if the family could afford it, be housewives.
Every year a few of the men, and very occasionally some of the women, would leave the village and go to live in the cities. These would normally be either the few individuals who had a little more ambition for themselves, or those unfortunate few who were forced to leave through circumstance or even scandal.
For example, if someone were found to have committed a crime such as theft or assault then they would normally be ‘asked’ to leave the village as a punishment. Depending on the severity of their crime, they would then be banished for a certain number of years and not allowed to return within that time frame. This, naturally enough, applied more to the male population than the female one, as more boys than girls tended to commit these crimes.
However, girls could also find themselves under pressure to leave the village in certain circumstances, such as pregnancy outside of wedlock or even, rather unfairly I always thought, in the event of abandonment by their husbands.
A guy may want a girl and so be more than happy to marry her while she was still young and nubile in her mid-teens, but a few years of almost continual pregnancy, childbirth and manual labour soon take their toll, and a village girl in her mid-twenties can often take on the appearance of someone ten or fifteen years older. It is at this point that many men start to look elsewhere. The poor girls involved then usually head off to the cities to seek work, usually as domestic servants.
Growing up in the village I was always happy, but I did wonder just what could be achieved outside its confines. Heri was the same; he was always talking about moving to the city and trying to become rich. He had many dreams and would keep me entertained for hours on end with stories of how he was going to one day move to a big city such as Surabaya or Jakarta and open a motorcycle repair shop. It would, according to him, become the biggest and most famous and popular motorcycle repair shop in the city, and when the time was right he was going to send for me and I would be his partner.
I loved listening to him, and we would stay up all night sometimes going over our plans and hopes. I look back now on those days and sometimes think that they were the happiest, most innocent days of my life, but I also realise that they were much more than that. Those were the days in which my character and personality were, if not formed, then certainly refined and strengthened and my ambitions and goals reinforced. I truly think those all-night chats with my older brother were the making of me.
Anyway, as soon as he was old enough he left for the bright lights of the city and I was heartbroken. I missed him so
