Wind, bones and brains – the miracle of kampung ailments

I met an old friend recently who’s never left the kampung. He’s been working there as a fisherman scraping up whatever’s left in the sea after years of pollution and overfishing. It’s a tough life, and has only got tougher.

He greeted me in the typical warm and affectionate kampung style. “Hey Adzhar you *%#@$ you son of a &!@$#$^ and you piece of &*(%#$! When did you get back?”

It’s great to feel so loved. I returned the love, and upped it a bit as a sign of my own respect and affection and to show I haven’t become uppity and aloof since I left the kampung for the bright city lights.

Soon we ran out of expletives. We then got around to talking about serious and important stuff instead of just the marital status of everybody’s parents when they were born.

“Eh what ails you?,” he said. “What illnesses are you suffering from? What debilities are about to send you to an early grave?”

He gave me a rundown of his own illnesses, throwing in for good measure what ails his wife, children, relatives, neighbours as well as most of the politicians in the country.

Some of the illnesses were attributed to “tulang” or bones – meaning orthopaedic-related; “urat” or nerves, possibly some degenerative diseases; “angin” or literally air or wind, which are probably whatever illnesses that couldn’t be easily blamed on either tulang or urat.

Of course, “otak”, or brain, got blamed a lot too for many of those illnesses, especially the ones afflicting other people. Somehow, people never suffer from an “otak” problem themselves – it’s always what others suffer.

On top of the illnesses known to modern science, there are others only explainable by “kampung science’. These are the “orang buat” illnesses caused by other people, whether by strangers or even families and friends, through hexes and spells.

Yes indeed, nothing much has changed in the kampung over the years, pollution and overfishing aside. That’s probably the same in many other kampungs too, whether they are in the depths of Pahang or in the middle of Shah Alam or Damansara.

I’m not an expert on spells and hexes, though I’m fascinated by how many in the rural areas – and by rural I mean both in geography as well as state of mind – view life and all of its adventures.

As a kampung boy I remember lots of illnesses, whether of myself and my family or of others. We’re always visiting some sick people, and other people would often come to visit our family too.

Only adults got visited though. Kids were expected to be sick, and would only be visited if they were close to death. This was such a shame because then they wouldn’t be able to enjoy the precious apples that usually came along as “buah tangan” or gifts!

Back then bomohs, or pawangs or dukuns – traditional healers – were the answer to most problems, whether health or otherwise. We had many visits by them to our home, often on account of my father who had more than his fair share of ill health.

I found a stranger coming to the inner sanctum of our home, bringing a collection of zoological or botanical “medications” – fresh or preserved, local or even imported, amidst the smell of the inevitable burning incense, amazing, exciting and also a bit strange.

Often the treatment didn’t work. Sometimes ambulances would come to take the sick person to a hospital, where more often than not the person would die there. Then the favourite explanation – that hospitals and doctors are useless – would be rolled out and accepted as gospel.

It’s pretty cool being a traditional healer. You can make a good living out of it without needing much training or investment; being the son or daughter of one is often enough, and you never get blamed when the patient dies.

At most they would say you couldn’t fight the spells and hexes of a more powerful shaman, most likely a Siamese one. Or perhaps the powerful local spirits were especially angry and spiteful. You may never get engaged again, but you won’t get sued either.

Occasionally people do get better after such traditional treatment. Some illnesses go away on their own, as even cancer can go into remission. And sometimes the treatment does have some practical value that science may not have understood yet.

Of course, many illnesses exist in the mind, or at least start there. Often what the mind started; the mind can stop. The placebo effect of traditional healers also works with modern medicines too, just as with its opposite, the nocebo effect.

But it’s no coincidence the health and life expectancies in those days were bad. Turning fifty was considered to be reaching a ripe old age; people would often often fall sick and die way before that.

Everybody took ill health to be a normal part of life. While they may have heard of germs, they preferred to see illnesses as either fated, or better still, the result of some people’s bad intentions on you.

Many would count their many illnesses as a sign they had lived long enough. In an environment where age carries a lot of respect, being ill with “sakit tua”, or illnesses due to advanced age, is often a badge of honour. Nobody liked being ill of course, but it wasn’t seen as a curse the way much of modern society sees it.

They would find today’s gym-going, supplement-taking, age-denying modern folks as strange and ungrateful in trying to fight off the inevitability of nature.

They would probably describe such people in some choice words, pretty much the way my friend greeted and described me, but perhaps without the affection! - FMT

The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of MMKtT.