During my young days we did not spend our school holidays at home. It was always outdoors. The secondary forests dotting our kampong had a variety of birds, wild fowl, small rodents like squirrels and a variety of fish in the many streams and rivers. Armed with catapults which were then known as “lastics” we would leave our homes in hunt of birds, waterfowl or fish which we used to cook on “skewers” over a fire created by burning dried twigs and shrub which we found in the vicinity. Lunch was usually outside our homes much to the relief of my mum who was spared what to cook for the day to feed the hungry little ones. We set up our mini kitchen after collecting wood and twigs from the forested land, prepared our meals of roasted birds and fish and cut fruits like guavas, mangoes and mangosteens and coconut water which we would collect from the many trees that were around. If our luck was good we would collect durians and young coconuts to satisfy our hunger. They were not wholesome meals but sufficient to satisfy our hunger.The best part was that they were in no man’s land and we would not be encroaching into someone else’s property. By the time we returned home our stomach’s were full and did not need meals in the house much to the relief of my mum. This went on for a while until the supply of birds was exhausted; We resorted to killing chicken in the neighbourhood. One of our neighbours spotted us killing her birds and cautioned us that the young chicken were not ready for the table and we would get stomach ulcers if we ate them.We were too young to call her bluff, believed her and stopped our habit of hunting chicken.
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