Childhood and water are made for each other. You can’t keep kids away from ponds, pool, rivers or fountains.
Back at Lumut recently, I spotted a couple of teenage boys fishing in the neighbourhood’s storm drain. It was a balmy Sunday afternoon and they were enjoying their day off from school catching tropical fish.
I felt delighted seeing this, because the sight of the children playing in the outdoor is still common in the area. Not every child succumbs to the local internet arcades. I approached the boys and asked for permission to see what they were catching.
The boys introduced themselves as Daniel and Fairuz, students from a nearby high school. I asked them if the water is dirty. “It’s dirty,” said Fairuz without hesitation. What type of fish have you got there? I asked the boys. I knew the answer even before they replied because I went through this same rite of passage myself as a child.
They were trying catching gourami and snakehead fish for their home aquariums.
Childhood and water are made for each other. You can’t keep kids away from ponds, pool, rivers or fountains.
The storm drains around here used to be a lot dirtier several years ago, but they are slowly becoming cleaner under the new government.
The drains are usually more polluted in the urban areas than the rural villages because of the higher population. The urbanites also don’t feel a strong sense of pride of their towns, therefore the responsibility of cleaning the borough falls entirely on the council workers.
The rural lands are usually maintained by farming landowners, so they feel a bit more responsible towards their own patches.
The good news is that I’m starting to see natural vegetation returning to the local storm drains.
I took a drive to nearby fishing villages on the mainland and on the island. The grounds and waterways were pristine until they reach the urban segment of areas. Then the clear water would turn into a brown liquid containing plastics and rubbish that would flow freely into the sea.
New housing developments neglect to account for good drainage systems, so whenever there’s a heavy rain there will be flash food that would bleed more rubbish into the storm drains.
About two-miles downstream from where Fairuz and Daniel were fishing, I spotted two other boys of similar age setting up their fishing rods at the Permatang fishing station.
It turned out that the storm drain is connected to a local brook that flows into the sea.
That night I was kept awake in my bed thinking about the children I’ve met and the waterway that they played in.
After The Rain 