Plantation Childhood

I really do not know what band group, Boney M was singing about in their 'Plantation Boy' song. Good and catchy number,though.

I was a plantation boy. Let me tell you something about life in the rubber estates before 1965.

Even though I was supposedly born in a General Hospital in the state capital,my childhood,as long as for 15 years,was spent in a dull,dreadful rubber plantation.


No, we do not own it. How we wish we did.My parents work in one. The plantation or as we called it a rubber estate (It later converted to an oil palm estate) then was owned by Harrisons and Crossfield of UK. My parents were paid wages to work there. They endeavoured and supported me through school and the university.

Let me tell you a little about life as a plantation boy.

The harsh realities.

Generally there is nothing much to do in a plantation but to toil. Low wages and dull work. Workers worked from dawn up to late afternoon and to evenings as well on rainy days.

My mother was a rubber tapper and she tapped rubber trees in the morning. When I got back from morning school, I would go to the plot of rubber trees she will tap the next day and clean the rubber cups and collect the dry rubber crumbs. During school breaks and the final year-end holidays, it only meant one more extra thing for me-to help her while she tap rubber trees (like tapping some trees as well) and to collect the latex and sent it to the weigh station to be weighed. After that, we washed the pails and went home. My mother will spend at least an afternoon or two sharpening her tapping knives with a round file.

Tapping days are really dreary. Believe me, on such days, you would wake up in the early hours sometime between 5.00 to 5.30 am. A quick breakfast of coffee and hard bread, and I was on my way. I either walked or cycled to the plot. With mosquitoes buzzing all round, I removed the dry rubber crumbs from the dangling ceramic or glass rubber cups as well as from the tapping tracks on the tree barks.

Every month, on a week-end, there was a film-show in the community hall. Except for an occasional Malay or Chinese film, we had mostly Tamil shows. My father was the projectionist. I guessed they pay him an allowance to do that.

Apart from shows in the hall, we also have companies like Nestle coming by and showing cowboy and indian English films in the open field with a white screen stand. They gave us free Milo drinks. On such days, we thought heaven was here.

For the estate workers, the other respite they had was cheap toddy-fermented coconut spirit. Drunkenness was normal in a plantation especially on pay-days.

I left plantation life when my parents sent me for my secondary education in Jasin.

Plantation days were hard days which I pray I will never return to.