Our First Residency

Alhamdulillah CFCS is finally(nearly) over. Finally I have some time to rest my literally aching butt & legs after 4 days of walking a few kilometers every day since the 15th of March. We're supposed to be in Kampung Kemubu, Ketereh for 5 days from the 15th until tomorrow. The CFCS stands for Community & Family Case Study. Other universities may call it differently but in general, basically it's about public health.

So for our first residency, our group was assigned to Kg. Kemubu which has 214 houses. We were divided into smaller groups. I myself was in a group of 3, one Chinese guy and one Malay girl. Our task for this first residency is to tag houses with numbers and using the systematic random sampling method, we are to interview 150 houses for our data collection. My group had to interview 19 houses and alhamdulillah we manage to finish interviewing our assigned area by today, thanks to the help of other group who managed to finish theirs early. 

We were there from 9/11 a.m. till 5.00 p.m. every day and to be honest, it was really tiring. Even for my area, we have to walk for almost a few kilometers since the houses are clustered and very far apart. Imagine walking through out the noon. Honestly I noticed my face getting darker but being this close with the community made our efforts worth it.

I did most of the interviewing since I am the only one in my group of 3 who can speak at least little Kelantanese. Not really that fluent but some of the villagers mistook me for a local. It was kind of a compliment since I never spoke Kelantanese whenever I went back to my in-laws even though they are by origin, pure Kelantaneses, because I'm kind of afraid of making a fool of myself. 

I remembered when I was interviewing this old woman and she's like 73 years old. Yeah, she's really old and she didn't really understand kecek luar (outsider's speak) since she never went to school. So I had to unleash my inner Kelantanese and alhamdulillah, my ability to mimic is finally showing some fruitful outcome. 

I can't really speak but I can mimic slangs so yeah, I guess that makes me sound pretty much genuine to them. 

Here are a few pictures of Day 1 and Day 4. (Day 2 and Day 3 I was so busy interviewing I couldn't even snap any pictures)

This is our checkpoint, courtesy of one of the many kind villagers. Trime kasih pokcik!

One of my colleagues drawing the map for our respective area. Mine is group C.

This is us while waiting for our morning bus. Today we went later than usual because the bus had to make trips. The journey to the kampung took abour 45 minutes. I'm the one wearing the black and white scarf, playing Donut Dance on my iPad. Others were fascinated by the cute game. 

C'est moi after completing the interviews. Tired but glad.

This is where we ate. Thanks to Kak Aya for providing us with food and also the cause to the 3 kilos increment in my weight ever since we came here.

To tell you the truth, before I entered the kampung, I was kind of anxious because I'm not really that social. I don't really know how to adapt with the community but alhamdulillah, the kampung people taught me a few things that I couldn't have learned in our lectures.

They taught me that people can survive even when they only make RM200 per month. They taught me how to live in a community and how to care for our neighbours. They're basically family here in this kampung. They know everything about each other and I was really amazed of that, really. We do have a few incidents where we were mistaken for con men but yeah, all that misunderstanding was cleared.  Anyway, all in all, I'm real glad for this opportunity. 

Till then, inshaAllah. Salam alaykum warahmatullah.