18th September 2007, Tuesday:
Walking out of the Sabah State Library, I needed to get across the darkened car park of the Kota Kinabalu City Hall to get to my MyVi parked next to the curb. I’d been browsing for a while – maybe twenty minutes – in the library even though I didn’t have a library card on me.
I had just lit a cigarette and stood next to the entrance of the car park finishing it when someone came up to me. She’d been walking from the direction of the High Court, which was right next to the car park of the City Hall.
The girl was so short, I don’t think she was more than five feet tall. In her arms she carried a baby, very calm but I could see that the baby was awake. I was surprised when she walked hesitantly up to me. There was no reason to be wary of this small girl but I was apprehensive. I was pretty certain that she was an illegal. Probably a Filipina. I admit I was being somewhat racist and laying on stereotypes but it was also true that a young girl of her sort did not usually approach a Chinese guy like me without a compelling reason, even though I was standing all by myself smoking on a sidewalk near one of the seedier areas of the city.
Apparently, to her, she did have a compelling enough reason to approach me. With a smile, she uttered a few words which I did not comprehend. I might have if I could hear her soft voice above the noise of the traffic passing by. I looked at her with a face that signaled my lack of understanding at what she wanted. I only wanted to be polite to her and hoped that she’d just leave. I’d also thought that she might be a beggar about to ask for some loose change.
She was wearing a dark blue dress, a flowing one that had short sleeves and a hem that covered her below the knees. Appropriate enough for a girl at the age which I had assumed for her in my head. I thought she must have been only ten or eleven.
She continued speaking and kept the smile while she took out a satchel from a pocket. The satchel was a dark colour as well, nearly similar to her dress and it had white draw-strings. She offered the satchel up to me for a second but I just shook my head. I shook my head but I was still looking at it and that gave her a clear enough signal to open it. Wary still, I did not want to reach for it when she offered it to me for fear that it might lead to unwanted attention or that it might make me unwittingly give off the wrong signal.
She pulled open the strings and I peeked into the satchel. They were stones as far as I could tell. Smooth ones of a light colour. Size of half the length of a lighter. I did not know the significance of these stones to her but it did give me a positive feeling because it means she was trying to be enterprising instead of simply just going around begging.
And then she asked, ‘Uncle pandai cakap Dusun kah?’ - Does Uncle know how to speak Dusun?
No, I said to her, only BM – Bahasa
‘Uncle dari mana?’ – Where is Uncle from?
‘Sia dari Tanjung Aru,’ I told her truthfully.
‘Oh, kamu Cina kah’ (Oh, are you Chinese?)
Yes, I said.
Then she asked me for two Ringgit. I declined her.
Not one to be let down, she thanked me with a polite terima kasih and walked on her way towards the State Library, the way I’d just walked from. Maybe her next destination was the nearby night market selling food stuff to Muslims who are going to break their fast.
I looked on for several seconds while sucking on the last of my cigarette. Dropping the butt into a puddle and feeling like I needed the loo, I got into my car and drove off for home.
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