WHAT ORANG BANDAR LEARNS FROM ORANG ASLI

An article by Nurfairuz binti Shamsul Kamal

The prefect is a general term for everyone. Prefects’ responsibilities are to take care of other students to make sure all of them obey the rules. I bet prefect and me never been far apart as I am part of it since primary school. One of the factors that contribute the most to me in behaving like this is the responsibility of me being a sister in a big family. As I always give advice and show good examples to my brothers and sisters below me, indirectly applying the attitude of a prefect in me. After I went to University for Diploma level, I consistently wanted to improve my leadership skills. Thus, I joined two clubs which is the Islamic club (non-academic club) and another one is Statistics Club (academic club). Both clubs are very active and organize more than five programs in one semester which at the same time gave me more experience to handle in any kind of situations. There are times when I wanted to give up on becoming the committee member for both clubs but whenever that feeling come across I put my faith in Allah that He will lift all the burdens of His slave who help others in worship to Him.  I realized that I became more mature in making a wise decision, being able to develop higher determination and always try to keep myself positive regardless any obstacles.

The best experience I ever have is joining charity work handled by committee members of Masjid Al- Munawwarah. The charity work is to help “Orang Asli” to improve and strengthen their foundation about Islam. These people live in rural areas at Pos Betau, Pahang which is out of modernization life. The purpose of this event is to give them their necessities such as clothes and emphasize the way to practice Islam in their daily life as a Muslim. The target for this event includes all category such as children, adult and older people. Our committee members we were divided into three groups. One group is to teach children, another group of the teenagers and the last group is assigned to teach older people. I have been assigned to teach the older people around 30 to 60 years old.

There are a lot of lessons I have to learn by joining this program which can be applied to the community in Malaysia. If a person wants to gain a new knowledge, the thing they need the most is grit. For example, there is  ‘Orang Asli’ age 70 years old and she really passionate and eager to learn to recite Al-Fatihah. The reality in this world is that even if a person very clever but at the end if she does not have grit, she does not have bright future. This show that the age and accommodations do not become a problem as long you have the grit to learn something new. Besides that, I believe if society applying healthy lifestyle, the chronic diseases in Malaysia can be reduced. We should learn the lifestyle of  ‘Orang Asli’  as they rarely got chronic diseases. Most of the older people also still alive and can do the heavy work. By seeing these people going through hardship every single day without any complain had open my eyes to see the world different perspective. Enjoying everyday live and always support among themselves have been the key for them to continue their live happily eventhough there is none the high technologies stuff.

‘Orang Asli’  able to produce their own handicraft. It is our responsibilities to learn the method to create this handicraft as these are the assets we need to preserve to show Malaysia identity to the tourists and for the sake for future generation. Most of the people live in city often were drive away with all type of gadgets in their hands,  it is not a good thing to neglect ‘Orang Asli’ community as they were also aboriginal people in Malaysia.  Therefore non- government organizations should create more awareness  towards society in order to take care the well being in Malaysia. I strongly believe that we should not simply take everything for granted. We need to provide these community with a better health care because the distance to reach to the city is very far away. They might live longer but they still a human who need empathy from the society to lend a hand to them when they were sick. Indeed changing our thought and reflect towards ourselves more can give a big impact towards our country. This can be proven by saying from Norman Vincent Peale that “ change your thought and you can change the world”.

As a conclusion, I believe we need to become givers, not takers. The reason is because we will able to spread happiness to the community and able to reduce hardship in a person’s life. It is like planting a tree which always gives benefit to the environment like oxygen for a human to continue their life, once we doing a good deed to one person, the takers will not forget. Thus, people doing the good deed continue increasing day by day and naturally it becomes our blood to help each other whenever a person in need. The givers have nothing to lose as they also instil a positive attitude towards themselves while doing other favours. This kind of environment I want to build in the future.