Chapter 12 Fragrance of the Night

The night life in Fabian and Francis were seemingly dull as television were unheard of those days.Neither was there a radio in the house nor they had any idea what it was.Fortunately there was electricity around those days.

During the night they were surrounded by sounds of crickets and other insects.Like it or not they had come to terms with them to enjoy they music the made.Then there were the hawkers making their rounds to sell their food.

Normally an Indian man will come round first.At the shouting of,"Hop",he announced his arrival."Hop" was actually spring rolls of cooked " mankuang",costing only ten cents a piece.Following the the sound of "tick tok" man will passed by.

The "Tick Tok" man was very rhythmical the way he drum on his bamboo strip.following him will be a push cart of a "Wan Tan Mee""seller.They only stopped wherever there was a demand for his food.

Being of poor family Fabian 's family seldom stopped any of these hawkers,besides they had earlier taken their dinner.

However the silence of the night will always be broken by the fragrance of the night.Yes the night soil man will passed their house en-route their toilet which was about five chains from their house.

There the Indian worker will exchange the rubber toilet bucket with a cleaner one and the half filled bucket will be carried away by him to a waiting Truck.His passing the house stunned the family with the smelly waste in the bucket.But it was only momentary that smell will be around and will be drifted away as time flies.

With them performing that job all the waste were cleared.Although a dirty job these people did a marvelous job in removing the waste without failed.No surprised,man,they were all government servants.Without these willing people doing that job we will have a problem.So a big hand to them for a job well done.

In the 80s'onwards these workers were slowly phrased out with the introductions of modern sanitation systems.Thus ended the nightly fragrance of the past.

Funny where will they disposed those night soil,many claimed some were sent to vegetable farms round town as organic fertilizers.Therefore organic farming was never new to all of us,In actual fact those days vegetables sold in the markets fully utilized organic fertilizers.Those days farmers seldom used fertilizers which they said were more expensive,let alone insecticides and fungicides.