Sometimes, when I look back at my childhood, there’s this one chapter that always feels like a dream… or maybe a scar that healed into something I can actually touch now without flinching. So, let me tell you a story of my childhood.
I was in 4th grade, just a kid who didn’t know anything about money, business, or adult problems. All I knew was that one day, my dad wasn’t home anymore. He had gone to Central Kalimantan, in Pangkalan Bun to be exact, to find a better financial opportunity. That’s what everyone told me. I didn’t understand what “our business collapsed” meant, not back then. I just thought he’d come back eventually.
Several months later, suddenly, my mom said we were moving too, all of us. No warning. No chance to tell my friends I’d be gone. I didn’t even have a phone. One day, I was at school like usual, and the next day I was gone, like I’d been erased. I remember the day we left for Kalimantan. My uncle was the one who drove us to Tanjung Mas harbor. It was early morning, but everything felt heavy, like the sky itself knew we were leaving something behind. I didn’t understand the full story yet, only that we were following my dad, who had gone ahead months earlier to try to rebuild our life.
The harbor was loud and busy, but I felt strangely quiet inside. Just a kid holding onto the little I knew. And then there it was: the ship. Dharma Kencana II. Funny how I still remember the name so clearly. Maybe because that ship carried more than our luggage, it carried the whole messy, hopeful, uncertain chapter of our lives. Boarding that ship felt like stepping into a different world. Three days and two nights on the ocean… it was the longest trip of my life at that point. I didn’t fully grasp the distance we were traveling, but I knew it was far. Really far. The kind of far you don’t just walk back from.
I remember the smell of the sea, the sound of the engine that never seemed to stop, the tiny bed I slept on, and the way the ship rocked at night. I remember wandering around the deck with my brother and sister, trying to make the days pass faster, staring at the endless water like it held answers. Sometimes, when you’re a kid, you don’t realize how life is shifting under your feet until much later. Back then, I just thought it was an adventure. Only as I got older did I realize it was actually the moment everything changed.
When we finally reached the shore, I felt this mix of relief and confusion. We were still far from where we needed to be. My dad’s friend picked us up, and we drove for about three hours to reach Pangkalan Bun. Three hours on a bumpy road, surrounded by greenery and long stretches of nothing. Looking out the window, I felt like the world had stretched out too wide for me. Everything around me was unfamiliar — the air, the trees, the silence.
I think that’s the first time I realized we weren’t just “visiting.” We were starting over.
Pangkalan Bun back then was… silence. Real silence. Houses far apart, stretches of forest everywhere, and this strange stillness you don’t get in the city. I didn’t go to school. I didn’t study. Day after day, I just played with my brother and sister because there was nothing else to do. No friends. No teachers. No routines. Just the three of us trying to fill the long hours.
My older sister… honestly, she carried a weight she never should’ve had to at her age. We’d barely settled, and she was already working in a clothing shop in Sampit. She wasn’t even an adult yet, but she acted like one — waking up early, taking whatever job she could get, smiling through exhaustion because she knew the money mattered. Looking back, I realize how much she gave up. While I was playing in the yard or wandering through the empty spaces between houses, she was out there helping keep our family afloat.
My mom wasn’t spared either. In our hometown, she never had to do this kind of thing. But in Pangkalan Bun, she became a “household worker”, the kind of person people called when they needed their house cleaned, laundry done, basic chores taken care of. She walked from house to house, doing whatever work she could find. She’d come home tired, hands cracked from detergent and constant scrubbing, but she never complained. Not once. She always acted like it was normal, like we weren’t struggling as badly as we actually were. Sometimes I wonder how many times she cried quietly where we couldn’t see.
Our financial situation didn’t get better. It didn’t get worse either. It just… stayed stuck. And when you’re poor, “stuck” feels like forever. My mom started buying lots of gereh — dried salty fish — because it was cheap and could last for months. So that’s what we ate. Every day. For a while, it tasted okay. Then, after the hundredth time, it didn’t. I remember days when I stared at my plate, feeling sick of the smell, the taste, everything. There were times I threw my food away and just decided to starve until tomorrow. I was a kid; I didn’t know how else to cope. Even now, as an adult, I can’t eat ikan asin. The smell alone takes me right back there.
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| Gereh, credit to the picture's owner |
And we were fasting during Ramadan too. Imagine that fasting all day, then breaking it with the same salty fish, again and again. I didn’t complain, but inside, I was tired.
Then one day, food started arriving at our door. People from the neighborhood, people I didn’t even know, came with dishes covered in plastic wrap. At first, I thought they had the wrong house. But they kept saying, “This is for your family.” I didn’t understand how they knew our situation. Maybe my mom had finally made a friend. Maybe someone had noticed. Maybe kindness just finds you when you need it most.
I still remember how it felt to open those containers, the smell of real food, warm food, different food. Breaking my fast with something delicious felt like a blessing straight from the sky. I don’t know who those people were, not all of them. But even now, I wish I could thank them properly. They have no idea what they did for that small, lonely kid.
Then came the days leading up to Lebaran. For a moment, life felt a little lighter. Someone, who is one of my dad’s coworkers, I think, offered to take us to the city. I still remember stepping into Borneo Mall for the first time. It felt huge, bright, and overwhelmingly alive compared to the quiet place we were living in. For a kid who had been surrounded by forests for months, it was like entering another world.
We bought new clothes there, but of course, the cheapest option we could find. There was a “buy 1 get 1” promo, and that’s what my mom chose so my younger sibling and I could each have something new to wear for Lebaran. I remember holding the shirt in my hands, feeling excited but also strangely aware, even as a kid, that my mom was stretching every rupiah she had.
Lebaran in Pangkalan Bun itself was… simple. Quiet. We didn’t go around visiting a lot of people like families usually do back home. Instead, we just visited the neighbor next door, one of my dad’s friends, someone who had been helping him get work there. Their kindness felt like another thread holding us together.
One day, we traveled to Sampit to visit my sister. She was staying at a relative’s house, one of the many people from our extended family who had also migrated to Kalimantan, searching for better lives. I remember seeing her there, tired but smiling, like she didn’t want us to worry. We didn’t do anything special, didn’t go out to eat, didn’t buy anything. We just sat together, talking, sharing stories, trying to pretend everything was okay for a little while.
Those months in Pangkalan Bun… they were rough. Honestly, they were some of the hardest days of my life. I felt lost, isolated, cut off from the world. But I never blamed my parents. How could I? They were doing everything they could to survive, to keep us together. And strangely, that time shaped me. It made me tougher, more independent. It taught me how to endure things I didn’t think a kid should have to endure.
Sometimes I think about that version of myself, the boy who vanished from his classroom without saying goodbye, who wandered between forests, who ate the same meal until he couldn’t stand it, who learned what kindness looked like from strangers’ hands. It’s strange how much that kid had to grow without even knowing it. And yet… here I am. Older now. Stronger. Still carrying those memories, but not with bitterness. More like… a warm ache. A reminder of where I came from. A reminder of how far I’ve walked since then.