Visiting the K’s

It’s been a while since I last went to visit the K’s. The last visit was in April, immediately after they moved to a newly rented house, quite near the old house. With photos of the Family Day already printed, and some groceries already at our centre, I decided to give them a visit on Saturday. I texted Mrs K first to ask if anybody would be home. Mrs K herself would probably be working, so I just wanted to be sure any of her children would be around so I could leave them the groceries and photos. According to Mrs K, her 16 year old daughter would be home, so yeah, I went ahead with my plan.

The door was closed when I got to their house. I honked, and immediately I saw a girl peeping through the window. After a while Mr K opened the door and came out.

“Tak kerja ke?” I asked.

“Baru balik pukul 1,” he replied.

Since he was around, I got him to carry the box of groceries out of my car. I just carried the 10kg pack of rice. His 2 younger girls also came out. The 16 year old was not around – her aunt just came to fetch her to help in the baking of some raya cookies to be sold during the coming Ramadhan. Shah, the eldest boy, just started work at the nearby petrol station. Mrs K was not back from work yet.

Since the girls were around, I went in for a while, and passed the family day photos to them. The girls got excited, especially looking at the photo of the 2 of them riding the horse. Despite the fact that I had reduced my visits to their house ever since Mrs K started sending me text messages wanting to borrow money, 4 year old Baby K had always been friendly with me. Ever since she was small and couldn’t even talk, right to now when she’s already quite a chatty little girl, she’d always welcome my visits. In fact when she followed her parents to the hospital some time in May, when she saw me in the counselling room, she came in just to give me a peck on my cheeks and immediately went out again.

Well, this time she was telling me all sorts of stories… some I understood, some I didn’t. After a while, a cute little white kitten came in and immediately headed towards me. Baby K took the kitten in her arms. The kitten jumped from the girl’s arms and came running to me again, this time hiding underneath my kain, right between by legs. Baby K was so afraid the kitten wanted to follow me back, she grabbed the kitten from between my legs, and this time she didn’t let go.

“Apa nama dia?” I asked.

“Tot!” answered the older sister.

“Bukanlah! Nama dia Lily!” the little girl replied.

Anyway, I asked Mr K about 20 year old Shah. I was quite concerned about his future. If he doesn’t start thinking seriously of his future, what is he going to feed his family when he gets married? Shah was supposed to join Giat Mara starting July but none of the courses offered at the Giat Mara near his place were of interest to him. He’s more into automotive stuff and the Giat Mara offering such a course is quite a distance away, and they don’t offer accommodation. There is a newly opened Kolej Komuniti quite near their place, which offers automotive courses AND provide accommodation as well, so he’s aiming to apply for their January intake.

Let’s just hope this time it will work out as planned…