Saying Our Goodbyes

Today is bibik's flight home to Indonesia, This week activities in my household were also centered around her. Last Saturday, I took her shopping, she wanted to buy some stuff to bring home. T-shirts for her sons, tudungs for her grandmother and mother. Yes, she said she still have a grandmother (Bibik is 50 years old!!!). I changed some money into Indon rupiah for her and so on.

Sunday, I sent her to her former employer Puan J, bibik wanted to stay overnite for the last time there. Puan J ni pun dah nampak successful, She and the husband just received a Mercedes Benz 200 Kompressor just from doing the Gano business. They have been doing it all out for the last 7 years. It just prooved that with hard work, you can always be successful.

Monday, I had to get her passport and the letter from the Immigration to allow her to go home. Later I had to fetch her from Puan J's. Tuesday, I remitted the balance of her salary money to the person she always sent the money to. I am worried for the safety of the money when she arrived in Jogjakarta. But she said that, the bank charges there are very high. Macam lintah darat pulak no. And lastly today, Wednesday, we said out goodbyes to bibik. She has been a loyal maid and part of our family for a long time. It is very likely that she may not be coming back here again. Her age and a few other factors will make it difficult for her to come back to Malaysia to work.

Bibik's flight was at 9.05 am from Penang, to KLIA. Then, she will board another flight to Jogjakarta at 12.00 noon. We left home at 7.00 am to try to make it on time for the flight. All of us, even my mak went to send her off. I was confident that we would made it on time, but the traffic was busy during that time, people were going to work, and there was an unusual jam on the bridge. We dicovered later that 4 cars were involved in an accident. They kissed each others butt obviously in the haste to get to the other end. We did arrive with just enough time to check in the luggages. pay for the overweight baggage and get her the boarding pass. She had to get another boarding pass to Jogjakarta in KLIA because the next flight would be Garuda Air. Just had time to salam, hugs and off she went to board the flight. We all pray that she will have a safe flight home.

Back home, we bought breakfast and some lauk. That would only mean that I would not need to cook lunch anymore. But need to do some training and re-arranging of house work. Syia, being the youngest, has always been the pampered one. Being the one who bibik took care of since her very first day, need to be trained to do simple house work. We started with how to cook rice. She measured the rice, the water and place them into the rice cooker. Then there is another pot for maktok. (Maktok eats brown rice at the advice of the doctor). Then the feeding of the cats and chicken in the reban. She even put clothes into the washing machine to be washed.

We discussed about the daily help when they started school, Ayin said, we need to have someone be at home until she gets home from school, latest she said by 3.00 pm. The rest, we will try to manage between ourselves. They know that they will have to take part in helping us around the house. We willl manage somehow.

Now, the difficult part is to leave the house unattended or when I need to bring the girls out shopping for school stuffs. Or when the girls want to go out to have some fun. Someone amongst us need to sacrifice the time.

It was difficult for bibik to say goodbye to us and like wise for us to her. I called Kak Long to let bibik talked to her on the phone and she was already tearful. Bibik wrote us a note, saying thank you and to ask for forgiveness. It was difficult for her to express that face to face.

We all are thankful to bibik, May Allah Bless her and will always protect her and give her abundance rezeki in her homeland. We do not know whether we will be meeting her again. We hope InsyaAllah we will one fine day.