Ayah dan Projek Tebu 2.0

This entry is dedicated to the man who inspires us to keep on going. Ayah, 72 years with great experience in his life, the man we always respect and love.

He work hard. He have been working as coolie in construction site in PJ and Puchong during his teen days. He lives in many places and married to my mom in 1972. He joined Felda Pasoh 2 in 1976.  He choose to be Felda Settler although he was supposed to be a teacher in 60′s but for some reasons he decided to look for adventure in his life. Ayah is good in maths!

Being a Felda settler is the best choice the government can offer those days. As the country is trying its very hard to eradicate poverty, the Felda program offers its settler a house, piece of land to work and a dream of hope. 

I understand his predicament working days and night to feed 6 of us in the family.  Lucky me, I am the youngest and live in the best time of it. Apparently, the hardship we went together was made the best of us. My family were manage to become rich survive and live happily. 

In June 2014, ayah told me to balik kampung and took over 10 acre palm oil farm from Felda. Thats mean we will do it on our own. Before this, Felda manage the farm and ayah only do nothing and gets his cut every month. Besides that ayah has another 5 acre of palm oil farm that he works on since 6 years ago. It is not difficult to be a young farmer managing the farm, I think, so I decided to stay with him.

My family and I start the  Projek Tebu 2.0 in early October 2014. The location of our farm is just 2 minutes away from our house. For the record, ayah started the Projek Tebu 1.0 in 2007 - 2009. The project was abandon due to economic crisis in 2008. The price of fertilizer went up more than 100% and he decided to let the farm just the way it was. Moreover, he is no longer had a strength to work anymore. Anyway, he manage to secure some profit out of it.

When the project kicked off, ayah in his deteriorating health condition came over to oversee the project.  He advice me and taught me how to do the right thing in the first place. Mom also helping. Mom had number of years experience working in sugar cane farm. 

As the project goes, ayah is struggling to fight for his life.  His health condition is getting poorer by early December 2014. I left the project more than 3 weeks to take care ayah in hospital.

It was very difficult time for my family as his health is not improving. Ayah passed away in late December 2014 :(

This Projek Tebu 2.0 is very special to me and the rest of my family. I can feel ayah is with me in this farm… all the time.

I miss you ayah and I will prove to you that this project will make our family proud. I am proud of your legacy and I am proud to be farmer like you.

Al-Fatihah