Our pledge was to teach two boys, Asnawi and Rifqi the malay traditional form of martial art, Silat. Our first session with the boys was held on a evening on the 17th of July 2010. We have scheduled with Rumah Aman for three silat sessions before starting with the first session. Since we have misjudged the traffic on a saturday evening on the federal highway, the first session that was supposed to start at 5pm started about half an hour late. But that did not deter the determination and excitement of the Tuan Guru, Muhammad Hafiz and his assistant for that day, Ahmad Arif Zabri to teach the boys the basic of silat. Ahmad Arif Zabri has step in as another pledger to help the boys as,Saiful Bahari, another pledger, could not make it to the first session. We were given a space inside Rumah Aman to teach these boys silat. Before the session started, Tuan Guru had a small and brief opening talk about silat. After that, he started the session off with stretching. Tuan Guru has planned out the silat session with the two boys. The silat that was taught is the basic Silat Gayung Fatani. As we all may know, silat has many categories and types.
There are 8 steps in the ‘bunga’ of Silat Gayung Fatani and in the first session, 3 of the 8 steps were taught. The boys, asnawi and rifqi did pretty well with their first introduction of silat. They are indeed bright little boys. There are always smiling and very enthusiastic. Perhaps they were shy in the first 15 minutes to 30 minutes in the session but were opening up well to the Tuan Guru and his assistant. They are indeed fast learners and most importantly, are willing to learn and has a good attitude towards it. The first session went on about an hour or so and it ended around 6-ish pm as all the boys were called to bath and prepare to eat their sumptuous dinner.
The second session was held the next day in the morning. The second session started at 10 till 12 pm. The session as usual started with stretching and continued with the 3 steps learnt in the first session. The boys remembered the steps well and managed to perform it almost flawlessly. As the session started with yesterday’s lesson, Tuan Guru and his assistant were very please with them as they did well with the first three steps. After Tuan Guru was satisfied with the performance of the first three steps by the boys, he started to teach the next 3 steps. His assistants, Ahmad Arif and Saiful Bahari were helping the boys with their steps in order for it to be performed gracefully and in the correct manner. On this particular day, Rifqi looks a bit out of focus probably due to he has taekwondo earlier but got the hang of it after awhile. Asnawi looks extremely focus and told us that he really wants to learn silat whole heartedly which warms our heart. The session continued by repeating the first 3 steps they learnt the day before combining it with the 3 new steps they learned on the second session. The 6 steps were repeated till the steps were perfectly mastered. After about an hour in the session, the second assistant, Saiful Bahari gathered the two boys for what he calls ‘sesi rohani’ where by he asked the boys about how they are and future ambitions and basically a small talk on getting to know the boys better. The boys get to asked him any questions and he answered. He joked around with the boys and explained that what is inside of them is as important as the outside. The session ended when the boys needed to get ready to eat their lunch and we had a group photo taken before they left for lunch.
The third session was scheduled to be held on 25 July 2010 but the boys were out the whole day at a seminar and the warden did not have our number to tell us that we had to re-scheduled our third and last session. And so we did re-scheduled to the next weekend but to no luck, the boys had something on too and thus the third session could not be carried out.
As we, the pledgers had only free time in July and in August and September are the month of Ramadhan and Eid, we have yet to complete the third and last session. We hope one day we are able to fulfill the last session to complete the 8 steps of bunga to Silat Gayung Fatani.
Till then =)
Zafirah, Hafiz, Saiful Bahari and Arif.
