JehCreatives

There is this unassuming tree in our backyard- the kapasanglay tree, popularly known as kapok, or silk cotton tree, scientific name Ceiba pentandra (L) Gaertn. This tree has given us its white floss as filling material for our home-made pillows and which my late grandmother, Lilang Alli, did in her afternoon rest when light tasks could be undertaken at a leisurely pace . Most households had these cotton pillows before the commercial synthetic fiber-filled ones or magic pillows appeared in the market. When our kapasanglay tree has not yet grown to its behemoth size, we could reach for the dried pods by climbing or by using our sukdal (long bamboo pole with a diagonal stick tied with a string around its tip). We collected and laid these out to dry in the sun , cracked them open with hammer, smooth stone or wood. Afterwards we patiently separated the fibers from the seeds either by rubbing the pod’s contents on the rattan holes of the butaka (easy chair) or over the ya...