Lovely Guppies

Lovely Guppies

When I was a child, we, my younger brother and I were going out for guppies. It was an adventure. With our hands cautiously in the water  we caught them one at a time. They were in a drain that was with clear water in front of our house in Laan Trivelli, (now Tanah Abang 2), put them in a tincan and kept them in our washbasin.

We couldn’t afford to have an aquarium but that was not less beautiful, with tiny pieces of coral, stones or a weed as waterplant. And it was because they were in a washbasin that you could see the beautiful colors of the male fish clearly and NB each one is differently colored. I would like to call them Paradise fish, yet almost no one notices, cares for them as they are so small.

You could see them graciously courting the bigger female fish. The leaders have their own territory. You could see them fight, that was so exciting, they turn dark. We could sit for hours watching them. And we gave them a name, the “White Butterfly”, its tail was as the wings of a butterfly, the “Champion” who almost always won, the “Knocked Down Uncounscious” who was so severely hurt in a fight that for a moment it was uncounscious, the “Speckled” as it has a beautiful colored spot in its backfin, ... They were unafraid and swim into your palm in the water.

I was surprised and happy to see, find them still survive in an open ditch, draining our foul wash water from the households There are still a lot guppies in this ditch but I can’t catch them with my camera.

Our ditch in front of our house and many other ditches are hundred percent covered. There is no fish anymore and as there arise many eateries, foodstalls, these open ditches become stagnant with foul dish-wash water no fish, water creatures could ever live.  In former times you could find them almost in any ditch, occasionally see a crab, or fish an eel. It’s a pity, sad that they one day become extinct.

April 2011