Kampong Spirit

by Josephine Chia

  It was a treat to go to the cinema then. Mostly we watched films outdoors in a communal area when the Film-Man came with his reels of films and a portable screen. It was quite a challenge to watch films outdoors during the monsoon season! Umbrellas would go up and the screen would come down. When there was a break in the rain, the umbrellas came down and the screen went up. We learnt to keep the thread of the story in our heads whilst waiting for the rain to stop. Sometimes we would even discuss what could possibly come next. This back and forth yo-yoing would go on until the Film-Man got fed up and gave up altogether. Then we really had to make up our own endings. Probably my first training as a future writer! But when it was not rainy, it was so much fun. We sat on seats constructed out of a plank placed on top of two kerosene tins at each end. Hawkers took the opportunity to ply their wares; the kachang putih man sold a variety of nuts in cones made out of newspaper, KAMPONG SPIRIT – Gotong Royong the ice-ball man shaped the shaved ice into a ball with his naked hands, then swirled it with colourful syrup, the mua chee woman slicing the sesame flavoured mountain of mua chee with a flat aluminium slicer.

  Singapore was largely rural in the 1950s. Orchard Road was still an expanse of nutmeg trees and palms. Coconut trees abounded, particularly in villages, and if they were not on a privately-owned plantation, the fruit could be plucked by anyone agile enough to climb the tall trees. Usually it was the small Malay men who could scale up the trees like monkeys, their bare hands and feet gripping the rough trunk. I have a memory of seeing one climber nearly reaching his goal. He was close to the plume of coconut leaves where all the coconuts were hanging. He reached out to pluck a coconut. Only it wasn’t a coconut. It was a tabuan, a wasps’ nest! In retaliation, the swarm of tabuan surrounded him and stung him. He fell from the top of the tree, falling headlong downwards, screaming as he did so.

  Those were the trees where my mother got her coconuts from to make her nasi lemak. But usually it was coconuts she had found, brought down by the wind. It was amazing what one could find when one was poor and hungry – a chicken’s egg from a hen that had strayed from its coop: an eel, belot, from the monsoon drains; ubi kayu, or tapioca, from the undergrowth of forests; fallen fruits from over-hanging branches from people’s gardens; half-eaten cakes and boiled sweets from the dustbins of the rich English.

  It was a laborious task to separate the coconut husk from its shell; then to scrape the moist white flesh out; then manually grating the kernel on a metal grater, and finally adding water to squeeze out the milk. But the result was worth all that effort. I can still taste Mak’s special coconut rice in my memory as if time has not passed.

  The Kallang River cut a broad swathe across Kampong Potong Pasir. This river was both the boon and bane of the village. It caused major floods in 1954 and 1967. In the days when there was no piped water supply to the kampong, its water and surrounding springs and wells provided drinking water. Vegetable farms grew up on the banks of the river, farmed by Chinese farmers, supplying fresh chyesim, kailan, water cress, ubi kayu to markets around the island. I can still remember fooling around with the neighbourhood kids in our bare feet on the mud bunds that surrounded the padi fields. It was simply a delightful experience to squelch our toes into cool, wet clay and mud.

  Before I was ten, I was like a boy, bare-chested and flat-chested, dressed only in homemade drawstring shorts. My mother was an expert on the Singer-sewing machine. During Chinese New Year, she would peddle it furiously. Like all Peranakans, she was pantang, superstitious, and insisted on new curtains for the house and new clothes for us, to bring in good luck and prosperity. Unable to afford fabric from the major department stores, Robinson’s or Metro or stores on the High Street, she would buy them from peddlers at Robinson Petang (Thieves Market) at Sungei Road. Because most of the goods sold were either stolen or damaged property, it was pure luck whether we got fabric that would be the same shade the whole way through! When times were really bad and she could not afford to buy any new clothes for us, she would recycle the previous year’s curtains, to sew them into shirts and dresses. At least the clothes were regarded as new!

  “So clever your mother!” Neighbours would say when they saw all of us eight brothers and sisters wearing clothes in the same patterned material. But my brothers were not amused; floral patterns were not masculine enough for shirts!

  I was born in 1951 and spent all of my childhood and teenage years in Kampong Potong Pasir. Lighting was provided by carbide and hurricane lamps and later, a generator supplied intermittent electricity. It was pot-luck when the generator worked, making for some exciting times.

  My mother’s nasi lemak and her skill in making nonya kueh rescued me from a life of ignorance. Without them and her tremendous effort to defy my father and, against all odds, to enrol me in school, I might have been someone’s maid, or running a foodstall selling nasi lemak all my life instead of writing these English words. My moment of epiphany came when I saw a Milo tin when I was around seven or eight. It suddenly hit me that I could not understand the squiggles that were inscribed on the tin.

  “Mak, I want to go to school,” I said.

  “You know that your father won’t allow it or pay for it.”

  “But I want to study, learn English.”

  “How badly do you want to go to school?”

  “I really, really want to.”

  “How really is really? Are you prepared to work for it?”

  I noticed that her eyes lit up. I was her first surviving daughter. There were others before me who had not lived due to the lack of food and health-care. She had so many children, she lost count.

  “It would be good if you don’t have to depend on a man for your living all your life. I have to put up with a lot. You need not go through what I have to. I will take in the neighbours’ washing and you can help me wash the clothes, bringing the water up from the well. I will make more nonya kueh and nasi lemak and you can go round the village selling them.”

  “Yes, yes!” I said with enthusiasm. “I will do anything to go to school!”

  And so I followed in my brother’s footsteps and hawked the nasi lemak around the kampong. “Nasi Lemak! Nasi Lemak! Sepuloh Sen! Coconut Rice! Coconut Rice!” But by this time, the price had gone up to ten cents per packet.

  Growing up in the kampong, we were deprived of many comforts. Our family was extremely poor. There were days when we did not have any food to eat. Some days it was just soya sauce on boiled broken rice, the lowest quality rice which was used as feed for chickens. But the greatest thing we had was our mother’s love. She was a special lady, beautiful, devoted, compassionate and inspirational, not just to our family but to all the other villagers. She motivated each one of us to work hard and to succeed. My brothers and sisters all became successful in their chosen careers and businesses, buying themselves landed properties. I was the least business-minded, starting off as an Assistant Dental Nurse for seven years, then I attended Lembaga, adult education classes, to sit for my A-Levels. Eventually I managed to get into Singapore University; the first in my family to do so. I read literature, for I had dreamt (considered silly at that time) of becoming a writer. Having a family and a career postponed my dream for sometime, but eventually I decided that it was what I really wanted to spend my life doing. I managed to do an MA in a Creative Writing programme at a university in England.

  In 1992, I became the first Singaporean to be short-listed for one of the UK’s top literary awards for short stories, the Ian St. James Award. I wish my mother had been present at the award ceremony at the London Hilton. One of my sisters did attend to share my joy. Subsequently, I was invited to appear as a local author at literary events in the south-east of England. It was a great accolade. I could not have achieved my dream if Mak had not sacrificed so much. Thus, I am eternally indebted to her.

  Kampong Potong Pasir was razed to the ground in the early 1970s. The village metamorphosed into a concrete Housing Development Board (HDB) estate. The broad Kallang River wa
s narrowed, some of its water channelled elsewhere. All the vegetable farms were dug up and the fish ponds filled. And we lost some magnificent trees like the angsana and banyan, with their splendid canopy of leaves. A foundation of drainage and water systems was necessary for the creation of the blocks of flats, so the land was raised to its present level. So what used to be a hill at Atas Bukit now looks like a small bump. In fact there may have been more hills in this area in the old days because the words potong pasir mean to cut sand – potong means cut and pasir is sand. In Hokkien it is called Suah Ti. Suah means sand. Ti refers to the fish ponds. Some of these ponds were created when sand was excavated for land reclamation.

  Like many kampongs in Singapore, our village too was destroyed in the 1970s. Bull dozers stampeded in like a herd of mechanical beasts flattening the attap houses, consigning our way of life into history books. So I cannot balik kampong. Balik kampong in Malay literally means going back (to the) village but it is also a metaphor that suggests a kind of emotional going home. I can no longer balik kampong, at least not in a physical sense. But I can always return to it in my memory and would like to share these memories with you.

  NEARLY EVERY MEMORY I have of my childhood is connected with my mother. She was such a philosophical lady. One does not need a university degree to be philosophical. The ancient Greeks tell us that the word philosophy can be broken up into philo, which means love of and Sophia, which means wisdom. So someone who spouts wise sayings can be philosophical, but wisdom need not always be intellectual and acquired. It can be intuitive. Mak was a wise woman indeed. She was uneducated like most women of her time in that she was not literate. But she was certainly educated by the University of Life. My strongest memory of her is her genteel manner and the amazing wisdom that spouted from her lips. I may not recall all her sayings in the exact way she said them but I certainly believe I have captured the essence of what she said.

  “It’s not where you live that counts but how you live,” she used to say.

  This would be great if you were living in comfort and luxury but when you were like me, a child in Kampong Potong Pasir, where you had to live among rats scuttling along the cement floor or centipedes falling off the attap roof, you would have wondered if my mother’s philosophy was for real. But she was for real. I can say with my hand on my heart that she was the most influential person in my life. It was her positive philosophy and attitude that nurtured me and set me up for as long as I may live.

  I was born in March 1951. The year of my birth was auspicious for the island of Singapore and its people. In September that year, it was proclaimed a City by the British. In later years, I heard stories of how the Padang had so many people celebrating the momentous occasion that the field of grass which gave it its name was blocked from view. Laughter and cries of joy burst out when the fireworks erupted in a myriad of colours above the Esplanade, which was then a tree-lined walkway by the sea. To crown the event, an illuminated dragon-float glided across the seafront to the delight of everyone present. So my birth was also the birth of a hope for independence for our nation.

  By the time I was three, people were crying out, “We want Self-rule! We want Self-rule!”

  Just as I was about to turn four, the country was caught in election fever.

  “We want our own local leader!” People cried out to the British rulers.

  Our village was a hive of excitement. Our kampong road had never seen such a parade of vehicles, vans and open-topped lorries, trundling down its pot-holed lanes, their wheels raising clouds of dust. The party leaders shouted political slogans and promises from hand-held megaphones. There was David Marshall, from the Labour Front Party, Lee Kuan Yew from the newly formed People’s Action Party, and even an independent candidate, Ahmad Ibrahim. Great crowds of people rallied around them, inspiring everyone with their messages.

  “We want to improve your lives,” they said. “We will provide you with running water and electricity, and food to quiet your rumbling stomachs.”

  Villages like ours were served by wells, and we had no running water in the houses. Usually the stand-pipe, which provided drinking water, was some distance away. The electricity in the city did not reach our homes. Our homes were lit by hurricane lamps, kerosene or carbide lamps and candles. And the majority of villagers were poor and uneducated. The political candidates played on our lack of education, obliquely persuading us that the colonial government did not have our interests at heart but that local government would. We were motivated to act from hunger and to be free from the squalor of our everyday living. So villagers turned out en masse on polling day, April 2, to vote. David Marshall won a narrow victory and became our country’s first chief minister. Sadly his Labour Front Government was jinxed; a strike took place soon after he took office, and there were many more after that.

  That particular strike was by the Hock Lee Amalgamated Bus Company. Two anti-colonists, Fong Swee Suan and Lim Chin Siong, who were the leaders of The Singapore Bus Workers Union, were reported to incite their members, saying “You are deluded if you think that the Labour Party is not being controlled by the Colonial Government. Don’t be deceived. This government is only a pawn for the British! What have they done for you, eh? What? You work day and night and you still get so little pay and have not enough to eat. You live in villages that have no running water or electricity, where sanitation is appalling and disease rampant. We want better terms and conditions!”

  Indeed, bus drivers and conductors, Ah Chye, Peng An, Salleh and Gurjit were from rural villages like ours. They had experienced the devastating flood that had hit Potong Pasir the previous year, in 1954. Houses in the kampong were made with wooden walls and palm-thatched attap roofs. So they were flimsy and could not withstand the heavy monsoon and surging flood waters. Many people became homeless or lost possessions. Therefore in villages like ours, people were looking for a saviour to remove our deprivations and give us a better life. Lowly paid folks like Ah Chye, Peng An, Salleh and Gurjit decided to join the strikers in the hope that they could provide more for their families.

  “Our pay is too low!” The strikers shouted, together with all the others, raising a thicket of fists into the air. “We can’t feed our wives and children or buy shoes for them. We work very long hours in terrible conditions yet our stomachs still rumble!”

  On May 12, an event which came to be known as Black Thursday devastated the country. Nearly 2,000 students from Chinese Middle Schools joined the strikers of the Hock Lee Bus Company. Students from Chinese schools were disgruntled with the colonial government because their education was not recognised. Also they were not permitted to get into the University of Malaya even when they had the right qualifications.

  The strikers caused a major riot in Alexandra Road and Tiong Bahru. They barricaded the depots and stopped the buses from leaving the depots. Wives and mothers like Ah Sum, Ah Moey, Khatija and Gita from our village took out their tingkat or tiffin carriers. These were two- or three-tiered food containers, the enamel ones painted with brightly coloured flowers and birds. The steel ones were plain or carved. Mothers and wives filled these with delicious food to take to their husbands and sons behind the picket line. They had to walk miles, as the city’s transport system had ground to a halt. Only those with private cars or who could afford taxis and pawang chiar could still travel comfortably.

  “Aiiyah! Eat something-lah!” Ah Sum persuaded her husband.

  Students from the Chinese schools brought food and even entertained the workers by singing and dancing. Had it remained a peaceful strike, no one would have been hurt. The police tried to break them up with water cannons and tear gas, so both strikers and students retaliated, with devastating results. Ah Moey came back to the village distraught and in tears.

  “What happened? What happened?” Neighbours asked her.

  “Sway, sway-lah! Misfortune, misfortune-lah. My husband, Peng An. His head was smashed by a police truncheon. He’s in hospital now.”

  It was inde
ed a day of darkness.

  Across the Kallang River from our village was an English Missionary School, Saint Andrew’s School, which was run by a man called Canon Reginald Keith Sorby Adams. He had been nicknamed The Fighting Padre as it was he who introduced boxing as a sport to the school. He was one of the few Europeans or white men seen around our village, handing out alms or just being friendly. Besides this English missionary school was a Chinese school in Kampong Potong Pasir. Unlike St. Andrew’s, which was built of concrete, the Chinese school was an open wooden hut with wooden flooring, its roof thatched with attap. The pupils sat on long wooden benches facing an old-fashioned blackboard which the teacher would scratch with his white chalk. The colonial government did not fund Chinese education, so that opened the sluice gates of opportunity for the communists to spread their influence. China sent teachers, school-books and funds, purportedly to educate their Chinese nationals abroad. Most of the pupils in our village school were from Lai Par, the inner sanctum of Kampong Potong Pasir where their parents tilled the earth and grew vegetables.

  “Yi, Er, San, Si ... One, Two, Three, Four...”

  Mandarin was not spoken in our part of the village except at that school. Chinese people in our village mostly spoke Teochew or Hokkien and some Cantonese. The other village children, including myself, would crowd round the school listening to this foreign language. Apparently it was this language that linked the local Chinese to their Motherland and it was this sentiment that the communist insurgents played upon. People liked to belong somewhere and at this point in time, Singapore still felt like a staging post, not yet its own nation. The different immigrant races still thought of their former countries as their Motherlands. However, Peranakans, because of their mixed heritage, have an affiliation to China but consider Malaya as their home. At this point in history, the word, Malaya was used interchangeably to include Singapore, and did not merely refer to the Federated States of Malaya. That was why the first university in our country was called the University of Malaya.