Goodbye My Kampong

by Josephine Chia

  I was walking through my last years in the kampong on lighter feet.

  “My company is sending me to Germany to train to be a production engineer,” Boy Friend announced. “I have to learn how their cameras are manufactured, so that I can run their production lines in their factory here.”

  It was to Lee Kuan Yew’s credit that international manufacturing firms were brought in. They were willing to train the local workforce and upgrade local talent.

  Thousands of people were employed during this spate of industrialisation, and hundreds were sent overseas to train.

  I had not expected that bombshell.

  “How long will you be away?”

  “A year, they say.”

  We were sitting on a bench at MacRitchie Reservoir, facing the beautiful trees and the body of water, the breeze making small waves lap continuously at the shore. My father would have turned in his grave if he had seen me sitting in such close proximity to a man before we were wedded! MacRitchie was colloquially called the pak tor haven, a Hokkien word which referred to lovers going on a date.

  “You can wait for me or not?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I want to marry you lah, when I get back.”

  I had not expected a post-dated proposal. I hadn’t really thought of marriage. There was so much I still wanted to do with my life. I had already started making enquiries into how I could study for my HSC (Higher School Certificate) whilst I was working full time, so that I could qualify to enter university. I had discovered that it would take me two years to do the HSC. However, if I signed on as a private candidate, I could do it within the year. But I would have to take some classes at Lembaga, the Adult Education Board, in the evenings after work, and swot hard on my own. I even enquired about evening and part-time jobs I could do, to pay my way and support Mak, if I should have to give up nursing to go to university.

  “Actually, I’m planning to get a degree first.”

  “That’s good. That’s good,” he said. “When we are married, I’ll help pay your fees.”

  I was surprised by his offer.

  “Are you suggesting that we get engaged?”

  He shifted awkwardly.

  “Cannot lah,” he said. “My mother don’t know about you yet. Aiyyah! She’s such a control freak and don’t want me to have any girlfriends.”

  I couldn’t believe what he was asking of me. He was proposing to me in advance, asking me to wait for him for a year, but hadn’t gotten his mother’s approval. I should have read all the danger signs. But I didn’t. I was too caught up in the idea of romance.

  “Okay,” I said. Love knows no logic.

  Whilst Boy Friend was abroad, I kept working hard all day, studying during my lunchtimes and in the evenings. Now that we had electricity in the village, I could switch on a table lamp to work till late.

  When I had my first posting at the Lepers’ Home, I didn’t carry a book along in case it became contaminated, and took the contamination home to my family. Dr M drove me to Woodbridge in his MG. It was the first time I sat in a low-slung, sports car, the trees whizzing past me in a blur. When we arrived at the venue, I admired Trafalgar Home’s beautiful colonial building with its white columns and portico. Dr M ushered me into the clinic and told me how to make doubly sure that I sterilised all the instruments properly after he had used them on a patient. I had to admit that if I had not been forewarned by Sister A, I might have reacted adversely to the patients who came. Some of them had badly deformed features, a missing nose or finger. They were highly embarrassed about themselves and their posture reflected their shame. Many were actually members from the same families, in which one had infected the other. It was so touching. Their condition and unenviable situation propelled me to contemplate more deeply about life and its meaning. I decided that apart from reading literature at university, I would also read philosophy if I should qualify. Meanwhile, I tried my level best to ignore their looks, and concentrated on them as people. I had read the memoir, The Story of a Soul, by a Catholic Saint, St Therese de Lisieux, who had been a Carmelite nun. I remembered reading the part when the nun had purposely kissed the spot where a leper had been, to show she did not abhor such people. Sadly, I did not possess that kind of spiritual strength.

  On Tuesday, 31 January, Singapore experienced its first hijacking incident. Four terrorists from the Japanese Red Army, and some from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) attacked the Shell oil refinery complex on Pulau Bukom. The men subsequently hijacked the ferryboat Laju and took its five crew members hostage.

  Only the Saturday before, I had gone with Dr M to the dental clinic at St John’s Island, whose former Malay name was Sekijang Bendera or Deer Flag. Historically, this southern island, between Lazarus Island and Kusu Island, began as a penal colony and subsequently was used as a place of quarantine for people who had infectious diseases, before they could enter Singapore. People are always surprised to hear that Singapore has more than 60 offshore islands and islets. In 1874, a lazaretto had been built on St John’s, a hospital that took care of patients with diseases like cholera, beri-beri and also leprosy. Muslim pilgrims returning from Mecca as well as animals suspected of carrying any infectious disease would also be quarantined here. So, many locals called St John’s “Quarantine Island”. It also had a small section for the rehabilitation of drug addicts. The prison department kept the eastern part of the island for detainees. During the Second World War, some Germans were incarcerated here. In 1963, after the high security alert called Operation Coldstore, many political detainees, like Barisan Socialis leader Lim Chin Siong, were brought here from Changi Prison.

  St John’s Island had a huge expanse of forest, palm trees and beautiful sandy beaches. Its waters were much clearer than around our present main island. They reminded me of our original East Coast beaches, where we could find agar-agar in the shallow waters and pick fresh gong-gong and other shellfish to cook. Our boat stopped at a wooden jetty for Dr M and me to step off, its pillars crusted with age-old barnacles.

  “Be careful, Nurse Chia,” Dr M cautioned. “The steps are slippery with seaweed.”

  I felt like I was on some kind of Famous Five adventure. This was the kind of faraway island where we could hike and explore. Before discovering the local and mobile library, my reading had been restricted to books and comics the English people at Atas Bukit threw out. I recalled how I used to read out the stories of Julian, Dick, Anne, their tomboy cousin George (Georgina) and Timmy the dog, to Parvathi and Fatima. We had loved their adventures and we had talked and dreamt of going overseas, doing similar things. Both the girls would have been proud to know that I was now a nurse. How I wished I could share my adventure now with my childhood friends. I wished too that I could tell Parvathi that times had changed and that Fatima and I had not been forced into marriage and that she would not have needed to kill herself if she had lived a bit longer. What a sad waste of her life! I so missed my beloved friends.

  The dormitories of low housing and fields had a tall fence all around them, with curled barbed wire at the top. Our boat had sailed from Clifford Pier and had passed Pulau Bukom on the way there and back. It was about a half-hour ride from Clifford Pier. I absolutely loved the wind in my hair and the smell of salt in the air. I imagined that these same waves had washed at foreign shores and circulated around the world. How fantastic was that? Except for going to Malaysia, I had never been out of Singapore before, so it was magical to be out at sea. I was already 23 but had not seen the world yet. But the boat ride instilled in me an awareness of the possibility that one day, I would be able to travel abroad. It awakened in me a sense of wanderlust. Going to St John’s Island every other Saturday was the highlight of my nursing life.

  When we heard the news of the hijack, we were deeply shocked. I was staggered. With my fertile imagination, I imagined that if the bombing had taken place three days earlier, it might have happened that the hijackers could have pounced on our passing
boat, instead of the Laju. This thought, though a mite far-fetched, somehow connected me to the event in a strange vicarious way, and I glued myself to the radio and TV to follow the details of the continuing saga and developments.

  PFLP issued a statement from Beirut that the primary purpose of the bombing of the refinery was a warning to monopolistic oil companies, as well as to disrupt oil supply to countries like Vietnam. Its secondary purpose was to highlight the perceived notion of the oppression of Arabs in the Middle East. Fortunately, the bombs they used did not cause severe damage on Pulau Bukom. There was a scuffle at sea as the Laju was chased and surrounded by Navy gunboats and Marine Police boats.

  Throughout the week, we followed the news of the continuing negotiations between the Singapore authorities and the hijackers. Two hostages slipped out of the grasp of the hijackers and jumped into the sea to swim to safety. The Japanese Ambassador Mr T. Uomoto pleaded with the hijackers to release the hostages, but they initially refused. Later, they agreed to release the other three hostages if they were assured of safe passage out of Singapore to the Middle East. Mr S. R. Nathan, who was then Director of the Security and Intelligence Division, Ministry of Defence, led a team of 13 negotiators, which comprised government officials, marine police and commandos, to take the hijackers to Kuwait. Before boarding the plane at Paya Lebar Airport, the hijackers released the hostages and gave up their arms. Mr Nathan and his team accompanied the hijackers all the way to Kuwait and returned to Singapore the next day. The whole country was on tenterhooks for their safety till their return.

  “They asked us to apologise for the many inconveniences caused to the hostages,” Mr S. R. Nathan told the press. “The four thanked us for the treatment they received in Singapore and told us they meant no harm to Singapore.”

  For months, I had been saving my lunch money to buy my mother a Baby Belling oven for her 59th birthday in March, which was just a couple of weeks before mine. The Baby Belling oven was a table-top model and was not as expensive as a normal-size oven. Still it cost $50, which was all that Mak gave me each month. I thought that it would make my mother happy to be able to bake with ease, instead of using her dapur arang arrangement, where she had to use an aluminium pot to put over the hot coals to act as an oven, and squat or sit on a low stool while cooking. At her age, I felt it was getting more challenging for her to squat for long periods. With the new oven, she could stand up to bake her cakes. I even paid a delivery price of $5 for it to be delivered, as it was too heavy for me to carry it from Metro.

  “What’s this? What’s this?” Mak asked when it arrived.

  “Birthday present for you, Mak” I said. “You unwrap it.”

  I had taken my mother to eat her favourite briyani at Zam Zam restaurant in North Bridge Road. Now I could sense her excitement, though she acted calm. After the wrapping had come off, I helped her lift the oven out of its box.

  “But what is it?” she asked.

  “An electric oven!” I exclaimed.

  She didn’t know what it was for, and I went through the process of showing her how it worked, and explained how she could bake her cakes in it.

  “Aiyyah! Why waste money?” She said with an impatience that she hardly ever exhibited before. “Silly modern things. How can my kueh bangkit taste as good in an oven? Nothing can beat my dapur arang!”

  “Aiyyah, Mak” I said in exasperation, “give it a try lah!”

  “So many knobs and things!” she said. “What if the current poisons the kueh?”

  Local folks used the word “current” to refer to electricity, which was still an unusual phenomenon for them, as it was for my mother. I tried to explain about electricity, baked some fairy cakes for her to sample, showed her how clean and easy it was to use. But she would not budge. I had never known my mother to be so stubborn before. To my utter disappointment, she would not even try to use it. Only much later did I realise that she was actually afraid of it!

  The previous year, we had watched in dismay as our fish ponds were being filled up. Today, walking by the flattened land where they had been, you would not have guessed that these used to be beautiful bodies of water. Now we were told that the government was phasing out all the village standpipes around the country.

  “How will we get drinking water if they do that?” Ah Gu asked.

  “The government aims to provide every household with piped water,” Uncle Krishnan, our clever civil servant, informed us. “Then we won’t need a communal standpipe anymore. But as there are plans to dissolve Kampong Potong Pasir, I’m not sure if we will get to that stage.”

  We didn’t.

  In July, the Censorship Board lifted a ban on the 1973 American film, Jesus Christ Superstar, which surprised us all, especially the Christian leaders. Based on an Andrew Lloyd Webber rock opera with lyrics by Tim Rice, the story was based loosely on the last week of Jesus’ life. It highlighted the political and interpersonal conflicts between Judas and Jesus. These were not covered in the Bible. Many religious leaders around the world were offended. As with anything banned, its release meant that hundreds more people rushed to see the film, who might not otherwise have gone, or bothered. Many local Church leaders kept on protesting and discouraging their flock from seeing it. But I gave in to temptation and went to see it. Boy Friend, who was a staunch Catholic, would have been mortified.

  The songs were lively, but I felt it was almost scandalous in the way Mary Magdalene sang about Jesus in ‘I Don’t Know How to Love Him’ as if her love for him was a carnal one. And yet, I was influenced by the thought that there could be more than one interpretation of the Bible and its parables. This was a mind-opener. Recently there had been a spate of events at the church near Kampong Potong Pasir with the misbehaviour of its parish priest, who ran off with a young teenage girl, and other church organisers who preyed on young girls. I felt that some of the religious laws did not seem to aid in true moral behaviour but a hypocritical one. It spurred me on to want to find out the basis of all spiritual teachings. It occurred to me that if I should get a chance to study philosophy, I would be interested to read comparative religion, to understand for myself how religions ticked, what the spiritual laws were and how they came to be dressed in different codes and tenets of the various religions.

  I was planning for my future in a way I never had before.

  And then there was colour TV! On 7 July, Singapore had its first colour TV transmission. Hosted by Brian Richmond, the first colour telecast was a live World Cup soccer final match between West Germany and Holland. Two thousand sets had been sold the day before. Obviously a colour TV set would be very expensive for the majority of people. There were still many people, like those in my village, who didn’t even own a black and white TV, let alone a colour one. My family was one of the lucky ones when my father had splurged his Christmas bonus from the English company where he was working, to buy a TV set. That was two years after TV made its debut in Singapore. The government arranged to install a 26-inch colour TV in each of the 63 community centres, so that ordinary folks could also watch TV in colour.

  “We will also be able to watch the National Day Parade in colour!” Karim said.

  “I’m buying a colour TV,” Uncle Krishnan said proudly, the first man to own an automobile in our part of the village.

  “Aiyyoh, Uncle Krishnan, you chap duit or what? You print money or what?” Karim said.

  “You’re all welcome to come and watch in my house,” Uncle Krishnan said generously. “They are going to screen the 1960 film, North to Alaska. John Wayne and Stewart Granger are starring.”

  We all loved John Wayne and his cowboy Western movies. The film that Uncle Krishnan mentioned was about the Nome, Alaska Gold Rush, which we had seen when it came out in the theatre. The story was about a prospector, George, played by Stewart Granger who sent his partner, Sam, played by John Wayne, to Seattle to bring his fiancée to Alaska. When Sam arrived in Seattle, he discovered that she had married another man. Sam found a prostitute, A
ngel, played by the gorgeous-looking Capucine, and brought her back instead. It was a Western comedic film. We trooped into Uncle Krishnan’s house, and his wife offered us muruku, the Indian snack, which we crunched happily. We sat on their cement floor which was lined with linoleum. It was considered posh in the kampong to have linoleum on the floor. Ours was bare cement.

  We all knew the chorus of the ballady theme song which was sung by Texan Johnny Horton, so when Uncle Krishnan surprised us by singing, “North to Alaska, you go north, the rush is on, north to Alaska, I go north, the rush is on,” and we all joined in. The film whetted our appetite to travel to this most northern land. The wonder of it all was that the film was on TV and in full colour. Colour made everything more real and alive and we laughed at the actors’ antics.

  On our National Day, 9 August, we got invited to Uncle Krishnan’s house again, to watch the parade in colour. On that day, all the members of Mr S. R. Nathan’s negotiating team involved in the Laju Hijack crisis were given National Day Honours. We luxuriated in seven glorious hours of colour TV!

  In November, we thought that climate change was upon us, when we had to put on knitted sweaters as the temperature dropped. The strong wind was coming in from the East Coast, stirring and swelling our usually placid waves. Dark cumulus clouds swept into our sky, and they grew taller and taller, casting an ominous pall everywhere. Then lightning cracked open the clouds, followed in a few seconds by loud rolls of thunder. We expected the rain to fall, and raced around the house for empty basins and kerosene tins to catch the leaks from our ageing attap roof. We also put pails outdoors so we could use the rainwater for washing our floors and dishes.