by Yap Swi Neo
First published in My Life, My Stories (Verena Tay, ed.) Singapore: National Library Board, Singapore (2015)
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A blouse resembling a cheongsam cropped to the hips, and a matching pair of trousers. ↵
Malay for ‘very aromatic’. ↵
Malay for ‘very aromatic’. ↵
The standard measurement then was kati and taels. 16 taels make one kati. One kati is approximately 0.5 kilograms. ↵
Malay for ‘uncle’; also a term of address. ↵
Malay for ‘kitchen’. ↵
Malay for ‘in the olden days’. ↵
null ↵
Shrimp paste. ↵
Kaffir lime leaf – an aromatic herb. ↵
‘You ah, such unladylike behaviour, so delicious that you lick your fingers!’ [‘Ta’ seronoh’ is Baba Malay for ‘improper’ or ‘inappropriate’ (‘unladylike’ in this context); from the Malay ‘tidak senonoh’ (‘not appropriate’).] ↵
Herbal pork bone soup. ↵
Markets sold live chickens. We chose our chicken and had it slaughtered and dressed. ↵
My Sisters, My Teachers
I was educated in Convent of the Holy Infant Jesus (CHIJ), usually referred to as French Convent, as the first girls schools were set up by French missionaries. The Sisters were from France, England, Ireland and several were local Chinese and Indians. We wondered whether Sisters found their attire – their layers of petticoats, headdress, and socks and shoes – a ‘heater’. Despite their strict discipline, we loved our Sisters. We are what we are today because of our Sisters.
Walking into primary school, Convent of the Holy Infant Jesus (CHIJ), Bandar Hilir Road, Malacca,[1] we could never escape the prowling, stalking eyes of the Sisters. There were Sisters here, there, everywhere – at the school gate, classrooms, office, bookshop, canteen, chapel, playground. We could never escape their binocular vision and binaural stereo hearing; the Caucasian faces and hands peeping out of the ankle-length black tunic covered by a scapular, which was an apron that went over the shoulders and covered the front and back of the tunic; a coif covered the head completely; socks and shoes; and often their metre-long rosary swinging round their necks as they walked very fast chasing us. We wondered then whether the Sisters had ears and hair, both of which we never saw.
Facing the main gate of the school was the grotto of Our Lady of Fatima, the Mother of Christ. She was serene and beautiful in her long white robes, her hands holding a Rosary in prayer, and a crown on her head. Often we spent a minute asking her to intercede for us, for whatever. The primary school was a three-sided double-storey rectangular building. The school building was educational. We learnt about the Parlour, the Visitor’s Parlour and the Morning Room leading to Reverend Mother Margaret Mary, the Principal’s Office and beyond that the General Office. On the left was the Piety Shop, where we could buy rosaries, crucifixes, bibles and other Catholic paraphernalia. On the left longer side of the rectangle were the school hall and a row of classrooms. On the right side of the rectangle was the canteen. Beyond it was the orphanage. The orphans attended school with us. During recess the older girls helped out in the canteen. The fourth side of the rectangle, facing the Parlour, was the seawall and a barbwire ran across the top to prevent us from jumping into the sea, or to prevent undesirable guests jumping in. There was a short flight of concrete steps, enough for us to peer at what was in the sea – mainly household rubbish, as there was no proper garbage collection then. Sister Rita, Discipline Sister, warned us that should we fall over, there would be no ‘Big Fish’ to swallow us then spit us out to safety.
The upper floors of the building housed classrooms. Facing the playground was a large triangular balcony jutting between the joints of two blocks. The playground was the centrepiece, right in the middle of the school, like the city square. Down the middle of the playground, a pathway led from the entrance to the gazebo two metres from the seawall. Six gigantic, majestic angsana trees lined the driveway on the right. Running alongside the right of the angsanas was a low hibiscus hedge, brilliantly coloured blooms of red, orange, white, pink, formed a colourful curtain going into the Canteen, which doubled up as a Sports Hall. While the angsana provided perfect shade for us to play our games in, the hibiscus hedge taught us life skills such as how to catch camouflaged match-head green spiders that we kept in little bottles. Often the tiny ones died, and Sister Rita rained fire and fury on us. Occasionally, tiny birds set up nests, and we were like little mothers eyeing the eggs. Sister Rita reminded us not to pick or touch the delicate eggs as we might break the brittle shells; we were not to pat the fledglings because mummy bird might reject the little chirpy ones. Maybe we could send the little birds to the orphanage.
The Convent Sisters educated us in many things, one of which was encouraging us to run. ‘Girls, you must learn to run very, very fast. Go ahead, run some more!’ The Sisters were emphatic in their words, always repeating them.
Later in upper primary we were taught the reason and value of being able to run very, very fast. Sister told us, ‘You must be able to run very, very fast. If boys chase you, you can run away very, very fast. Don’t let any boy catch you. Boys catch you, they do very, very bad things to you.’
We wondered aloud, then, why would boys want to catch girls? What were the bad things they would do to us girls! Maybe like our brothers, they would pinch us or cut our hair or steal our homework! It was scary. So we all ran very, very fast every day in the school playground. That explained how secondary CHIJ girls earned our school many trophies for many years, running the 100 yards[2], the 220 yards, the 4 x 100 relays, and of course the hurdles at the Annual Inter-School Meet.
We were comfortable because the angsana trees fanned us as we ran about. Back in class, sweaty and panting, the Sister would ask, ‘So girls, did you play? And run?’ and she was pleased. When we told her we were sweaty, her response was, ‘Girls, girls, girls, horses sweat; people perspire. You are not horses.’ And later Sisters taught us, ‘Goats have kids, people have children.’
Once every two years the Reverend Mother Superior of the Infant Jesus Order in France visited her Sisters in the Federation of Malaya[3] and Singapore. The Sisters and teachers excitedly prepared us girls for her biennial visit to all her Convent schools and Sisters and of course the teachers and students. Instead of the daily twenty-minute Catechism class in the morning, we were taught a few French phrases: ‘bonjour révérende mère supérieure’, good morning Reverend Mother Superior; ‘merci beaucoup’, thank you very much (for visiting us); ‘bienvenue dans notre école’, welcome to our school; ‘oui’, yes; ‘bonne journée’, have a good day; ‘nous sommes heureux de vous voir’, we are happy to see you; ‘revenir bientôt’, come again soon; ‘oui, Jésus nous aime’, yes, Jesus loves us; ‘avoir un bon voyage de retour’, have a safe journey home. We were excited and learnt the phrases as instructed as we walked along the corridor, to class, to the canteen and to the toilet, and tested one another. For a few weeks we felt ‘French’ – sophisticated and cultured. I must confess I have forgotten all the French and used Google for the translations.
On that great day, Mother Superior, Reverend Mother and all the Sisters stood on the balcony on the second floor of the school. We lined up at the playground by class with our class teachers and looked up at Reverend Mother Superior while she looked down on us. We had not learnt the concepts of ‘looking up’ and ‘looking down’. We were to dress in fresh uniform, clean white socks and shoes. As a special treat, all girls were to tie a white ribbon in their hair, regardless of length or style. I had short hair, so mother tied the white ribbon into a bow and clipped it on my hair. I thought we looked nice. On cue, hundreds of CHIJ girls gathered together to welcome Reverend Mother Superior, recited in unison as rehearsed, ‘bonjour révérende mère supérieure’, ‘bienvenue dans notre école’, ‘nous sommes heureux de vous voir’. Mother Superior gave a short speech, which we pretended to understand. On cue, when Reverend Mother cl
apped her hands, so did we. And then, ‘oui, Jésus nous aime’, ‘revenir bientôt’; ‘avoir un bon voyage de retour’. On that special day, every two years, we were treated to a stick of ‘ice-cream potong’ of our choice – the red bean kacang merah, corn or coconut ice-cream popsicle. It was one great day and soon all the French was forgotten.
Primary school laid the foundations for a sound education. We were taught cursive handwriting in upper primary. The practice exercise books had wide straight lines and dashed lines between them. Each letter had a little ‘tail’ to join it to the next letter. We wrote our letters between the lower lines and the dashed lines, and the letters with a ‘head’ were to touch the upper straight lines.
We had poetry recitation lessons fortnightly. We learnt grammar and had to repeatedly write verb tenses in columns – Present Tense (Root Word), Past Tense, Past Perfect Tense. We copied short stories then created a similar one. We learnt spelling, and each mistake had to be corrected ten times.
We learnt Math – addition, subtraction, division and multiplication, fractions and story sums. We learnt to draw. Sister Henry gave us a picture to copy. For complicated pictures like a scenery, she drew one-inch grid lines. We did the same and got our drawings ‘right’. In later lessons, we drew freehand. Sister told us a story and we drew a scene from the story. My most cherished story was Black Beauty. I drew Beauty many times. I had a copy of Black Beauty, wrote my name in it and dated it 7 July 1957.
Soon, primary school was over. At our last assembly as primary school girls, Reverend Mother reminded us we were no longer girls. We were young ladies and to behave as such. We felt so adult, and promised her we would behave as adults. It was a tearful farewell to our Sisters and non-Sisters teachers who had brought us from arranging the letters of the alphabet to create words and stories to composing limericks, educating us on the different purposes of Parlours, Annexes, Meeting Rooms and Morning Rooms, narrating the fascinating stories of Moses and miracles of Jesus.
We crossed Bandar Hilir Road to CHIJ Secondary School. The design of CHIJ Secondary was much the same as the primary school. It was a U-shaped double-storey building. A large crucifix dominated the front stretch of the garden between the school fence and the school. A small gate on the left led to the bicycle shed. The main entrance, the base of the ‘U’ had the parlour in the middle where the teacher on duty stationed herself. She eyed us and we never knew what she was looking for. Classrooms stretched on both sides. From the parlour we walked to the rectangular hall, behind which was the canteen and beyond that the washrooms. On the right side of the hall was the school field and four badminton courts and a row of classrooms and the domestic lessons classrooms – two kitchens and a sewing room. As with the primary school across the road, all the upper floors were classrooms. However, there were no angsana trees to shade us, and no gazebo to sit in to giggle our secrets. Sisters repeatedly reminded us we were young ladies and to behave as such.
What was different academically? Sister Martha, my English teacher, made the lessons difficult as she explained that the more difficult the lesson, the more we learnt. We had to write compositions on given topics with no ‘helping words’; comprehension passages were longer; vocabulary lists were more difficult. We concluded she had to live up to her name – Martha the Martyr-er! She immersed us in the beauty of the works of Shakespeare, Wordsworth and other poets. Eventually when we did well in our Literature and English, we paid tribute to Sister Martha. We had new subjects like Malay Language, History, General Science, Physical Education, Music, Art without grid lines and Scripture Studies. In Geography we used a length of thread to measure lengths of rivers.
Music lessons included singing ‘Danny Boy’, ‘Home on the Range’, ‘Greensleeves’, ‘The Ash Grove’ and ‘Amazing Grace’. Irish Sister Monica taught us the Irish jig. We paid unwavering attention as she lifted her skirt and exposed her black buckled shoes and white socks and layers of petticoat as she twirled, kicked and jumped, yet we could not see her feet. We enjoyed the Saint Bernard’s Waltz and barn dances. We were fully English educated.
Our fist Domestic Science lesson was to brew a cup of tea. Sister Alexis taught us the proper way to brew and serve tea. We were given a tea tray, on which was a teacup and saucer, a teaspoon, a teapot, a tea leaf strainer on a tea strainer saucer, a tea milk jug, a tea sugar bowl, tea leaves in a tin, a cloth napkin and a teapot cosy.
‘To make tea, you need a tea tray. This is a teacup and saucer, and a teaspoon. Crockery for tea and coffee are different, don’t mix them up. Put in a teaspoon of tea leaves for each cup and one for the pot. So if you’re making tea for three persons, you would put in four teaspoons of tea leaves. Pour in a cup of boiling water for each cup and one for the pot. Then cover the pot with the tea cosy, for the leaves to seep and to keep the tea warm. Pour out the tea four-fifths full into the teacup, help yourself to the sugar and milk and stir gently and quietly, clockwise.’
Gently, quietly, clockwise were emphasized. That was how Sister Alexis introduced us into the polite English society of serving and drinking tea. We were amazed and fascinated. A teapot had a baju to wear, and such pretty ones in different patterns, colours and materials. When I told my mother we had been drinking tea all wrong, she snorted Sister ‘kepala angin’, wind in the head.
Our next lesson was to prepare cucumber sandwiches to serve with tea. At thirteen years old, I was already pounding sambal belacan, boiling rice over a wood fire and frying eggs and vegetables but had never heard of cucumber sandwiches. We had bread and Planta margarine and a sprinkling of sugar, condensed milk or kaya jam.[4] We had learnt what would be served should we be invited to tea in polite English company. Sister Alexis must have drunk so much tea that she did look like a teapot.
It was in secondary school, when we were just a wee bit more aware of our sexuality, we decided that we wanted to be caught by the boys, though in primary school Sisters had instilled in us to learn to run very, very fast, so that boys would not be able to catch us and do bad things to us! How exciting! And what were those bad things boys could do to us? That was when our sex education began. French Sister Lucy with perfect skin and rosy cheeks, explained, ‘If you sleep beside a boy, you will become pregnant! And you have no husband! And your parents will be so ashamed! And they will throw you out! And where will you go? You are a sinner. You will burn in hell!’
We believed our Sisters, our teachers. We did not want to shame our parents, be thrown out and burn in hell! We formed ourselves into our own vigilante corps. On bus rides, should one of us sit next to a boy and nod off, we were quick to pinch her hard, we did not want her to burn in hell.
Sister Rita, our primary school Discipline Teacher was our Scripture lesson teacher. She taught us how to sleep the proper way. ‘Kneel beside your bed, say thank you to Jesus for a good day and thank God, Jesus, and Mother Mary for keeping you safe, and you promise to be a good girl. Then lie on your back, fold your arms across your chest, close your eyes and go to sleep.’
‘But Sister, why do we need to lie on our back and fold our arms?’
‘Sister, I always sleep on my side,’ some of us protested.
The good Sister explained, ‘When Jesus sends his angels to visit you, you are ready to go with them.’ That terrified us! The angels of death!
It was during a church camp that a priest answered the question: ‘This is to ensure your hands are not where they shouldn’t be.’ Ha? Aren’t our hands here on our sides? Where else could they be?
A few years after we completed school and were in higher education, the movie To Sir With Love was released. My classmates and schoolmates sang the theme song repeatedly. It described our emotions and sentiments for our school, our teachers and especially our beloved Sisters perfectly, especially this line:
But how do you thank someone who has taken you from crayons to perfume? It isn’t easy, but I’ll try
CHIJ Malacca, the first school for girls set up by the French Missionaries in the state, cel
ebrated her 150th anniversary in October 2010, more than half a century after I left at sixteen. It was with great nostalgia that my classmates and I visited our school. The turnout of past pupils was a tremendous show of love for our Sisters and our Convent. The gala dinner at the largest hotel had tables along the corridors. We met past students in wheelchairs, with walkers, and walking sticks. My classmates present included those who flew in from Australia, Italy and the US. The cliché ‘how time flies’ was repeated hundreds of times. We were schoolmates and classmates, now we were grandmothers.
Today, no Sisters walked the convent corridors, no 360-degree compound eyes to watch over us, no unseen stereophonic ears to eavesdrop on our chatter, no quick tongues to advise us to run very, very fast, no noisy chatter of silly convent girls of old. The gazebo where we had imagined and giggled over many unmentionable thoughts was in such a state of disrepair it had to be torn down. The seawall that had protected us from falling over into the sea now looked into a mammoth commercial complex, a hospital of international repute, and a colossal housing estate looking into the Straits of Malacca. Of the six majestic angsana trees, five still stood a full twenty to thirty metres tall in glory with a full head of green foliage sweeping the blue skies. One, naked, yet regal in its nakedness, refused to be hewn down. Only these trees could tell the stories, the gossips, the tears, the joys of past convent girls who had played in their shade.
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One of the thirteen states in Malaysia, ‘Melaka’ in Malay. ↵
1 yard = 91.44 centimetres. Malaysia changed from imperial to metric units in 1972. ↵
It was only on 16 September 1963 that Malaya and Singapore merged to became Malaysia. ↵
