Warming up inside: Sayur Lodeh

Over the last months people have laughed at me in my thick scarf, woollen hat and gloves. ‘It isn’t cold,’ they’d grin. ‘Just you wait until winter really starts.’

More than chilled enough by autumn, I would shudder. And now it happened: winter started. We’ve had frost at night and during daytime the temperature stays in single digits. Yes, I know, it can get much worse still, but this is bad enough for my tropical bones. Our mornings are a flurry of looking for hats and mittens for the children who complain of having to cycle to school in the crisp dark – this time of the year the sun won’t rise until after school started and sets somewhere mid-afternoon. I’m not sure yet what is worse, the cold or the darkness. The kids quickly caught on to the fact that Dutch winds are always headwinds when you cycle to school, and then somehow defy physics by being the same when you turn around. 

A few weeks back we were stuck without heating for a weekend and now, in the chilling wind and drizzle, the new heating system struggles to keep our old, leaky house as comfortable as I’d like it to be. So what can one do to heat up? Cook warming, spicy, Asian food! I spent our last year in Singapore painstakingly noting down recipes for Indah’s amazing Indonesian food, and when we miss her, miss the sunshine, we cook it and warm our chilly guts. I get many requests to share Indah's recipes - her cooking was famous amongst family and friends, and not without reason: her food is amazing. 

Foraging Singapore for wild greens

Today it is time for Sayur Lodeh. The great thing about this dish is how versatile it is. Sayur simple means vegetable, and lodeh signifies they are cooked in a coconut milk gravy. The dish is mostly vegan, apart from the dried prawns, but those can easily be left out if you don’t eat them.

The soul of any curry is the rempah, or spice paste for the gravy. This particular one is a base you can use for many different varieties of vegetable curries. It’s a great dish to empty your vegetable drawer as most things work. In Singapore we would go and forage for our vegetables: tapioca leaves, moringa, jackfruit, tiny round aubergines. But for lack of those, kale, carrots or green beans work just as well.

We are lucky that the Hague boasts a large community of Indonesian people, so most of the ingredients are available easily enough. Although the only place that sells fresh (well, frozen) galangal is half an hour drive away, so I do sometimes resort to powdered. And I really don’t understand why all the crispy fried shallots here are made with wheat flour (which I’m intolerant to) when in Asia they never are! If you can get fresh ingredients, do so, but with dried spices this dish will still be nice. Candlenuts (kemiri) can be replaced by macadamia or brazil nuts. 

Rijsttafel, an Indonesian feast

Sayur Lodeh

Rempah (spice mix)

8 small (or 3 bigger) shallots
3 cloves garlic
2 or more chilis (mix large ones for colour with small ones for heat)
3 cm fresh galangal
3 cm fresh ginger
2 stalks lemongrass, hard outer leaves discarded
3 cm turmeric,
8 candlenuts,
1 teaspoon shrimp paste (belachan in Malay, terassi in Indonesian)
1 tbs dried shrimp

As with all Asian recipes, quantities are indicative, kira kira. Indah’s original recipe that she wrote down for me just has a list of ingredients, but I added some indications of how much to use because I know working intuitively is difficult if you are less familiar with these spices. Based on the strength of the spices you use and your personal taste, use more or less of each. If you use dried, about one teaspoon of dried spice roughly equals 3 tablespoons of fresh.

Chop all rempah ingredients coarsely and blend them to a paste. Add some oil and/ or water if needed. I do this in a bender, if you are a traditionalist you can use a grinding stone or pestle and mortar.

Fry the spice mix in large pot with thick bottom until fragrant, five minutes should do it. Add your vegetables (see below for some suggestions), a few cups water and bring to boil. You an add more water later if it gets too dry, you are looking for thin curry/ think soup consistency. Add some salam leaf, kaffir lime leaf, and salt to taste.

Boil 15-20 minutes then add coconut milk, about 400ml should do it. If you use fried tofu, add this only at the end. Sprinkle with crispy fried onion. Sayur lodeh can be part of a nasi campur or rijstafel, a selection of different dishes served together with rice and spicy sambals. But for a simple weekday meal it is fine on its own served with rice.

Vegetables

As I said, you can throw anything you like in this gravy, but I’ll share two classic versions that I love. 

Singkong lodeh is even better the day after as leftover lunch!

Singkong lodeh (tapioca leaves)

One of our favourites is lodeh with tapioca leaves, which in Singapore and Bali we’d pick wild in front of our house. In the Netherlands I’ve found them frozen in an Asian supermarket. Take the thicker stalks off the leaves, wash them, then boil the leaves for 20 minutes. Squeeze out excess moisture, then chop them roughly. Add the leaves to the gravy as described above. This curry is usually made with only the one vegetable. It is quite an ‘adult’ dish to me and the first time I tasted it, Indah made it for herself for lunch. Suffice to say, the heat of the dish blew my tastebuds to pieces. Although I don’t make it as hot as Indah, I still like my singkong lodeh on the spicier side. If you can’t find tapioca leaves any dark green leafy vegetable like spinach, kale or beet greens will work as well. 

Classic sayur lodeh

Classic Sayur Lodeh 

The best known version that is served over Indonesia usually contains a mixture of green beans, carrots, aubergine and cabbage as well as cubes of fried tofu. It is the one that can be seen in the picture of the rijsttafel above right in front.

Wash and chop the vegetables into bitesize pieces, then blanch them briefly - be careful not to overcook, they still need some crunch at this stage. You can either buy ready fried tofu puffs or fry cubes of firm tofu in oil before adding them. Add the tofu to the curry at the end only, and boil until thoroughly heated and the tofu has soaked up all the flavours.

Lodeh with wild aubergines

Domestic drama

Dinner is never a quiet event at our place, although this is normally due to our children’s lack of table manners, or their refusal to sit still and well, eat. But today we have another form of entertainment: a family of wild jungle fowl. 

Mother hen struts around the grass niftily, a clutch of three babies in close pursuit. It’s close to bedtime, and mother look up at the trees, searching for a good spot to roost. She spots a fine branch, takes off and flutters steadily to a high-up branch. Her three babies look after her with trepidation. Mummy went very high! After a minute of staring, number one flies up. Its little wings can’t reach quite as high as mum, and it lands on a dead palm leaf halfway. After some quiet deliberation, number two follows suit. It ends about a meter higher that the sibling, and perches on its higher branch triumphantly. Number three now can’t stay behind, and flies up, managing to come highest of all. But none of them is as high as mummy, and slowly they flap their way further up.

Suddenly, there is a rustle in the bushes and a fierce rooster appears. He flies up determinedly to where his wife is sitting, and a ruckus erupts, with leaves shaking and chicken shrieking. The flustered hen soon jumps down from the tree again and lands in the grass with a thump. The babies look down from there spots at different height, confused how to proceed. 

Dad comes down too, in hot pursuit of mother. He runs after her with his tail up high, and his wings slightly spread. Mother is in no mood for this, and runs off, her wings open too, her legs bent and her neck low. For a minute they chase each other in and out the bushes whilst their offspring looks down, showing their dismay with louder and louder discerning cheeps.

The first one decides to take action, and dives down from the tree. At this point, cat Snowy, who like us has been observing the scene from a distance, decides to get in on the action. Slowly she prowls towards the baby, prompting Linde to panic and rush over to save the baby. The chick decides to scramble, quickly clambers up the bushes, until it is safely out of reach. Linde too decides to cut her losses; barefooted as she is, she doesn’t dare follow into the wet bushes, where Snowy stares up longingly to the little fluffy snack.

The other two babies, still sitting up high, still cheeping noisily, now decide to come down too. Soon all three of them run around the grass, looking for mummy, who is still being chased around the bushes by dad.

Mother finishes off the kerfuffle with a big peck into dad’s tail. He settles down, slowing to a strolling pace, as if he never did anything more exciting this evening than a turn around the garden.

Snowy sticks her nose out from under the bushes, spying the three chicks in the middle of the grass. She attempts to stalk, but has counted out dad, who swiftly runs past her, scaring the little cat back to our table for a tumble with sister Pepper.

The family, reunited, leisurely strolls off to the other side of the garden, the three babies running their little feet off to keep up with their parents.

We sit and watch and enjoy. Who needs a television when you have a garden?

Home for the holidays

In multi-cultural Singapore we have a never-ending sequence of free days and colourful celebrations that we all join in happily. The Deepavali henna had barely faded from the palms of my hands when Sinterklaas arrived at Marina Bay in his bumboat. As soon as the Sint leaves it will be time for Christmas and then the year will be over, but not the Singapore holidays as the main event has yet to come: Chinese New Year.

Usually, I am not the kind of expat that is prone to homesickness, not even over the holidays, but this year I find myself excitedly looking forward to a traditional Dutch Christmas at home. In Northern Europe this is a depressing time of the year. You take off for work in the dark and come back in it too - if you have an office job you won’t see daylight at all. Not that you miss much, a Christmas of falling snowflakes is more fairy tale than reality, days in December are likely to be drab, grey and wet. We need a party to get us through that, and Christmas marks the shortest day of the year, the darkest.

Our Singapore rainy season is well timed - huddling inside whilst a tropical storm rages, with gusts of winds sweeping through the trees, rain hammering on the windows; it is just as it should be this time of the year. Other things, less so. The light-up at Orchard Road is a depressing one this year; with not a Christmas decoration in sight Orchard Road makes clear once and for all what Christmas is all about for some: Disney. And commerce. It makes me glad to be Dutch, and makes me stick even firmer to our traditions: no presents at Christmas.

I never once received a Christmas present as a child. Christmas to us is about being together with family, special food, candlelight, singing carols. Even without presents, Christmas was magical. The smell of fresh pine (not the chemically sprayed American ones they have here – that keep smelling long after the needles drop off, but the real deal, from the forest) mixed with Christmas spice, open fires, stollen with almond spijs.

Fear not, there is no need to pity me - or my children. Because we have Sinterklaas. On the eve of his birthday, on December 5th the good old holy man, Saint Nicholas with his trusty junglepieten will drop off bags full of presents. Pakjesavond is the event of the year for Dutch children. Pepernoten (spicy tiny biscuits) are thrown around, and there is no end to unique candy associated with this day: marzipan, chocolate letters, taai taai, schuimpjes and borstplaat. For the adults: bishop-wine.

My favourite part? Sinterklaas is a holiday to get creative. This is the day to get back to your annoying little brother or teasing your classmate in a snappy poem and crafty joke as surprises are exchanged. Or house is already full of glue, cardboard, paint, papier-mâché and kids yelling ‘don’t come in, don’t look!’

And when the giving is over, later this December, my whole family, ooms, tantes, opa and oma will come together in our home for a real Dutch-Singaporean Christmas. With Christmas Day brunch and Indonesian rijsttafel and not a gift in sight. Because nothing you can wrap up can ever beat being together!

Breaking down borders with stories

This weekend I was asked to talk at an inspiring event organised by Migrant Writers of Singapore and the National University of Singapore (NUS) with the theme: Open Borders, Stories have no boundaries. My friend and domestic worker writer Rea Maac, also a speaker at the event, told me they asked me to speak because I, as she said ‘opened borders for the domestic workers'. A lovely compliment.

Rea's comment made me reflect on the different ways one can use stories to open boundaries. As a migrant and a writer myself, I realise the importance of this. After all, there are many borders - physical as wel as invisible - that we encounter when we migrate to a new country.

The question I started pondering about is: how hard is it to really connect to Singapore, to become a part of it? When I first moved here six years ago I found it hard to make Singaporean friends. I did not work at the time, and as a mother the easiest way to make friends is at your children’s school. But at our international school there were no Singaporean kids; MOE (the Ministry of Education), does not allow them to go there. Likewise, because we do not have permanent resident (PR) status, it is almost impossible for my children to get a place at a local school. The result is that my children have friends from all over the world, but few from Singapore.

Many so-called ‘expats’ complain about how they feel like they live in a ‘bubble’. Of course we are aware this is a privileged bubble; the minimum salary to be eligible for the coveted Singapore EP (employment pass) is high. But a luxury bubble is still a bubble. It can feel uncomfortable.

Then, let’s look at work pass (WP) holders, what is life like for them? WP holders are low wage migrants that come to work in Singapore. Examples are domestic workers, that live in with their employers. Or construction workers, who mostly live in dormitories. The families of this type of migrants - in contrary to those of EP holders - have to stay behind in their home countries; even it they would be allowed to come, a WP salary is not sufficient to support a family here. I would like to say that we migrants are all the same, but if I did, I would deny the truth: our lives are very different. Because of the nature of their work and living arrangements, as well as social stigma, it is even more difficult for WP holders to make Singaporean friends.

Thankfully, now I have lived here over six years, I have made a number of lovely friends, Singaporeans and all sorts of migrants alike. But this took time and effort. Singapore is a multicultural melting pot, but fact is, when it comes to migrants it can still be quite segregated.

So how do we open those borders with stories?

For many years I conducted workshops through local charity HOME with domestic workers. Creative writing workshops and also a ‘dreams class’ to empower them. In that dreams class we played a game where we would brainstorm about what we would do if we won the lottery. Sorting our many ideas – both theirs and mine- that we would jot on post-it notes, taught me one thing very clearly: our dreams are very much the same. Buy a house in our home country. Provide a good education for our children. Study. Travel and see the world. So even when our lives might be different, the fact that we share the same hopes and dreams is what binds us.

So when we share stories about migrants, particularly low wage migrants like work pass holders, in Singapore, do we focus on our differences, or on the similarities?

Talking about migrant workers’ rights we often talk about the injustices they face. These stories strongly focus on the differences, on the unfairness in the treatment some migrants get. Domestic workers that get no day off, get their handphones taken away, suffer verbal or physical abuse. Construction workers that don’t get paid or are exploited. It is of course important to raise awareness of these issues. But the danger in these stories is that they often portray migrants as victims, as weak people that need protection.

It is important we share other types of stories too. When we talk about the similarities between different migrants and Singaporeans, about hopes and dreams, love and sorrow, we show that we are all the same - deep down. We are all humans. Stories like that can help create a shift in way Singaporeans look at migrants. As humans, they deserve to be treated humanely.

So when I work with domestic worker writers I don’t want to hear only about the difficulties they faced here. I also want to hear about the love they have for their families, the things they enjoy to do in their spare time, the plans they make for their futures. Most particularly, I want to hear about their dreams.

Many of the stories I collect get shared on the MyVoice blog, which I started in 2014 as a platform to give a voice to domestic workers in Singapore. Earlier this year HOME published the anthology ‘Our Homes, Our Stories,’ that I edited, which contains 28 real life stories written by domestic workers in Singapore.

All the strong and amazing women I met while working with domestic workers in Singapore inspired my debut novel that was published by Monsoon Books this summer. To reach a large audience I wrapped up the many of the plights of domestic workers I encountered over the years in an exciting plot. A Yellow House is fiction, inspired by real events. By real people.

Lots of cats and a snake

A few months ago I wrote about the wilder, more dangerous aspects of black and white living and owned up to my fear of snakes. It turned out my fear of snakes was completely warranted. This summer our cat Mitzi disappeared and guess who our number one suspect is?

Traffic is slow in our area which means there are few road kills. And since she has been micro-chipped but not found anywhere we can only fear the worst. Pythons are known cat killers and who did we see slithering on our drive not long before she disappeared?

We did not plan on getting a new cat. Sure, the increased amount of rats scuttling across the terrace had me tempted. But we still miss Mitzi. And I felt a bit guilty about not heeding the advice of the charity where we picked up Mitzi to keep her inside – which would have been sheer impossible anyhow since we basically live outside. And I feel that keeping a cat inside is akin to animal abuse - better enjoy life to the fullest and die happy than wile away being safe. Still, no charity in their right mind would give us a cat now.

Of course fate intervened. One day my ears pricked up when zonked on the sofa in front of Netflix. Did I hear Mitzi? I rushed outside and found Indah with a bowl of cat food and a little black feline. We’d seen the cat around – there are many strays in our area – but usually Mitzi chased her off. The next morning Blackie came back and played with the kids all morning. They got very excited and begged to keep her. After checking with all the neighbours she was in fact a stray I gave in. But we never saw her again after that week.

So we went on with our happy cat and stress-free existence until Indah’s friend kept WhatsApping us photos of two little ones in need of a home. Their mother was a local stray that had given birth in her garden to a litter of six. They spayed the mother and released her back into the wild. One of the babies died, one ran way, two got rehomed. There were two left. They had been vaccinated, taken care of lovingly but the employer did not want to keep them. What else could I do but take our cat carrier and drive over?

So now we have to seven-month-old kittens. Two sisters that immediately got diarrhoea – either from stress, new food or poisonous plants – and were locked in a very smelly side room for the last week. Since they seem to have finally remembered what potty training is all about I just let them out and as I write they are frolicking around and creating havoc in the house (they won’t go out for at least a few weeks, until they are not only settled but spayed – two cats is more than enough, thank you very much). They dig up houseplants, jump on every available surface, practice their piano skills, run full speed and fight endlessly. Since they are also the most sociable, cuddly and affectionate cats I have ever seen and unlike Mitzi are up to being manhandled by the steady stream of playdates coming to admire them, we forgive them. They have been here for only a week but already we can not imagine our life without them. So I am proud to introduce what Roel so elegantly calls our new python food: Pepper and Snowy. 

All that is left now is to keep our fingers crossed and hope they will outrun the enemy.

Pepper 

Snowy

Nine weeks

Time can fly past in a blink, or take forever.

The first week everyone was tired after a year of school, and we lounged in the garden, the pool, played Carcassonne, read books and comics, had playdates, sleepovers and made a quick visit to the Zoo before our yearly membership ran out.

Then we went on holiday. A week in France, a week in Friesland. After that daddy went off to London for work while I spent a week in Holland with family and then another week in Friesland where the kids learned to sail and I could write. It was lovely in sunny Europe, in the hottest summer since the one I was born in, we saw old friends, family, and all too soon we had to board a plane to fly home.

When we got home we had four more weeks to go.

The first week we were tired. Visiting ‘home’ countries are not holidays for expats, they are an endless stream of social events where you try to squeeze everyone in, and at the end you have gained at least five kilograms and tell yourself: next year we’ll just go climb Mount Everest, that will be much more relaxing.

We rested. We hung about in pyjamas, uncombed, unbrushed. We read a lot of comics again, lounged in our pool, slept off the jetlag. The week after, which is now, they became bored and restless. They miss school, their friends that are mostly still traveling, and are in dire need for some routine. I am itching to get back to work, but the stolen moments in between tearing apart fighting kids are not really long enough to do some proper writing, more than a quick blog, so instead I take the kids out most days. Wear them out, so they won’t have enough energy left to hurt each other all the time.

Why do my kids fight so much? Linde has perfected her karate kick and Jasmijn is still nursing the scrapes from Tijm’s friendly tackles – on tarmac. If only they fought in silence I would leave them at it, but all of this is accompanied by ear-piercing shrieks from the girls and bone crunching growls from Tijm. (And their father still asks me why I don’t wear my hearing aid around the house…)

To tire them out I dragged them to the summit of Bukit Timah, Singapore highest hill, but since that is only 163 meters high, that did not take up more than a few hours. We went to the museum to cool off, cycled in East Coast Park. That one day I had to be out for work Indah took them to the Botanic Gardens on scooters.

Whenever I hope for a quiet few minutes I give in, in to iPads, Donald Duck comics and hagelslag sandwiches, things that I vowed to be strict about this summer. Because sometimes I just need a little peace. A little break. Sometimes I need to actually get something done, an email sent, a deadline made. Working from home is a very different scenario with three noise making machines present all day, still I have a novel and a charity book to promote, articles to write, events to organise. With barely enough brainspace to write a simple blog, let alone anything literary. 

It has been eerily quiet the last half hour that I was writing this. Should I enjoy my peace or go check whether they finally did kill each other this time?

Two more weeks to go.

Excited!

It is what everyone is saying to me at the moment: ‘Congratulations! You must be so excited!’ 

And every time someone says that I cringe a little inside and am briefly lost for the appropriate answer. Yes, of course I am very excited about my debut novel ‘A Yellow House’ coming out this summer. But at the same time I am terribly nervous. How will it be received? Will people like my writing? Will the narrative keep them gripped till the end? What if people will hate it, or worse, nobody will buy or read it. 

And how will Singapore react to an Ang Moh writing about the controversial subject of migrant domestic workers? I might have spent the better part of the last five years researching the subject thoroughly; still, the trolls are probably out there sharpening their thumbs to pummel me down. 

And it is not just about me. Little Maya, my protagonist, has become like another daughter to me, and just like I had difficulty letting go of my flesh and blood children last week when I sent them off to camp, I am apprehensive at releasing Maya into the big bad world. Will everybody love her like I love her? 

Thankfully relief came in the form of my very first review last week and it was a good one - and not even written by a friend. Thank you Tripfiction for that boost of morale. After having spent the first part of the year promoting the ‘Our Homes, Our Stories’ book, it is a great relief to have a professional publisher for my novel and, even better, a publicist this time around. The local publicity will kick-off when the book hits bookstores here in early August, so Singapore, you will need to be a little more patient. 

In the meanwhile, the book can be ordered online as an ebook or paper copy. In the UK, Netherlands, and other countries, you can just walk into any bookstore and they should be able to order it for you if they don’t stock it. And please, do remember to review the book on Goodreads and/ or Amazon.  (Do review whether you like it or not, but please let me down gently if you don’t..)

So, now for some  spamming: please all ‘like’ my new author Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/KarienvanDitzhuijzenAuthor/

Follow it closely as there will be a book-giveaway coming up there soon!

The wild side

Do you ever have those days, those days where you are busy shooting monkeys out of your papaya tree with a super soaker and when you try to get a better angle to hit the motherf*ckers, you almost step on a large monitor lizard with your bare feet? And that later that night, as you arrive home after a party, there is a four-meter python on your driveway and the taxi uncle mutters under his breath: ‘Why on earth do you live here?’

No, you don’t have those days? Well, this was just my Saturday. A lot of people ask me what it is like living in one of Singapore’s (in)famous ‘Black and White’ colonial houses. The only real answer to that: it is a unique experience!

If you are into old rickety houses with oodles of charm and nooks and crannies to lose your children in during the too long summer holidays that international schools offer in exchange for extortionate school fees, these houses are for you. And if you like a bit of history thrown into the mix - even better. Especially if you don’t mind that history bloody, with a genuine WWII battle in your garden, a POW camp in your very bedroom and the accompanying ghosts roaming your lofty verandas. Go for it.

But if you like your real estate polished, smooth, your roof leakage-free and your bathrooms clear of mould – think again. And of course, you need to have a certain tolerance for the wilder aspects of tropical living. Up in the sky on the twenty-seventh floor of a concrete condo you can be fooled into believing the opposite, but us ground-floor and garden dwellers know better: Singapore has a wild side.

And that is what I love most about our Adam Park house: the immense garden. That place where our kids can build huts, where we host marshmallow roasting campfires, where I scoop the leaves out of our very own pool three times a day. Where the kids play football, badminton, tag, hide and seek and swing on our jungle swings. Where we breed tadpoles and butterflies, keep chicken, plant flowers, herbs and vegetables. Where guests comment that they don’t need to leave the house, that staying with us is resort experience enough. That is, those guests that don’t mind sharing their bathroom with our resident toad. At Adam Park, we are never allowed to forget whom we share this lovely green space with.

The second thing people ask when we talk about our house is usually: ‘But what about the snakes?’

For some reason I have the reputation of that tough gal, that head horror that fearlessly leads the way in jungle hashes through the wildest terrains, the one that scoops up snakes from her daughter’s bed (who was at school, thankfully) with a broom and dustpan, and throws them over the fence without flinching. Admittedly, I do those things, but what people don’t see is that even tough that was a perfectly harmless bronzeback tree snake, my heartbeat went through the roof. So it is time to admit here, once and for all: I am terrified of snakes!
I am afraid of the black spitting cobra I saw slithering though the front yard from the window, the extremely poisonous malay coral snake that bit my cycling husband in the rear tire. Even the harmless wolf house snake, kukri snake and the beautiful colours of the tree snakes make me nervous. I have become proficient in identifying local snakes, thanks to the internet and the SG snakes app but still, I remain restless. A child bitten by a cobra can die in hours. 

(as I am typing this on our patio, a two-feet monitor lizard is sneaking up at me. It is still around five meters away, but bloody hell, that face with its forked tongue is just too much like a snake for its own good!)

Anyway, this Saturday night, I did not sleep so well. I kept imagining all four meters of that python coiled around our cat Mitzi. Or seeing its long, chequered body with several chicken-sized-bumps in the middle. When I woke up late, hung-over and restless, I was relieved to see all my children sitting on the sofa reading comics quietly, Mitzi snuggled up cosily between them. It took several minutes for me to work up the courage to go outside to let out the chicken from their supposedly snake-proof coop. Supposedly, as the hugest python can squeeze itself through the tiniest gap and that coop is as rickety as our house. Our chicken run is the most efficient python trap, as any python with a chicken inside his belly is too lazy and fat to get out again. We have ‘caught’ four already, and yes, I have ACRES on speed dial. Thankfully, all the chicken were safe. That is, for now.

Despite the snakes, the lizards, the monkeys, the omnipresent ants, the ear-numbing noise of cicadas and last but certainly not least the terrifying risk of falling trees, I would not want to live anywhere else. 

Every day here is an adventure!

Our Homes, Our Stories

Oh my, I realise it has been terribly, terribly quiet here on the blog the last months. I suppose it is time I tell you why I have been so busy lately: I have been working on a new book, that will be published on International Women's Day in March next year by HOME, a Singaporean charity that has supported and empowered migrant workers since 2004. Have you ever wondered what life is like for a migrant domestic worker in Singapore? This book will answer that question, and more.

In Our Homes, Our Stories, women that work in Singapore as live-in domestic workers share their real-life stories. They write about illicit love, rogue agents, abusive employers, and that one thing they all suffer from the most: missing their families back home - in Indonesia, the Philippines, Myanmar and India. The women write about sacrifice, broken trust, exploitation, lack of food, salary deductions and constant scolding; but also about supportive employers, the love they have for the families they take care of, or how they use their time in Singapore as a stepping-stone to realise their dreams for the future.

A writing class at the shelter 

Writers Meri Ledi and Ainun at work

Volunteer Raelee working with one of the shelter residents

All proceeds of this book go to HOME, and all the writers in Our Homes, Our Stories are part of the HOME community, either as volunteers on their one weekly day off, or as residents at HOME shelter for ill-treated domestic workers. With a team of volunteers we did workshops at the shelter and HOME Academy around the theme ‘home'. We worked closely with the women, coaching them to improve their writing, the structure of the story as well as their grammar. We taught them how to rope the reader in from the first paragraph, and how to keep their attention until the end. As many of the women shared intimate, strong and compelling stories, this was not at all difficult to do, all they needed was to be nudged in the right direction. For some women, who had a very limited grasp of English, we brought in volunteers that could work with them in their own language – Indonesian, Burmese, Tamil, Punjabi. But where possible, we let them write directly in English, helping them to choose the correct and best words suited to convey what they wanted to say. We always aimed to conserve the writer's own voice, after all, it is her story to tell.

Karien and writer April Lin

HOME Academy workshop (Jo Ann, Karien, Gilda and Novia)

Writer Linda and volunteer Pleun

I am immensely proud of what we made together. I am proud of the brave women that opened up their souls to share their lives with you on the blank paper we gave them. I hope it will help you, the reader, to get a better insight in who these women are, and what drives them to leave their family, often their young children, behind to take care of those of others.

In order to bring this book to print, we need funds. We are getting closer to our target, but it would be great if you can support the project by pre-ordering your copy. For people outside of Singapore, we can ship (at your own cost) or you can order the ebook version. 

Find our crowdfunding page here: 

https://www.giving.sg/humanitarian-organisation-for-migration-economics/our_homes_our_stories

Follow us on Facebook to get regular updates on the book: https://www.facebook.com/ourhomesourstories/

And do look out for the MyVoice blog for any other news on the book, interviews with the writers, and much more: www.myvoiceathome.org

Writer Lakshmi at work

Tamil speaking workshop with volunteer Jayanthi

Not so Scruffy

He struts around the run as if he owns the place, not I. Whenever I enter, he keeps a shrewd eye on me, ideally positioning himself between his harem and me. I have learned never to turn my back to him. He might look plucky, but he always attacks from the back.

Scruffy is the youngest in the flock, yet about double the size of the hens. His head is crowned by a magnificent, bright red, comb, flanked by equally impressive wattles. When he was a few weeks old his feathers poked in all directions. A pineapple chick, Indah laughed, and Roel aptly named him Scruffy. When he started to grow at an alarming rate, and his comb became suspiciously big and red, it became more obvious day by day: Scruffy was a boy. 

A few days old, and still scruffy

Of course roosters are pretty useless when you keep chickens for eggs. In fact, this batch of hatchlings we had been fairy lucky; out of four chicks, Scruffy was the only boy.

Scruffy at a few weeks, comb starting to show

Scruffy grew up not so scruffy at all. His long white tail feathers arch up elegantly from his back, and the golden ones on his neck contrast brightly with the red of his comb. His favourite position is on top of a stool, towering even more high over the ladies, from which he will crow – all day long.

Since his testosterone has kicked in, Scruffy and I have been at a standoff. If I come bearing food he accepts me, grudgingly. Do I merely to come by to look for eggs, he will eye me suspiciously until I leave. I feel his eyes piecing my back when I look in the hen house for eggs.

A few times he has confronted me, high on his haunches, his neck feathers upright, but even in this position his impressive chicken size is nothing to my human one. But I have seen the spurs grow on his legs, and have no wish to test their sharpness.

So one or twice a week I show him who’s boss. I grab him, and push him to the ground firmly, all the time telling him I’m in charge, not him. Roel has dunked his feet in ice water for a similar face losing session. Afterwards, Scruffy retreats in a corner, licks his offended feathers and shakes his wattles. He behaves himself for a few days, until his cockiness rears again. He can’t help it. He is an eight-month-old cockerel.

The big question is, can he stay living with us? Since he attacked Tijm, the kids refuse to collect eggs. But what to do with him? Linde bawls when we suggest turning him into coq-au-vin like predecessor Messi. Indah suggests releasing him to go and live with the wild junglefowl, but will he manage there? Once, when I accidentally left the door of the run open he showed a wild rooster - half his size - all corners of the garden. But unlike them, he can’t fly for the safety of the trees at night. Is it better that we eat him, or the pythons? Or will he be successful, but mess up the gene pool of the endangered junglefowl with his hybrid features?

To be honest, Scruffy is an arrogant bastard, and I am not sure even the hens like him and his aggressive romantic advances, but still, I hesitate to kill him. I have seen him break out of his egg, grow into the insecure adolescent he is now. We know he can’t stay, we have been talking about it for weeks. Yet here he still is. He is so gorgeous.

A park, two tents, and one-and-a-half air-mattress

After our three-week trek through Portugal, France and the Netherlands, where we saw family, as well as old and newer friends, we still had almost a month of summer holidays left. A week of doing very little was restful enough for me to give in to the kids' repeated pleading: we would go camping. 

We went off to buy two cheapish tents, and tested them in the garden. But that was not real enough. The most adventurous places to camp in Singapore are on offshore islands, but to practice; Singapore’s mainland parks have campsites too. I decided on Pasir Ris. It has plenty of cycling paths, a wetland reserve, a huge playground, and we had never been there yet. I figured few people would be crazy enough to go camping in the height of summer, and that we could just get a (free) permit on site. But when Roel, who did not trust me, decided to register online, it was already full. We would have to go to East Coast Park. Also nice. 

After we had packed our sizable seven-seater to the brim (we were going one night), our escapade started, as many do, with fights and shouts and accusations that shook the foundation our marriage wobbly. The first challenge was locating an AXS machine to print the camping permits Roel had registered for. No, there is none in East Coast Park these days, regardless of what maps say, and yes, there is in fact one about 100 yards from our house, which we noticed on the way home. Of course all of this was my fault. 

Then there was the thing with the air mattresses. It turned out I had packed one single and one double – for five people. The upside of the mistake was that it saved Roel some breath, because when I unpacked the pump, I realised I had forgotten to pack the connector valve thingy. It also saved us a trip to a nearby sail club to scrounge electricity (I had not managed to locate the foot pump in our piled high storeroom). What we did find, rolled in the air mattress was the cap of another – the double one that sleeps 3 kids – that had gone missing when friends had borrowed it a few months ago. The matching air mattress, sadly, was not here. 

Blowing up by mouth the offensive objects, left Roel so out of breath that he had none left to argue when I said that, during my futile quest around fellow campers to borrow a pump, I had spotted a better spot for the tents. Directly at the beach, closer to the toilets, and not right in front of – later on potentially smelly – BBQ pits. He gave in grudgingly, and I dis- and reassembled our tents, in not too much more time than the 3 seconds promised on the package, at the new spot. 

We cycled, drank sugar cane and lime juice, picnicked, swam in the murky sea and told stories around an imaginary campfire. We ate our pre-cooked quiche and salad with gusto, but still looked jealously at our neighbours grilling crabs and satay on charcoal. We slept uncomfortably, hot and sweaty, huddled with the two of us on a single air mattress under the roaring planes taking off at Changi Airport. But the next morning, breakfasting with chocolate croissants and crackers with Nutella in the morning breeze, we looked at each other and smiled. Three happy campers rode around on their bikes. Yes, we promised them, we’ll go again. We now know where the AXS machine is... 

Looking the cat out of the tree

We have this saying in Dutch, de kat uit de boom kijken. It means, literally translated, looking the cat out of the tree. I always imagine a bunch of people looking at a cat stranded in a tree, hoping it will get down on its own. Though that is not exactly the drift of the saying, it implies someone observing a pretty long while, before acting. We now have a cat that is looking herself out of the tree.

I have always wanted a cat, but since my mother was allergic I was never allowed. I swore I’d get one as an adult, but somehow never did. Between the rabbits, the chicken, the frogs and the hamster, I forgot about the cat.  Then, we had a rat infestation at the same time that Jasmijn was begging for a new pet for her birthday, and I suddenly found myself at a cat shelter. Imagine twenty cats looking at you through bars, some sleeping, some meowing neurotically, some just sitting there and staring. Where do you even start? Luckily, most were kittens, and we’d decided to go for a slightly older one, a female, as they were supposed to be better hunters. That narrowed it down a bit. I approached one pretty tree-coloured one, and stuck my hand through the bars. She woke up, stretched her back, and walked to the bars. She started nuzzling my hand, for a good few minutes, and when I retracted it, sat there and stared. Those big green eyes…

I was sold. As a formality, I looked at the other cats, which were nice enough. But they weren’t her. That weekend we came back with the family, she was allowed out for a minute, and after more admin and tough questions than were needed to deliver a baby, we were allowed (only just) to take her home.

We put her up in the small study room and she ran under the cabinet. From there, she started to look the cat out of the tree. Slowly, she comes out, if you sit next to her on the floor, and cuddles up, rubbing her head to your hands, legs, side, basically every part of your body she can reach, purring along. She will settle for nuzzling a doorpost or chair leg too. When we open the door to the living room, slowly, after much deliberation, she sets a few steps in the room. One slight noise or movement, brings her back into her safe room. Until she realises there are cuddles to be had, and she forces herself out.  After, she sits and stares. She watches, with those massive green eyes. She looks the cat out of the tree, and doles out cuddles. We all love our Mitzi already, even if she is the laziest, shyest, cuddliest cat I have ever seen. I can’t see her killing a fly. Our rats will be happy too. 

Expatland

When we just moved to Singapore, a friendly aunty in the park asked my children where they were from. They looked at each other, hesitantly, and then at me. Born in the United Kingdom, from Dutch parents, living in Singapore; the answer was not easy. More curious than the asker I shrugged, and waited for their own response. ‘England?’ my then five-year-old son offered. He looked at me. I nodded. That was right. But there are more right answers.

After three years at the Hollandse School in Singapore, my kids became more and more Dutch, almost too much for my global taste. When my daughter was asked to list all the countries she had lived in, the Netherlands topped her list. That she never lived there, my headstrong then six-year-old would not accept. Now, at an international school with more nationalities than I can count, we are back to inconclusiveness about the big ‘where are you from?’

I share my children's confusion. I too was an expat-child. Every three years I moved to a different town, country or continent. Often we lived in a ‘camp’, a compound with only expats working for the same company. The camp had it’s own school, shop, and sports and private club facilities. The camp was a country in itself.

Life abroad changes you. You adapt to a new culture, learn new ways of doing things, and when you come back to your own country, you feel like a stranger. I still clearly remember the move to the Netherlands when I was ten.

We would go ‘home’, my parents had said, but I did not feel at home in that country, that I mostly knew from holidays and visits to grandparents. I felt different, yet everybody expected me to fit in, my parents included. I looked and sounded the same, didn’t I? I remember it as the most difficult of all the moves I have made, and trust me, there were more than a few.

I could not wait to get out of that tiny, cold, and to me, constrictive, country, so after secondary school I left for a gap year abroad. A few countries and continents down the line, I finally know where I feel at home: Everywhere and nowhere.

Being a stranger in a new country is hard for some, but to me it feels great. Comfortable. Outside of the Netherlands I don’t feel the pressure to fit in, and I can just be me. Maybe that is why Singapore, a multicultural immigrant city with a vibrant expat community, fits me like a glove. Here, everyone is different. Four years down the line, I am happy to stay just a little bit longer. I am not finished here. And I have finally learned the correct answer to that dreaded question. 
‘Me? I’m from expatland!’

The hens that came along

When I wrote about our latest house move, I did not fill you in yet on our feathered ladies, obviously, they came with us, and also obviously, that did not go without hiccups. 

Firstly, a general update on the ladies is in order. Yes, ladies, as we have no more gentlemen left in our run. At some point we had three. From our first batch of three chicks, I guess we saw it coming with Ronaldo, but we did not realise that Daisy's courageous, cheeky streak was also caused by testosteron. She became a pretty white rooster. An then Lily, one of our rescue chicks, suddenly got a suspiciously large comb, and when she crowed, we knew she too was, well, a he. I managed to exchange Ronaldo and Daisy for two pullets; our chicken uncle was starting to notice how lucrative the business of selling laying hens to crazy expats was, and he could use two solid guys for breeding. 

Our gorgeous Messi

Poor Lily, who we renamed Messi, with his cripple feet, was a different story. Messi and his sister had been hatched at a local primary, as part of a science program. I am not sure what the teaching objective was, but the kids must have learned that chicks are disposable things, that don't need proper care. They came to us malnourished, and in Messi's case, with several broken toes. We healed them with vitamins, worms, and a lot of TLC. Messi kept falling over initially, but eventually became a healthy big guy, albeit with a permanent limp.  The video shows baby Roos and Messi after they'd been with us a week. 

Initially, we decided he could stay. Yes, his early morning wake-ups were annoying, but he was pretty and we were fond of him. Then, Messi got bossy. He seemed to accept my seniority, but attacked Indah on several occasions, and since the chicken run is a favourite hangout for visiting kids, we could take no risks. Unfortunately there are not many options for a cripple rooster. I will spare you the details, but Roel manned up to do the difficult part, Indah did the plucking, and I cooked the coq au vin. I know many chicken holders might cringe, but as a partial vegetarian I rarely eat chicken, and if I do, I like to know where it came from, and how it was treated. I’m no hypocrite, and I would much rather eat my own rooster, lovingly reared, than one maltreated on an industrial farm. 

In front Fien, Lucy, Sushi and in the back Cherry and Roos

So who moved with us? Veteran Lucy, our now big baby Fien, Messi’s sister Roos, and the two new pullets, Cherry and Sushi. Five in total. 

The old run was broken down, and rebuilt in the new garden. It was not until the gardener pointed at the tree above, a large rain tree, that we saw the dead branch exactly above the run. Within the year, it will likely drop, and squash the run. When the gardener tried to cut it, it turned out there was a massive bees nest right beside. The branch – and the bees – are still there, waiting for our landlord to find a pest control company that is capable of climbing up that high.

The egg stealer

Our troubles were not yet over. The rebuild of the run had been sloppy, as the friendly neighbourhood monitor lizards were quick to notice. One squeezed his three feet long but skinny body through the wire. He did not hurt the hens, but stole all the eggs. After several failed attempts to lizard-proof the run, I thought I finally cracked it. To my surprise, we still found broken, eaten, eggs. It seemed our lizard friend had thought the hens a dirty trick! Some plastic, hard eggs, have helped to overcome this nasty habit, most of the time.

Our ladies seem happy enough, and are laying well, apart from youngsters Cherry and Sushi, who will hopefully start soon. With three eggs a day we indulge again in egg-eating feasts, and hope that for now, our hens lives will be less eventful. If only that dead branch cooperates….

On the move again

After our last move, we vowed we would never move again, at least, as long as we lived in Singapore. But we would not be real bedouin, nomads, if we had not yet again developed that itch. We lasted three years. Then, the grass turned out greener on the other side of the PIE motorway. Our new house is lovely, but the move wasn’t, still isn’t, an easy one. With these Black & White, government owned, colonial bungalows, you can’t plan. When one came up that we liked, we put in a cheeky bid, got lucky, signed the lease. The house was over a hundred years old, had been empty for 3 years, and needed some work. Well, actually, a lot.

The landlord promised to do the work, and we went on holiday in happy anticipation.

When we returned from our holiday the grass was still greener, but also an inch higher, and nothing else had chanced. Many angry phone calls later, they started the work, six days before the movers would come. We have been living there two weeks now, and still have contractors over almost daily.

The amount of workers involved in the renovation is amazing. We have plumbers, electricians, gardeners, builders, painters, aircon installers. Not always at the same time, but Asian contractors never travel alone – at least four men are needed to fix a faulty light. They are an international bunch, coming from all over Asia; the majority from Bangladesh, but also India, Malaysia, Myanmar, China, and occasionally, Singapore. On Sunday, most of them work on. When I told them the house would still be there on Monday, and that a few more days’ delay did not matter, they looked at me, that white, privileged, naive Ang Moh expat wife, and said that even if they did not work here, their boss had many urgent projects to finish.

When the initial clouds of rushed moving stress lifted slightly in my head, I started thinking more about the workers. I did not know where these men stayed, how much they got paid, and whether they were treated fairly. I chatted to them, trying to get to know them, but most gave polite answers, the ones they think you like to hear. Recently, I gave a lecture to students about corporate human rights, where I stated that as a company, you need to make sure your contractors and sub-contractors stick to the same moral values as you do.

I did not practice what I preached. I needed to try at least. So I started with one, which we hired ourselves, unlike most of the other contractors that were the landlord’s. He was a nice guy, and when asked he said it was fine for them not to come on Sunday. When I asked if he would give him the day off, he laughed, and said that they were free to do the overtime, or not. He was a good employer. Most chose the money, he said. It was not exactly what his men had told me, but lecturing a local, as a foreigner, is a tricky business, and he still had to finish the work, so I continued about how days off are good for moral, for mental well-being, and so on. He wholeheartedly agreed. But I don’t know where his workers were that Sunday.

Challenging a system, if you want to stay polite, and get things done at the same time, is, well, a challenge. I am full of words on paper, but in real life, I am not that brave. I left it after that. Well, we did buy them all pizza.