Always a celebration in Singapore

In the Northern Hemisphere today, the third Monday of January, is known as ‘Blue Monday’, the day of the year where supposedly people would be the most depressed. The holidays are over, the days still dark and cold, and spring is miles away. Myth or not, January was never my favourite. 

In Singapore, our January is much better. In Singapore, the holidays are never over. In a multicultural town like this, there is always something to celebrate. And with around three quarters of the population being of Chinese descent, the biggest celebration of the year is yet to come: Chinese New Year. Or, as it is called in politically correct Singapore: the Lunar New Year. 

Last week we managed to accidentally witness the Chinese New Year lights up, stuck in traffic on our way to dinner. At this popular event the hundreds of galloping silk horses and golden coins that decorate Chinatown are lighted to ring the start of the festive weeks leading up to the New Year. The coming year will be, can you guess, the year of the horse. 

Supermarkets are filled with red and gold, with bright pink blossoms, with heaps of oranges, red-lidded boxes of special biscuits, tinned strange seafood and many, many forms of decorative horses. Shops and houses are decorated with trees laden with oranges, colourful plants and frilly plastic pineapples. 

But that is not all Singapore has to offer in January. This week saw the celebration of Thaipusam, a Hindu festival where brave Tamil men and women honor their gods in a spectacular way by piercing themselves with metal rods and spears. We opted for the friendlier Pongal festival, another Tamil fest, which celebrates the harvest, where milk is offered to the gods. Here were saw some Friesian ladies that seemed just as happily assimilated into Singapore society as ourselves. 

So while Singaporeans fill their shopping trolleys, spring-clean their houses, buy new clothes, watch lion dances and decorate their houses, what do we expats do? We book a trip, off course. Because Chinese New Year also means a few days off. Thailand, here we come. 

Gong Xi Fa Cai!

Life’s a beach

Today I went to the beach. Alone. I needed some rest, and I am not very good at resting. Sitting around the house, a quiet weekday morning usually turns into sorting out the kid’s clothes, tidying the storeroom, weeding the garden, or writing behind the computer. And that was not what the doctor prescribed.

A few weeks ago, when I watched my predecessor teach the ‘Dreams Class’ I am now teaching, I drifted away during the visualisation session. The idea was that you could see yourself in your own dreamed-for future. I closed my eyes, and took off. Dreaming, I saw myself on a beach, on a sun lounger. In the distance I could faintly hear children’s voices. Nothing but golden sand obstructed my view of a turquois sea. The sun shone brilliantly and a breeze refreshed me, as did a colourful cocktail in my hand.

So was this my dream for my future? Not me being a famous author, a successful product developer, or a great mother? Me being lazy on a beach. Seriously? I dismissed the thought as crazy. I like to keep busy, to be slightly overworked rather than anything else, that is just the way I like it. Isn’t it? 

Isn’t it? Slowly, the idea started ripening in my brain. Maybe it was time to start listening to my subconscious me. I am actually quite stressed most of the time. Way too busy. And with my state of health, I really do need some rest. 

Getting ready for the beach was great already. No plastic buckets and spades, no goggles, no inflatable toys, no piles of swimsuits and towels, no emergency snacks, no rash shirts. Just my bikini and a book. I was done in a jiffy.

I finished the whole book. I ate a salad. I drank some tea. I looked at the not too turquois sea full of big container ships, and stared at the refinery in the distance, realising I had come a long way from studying its chemical streams in university. I paddled a bit in the lukewarm water. In short, I had an amazing time.

And even though the sky was a Singapore rainy season grey, and nothing like the clear blue of my dream, I am now red. With my optimistic light packing I had forgotten the sunscreen. I am red, but thoroughly rested. Going to the beach alone, on a weekday, with nothing more than a book and a bikini feels just like skipping school. It feels exciting. Fun. And a little bit wrong. Now my new dream is to go again. Next time, I will bring some sunscreen. And, maybe, my husband. I think he needs this dream too.

The Mango Princess

Teaching women staying at the shelter of HOME, a Singaporean charity that supports foreign domestic workers in trouble with their employers, is an extremely inspiring job. It is amazing to see what my students can teach me. 

Meet Maribel (not her real name), from the Philippines. The first time I met her was during my story writing class. She sat in a corner, quiet between chatting classmates, hunched over her papers. On all the questions of my writing exercise she gave the same answer. The first thing she saw when she woke up in her bunk bed at the shelter? She wouldn’t know, she only felt sadness for missing her son. What breakfast looked and tasted like? She wouldn’t know, she only felt sadness for missing her son. Her most and least favourite activity? She wouldn’t know, she only felt sadness for missing her son.
Not sure how to cheer her up, I gave Maribel a clean sheet and said: ‘Ok. Then write about your son for me.’ 

Not much later Maribel had filled the entire page with stories about how she picked the eight-year-old boy up from school, and took him to the market. They would indulge in their favourite fruit: mango. Maribel told about all his favourite foods she would cook for him, which were her favourites too, and the games they would play. Impressed, I told her how great her writing was. ‘You just showed me how much you care about your son, without once using the word love.’

The week after, Maribel joined the ‘Dreams’ class, where girls are encouraged to think about their future in a positive way. Whilst looking at the future, I learned more about Maribel’s history. She came from a very poor family, but had married a man whose parents were the owners of a mango farm, and quite affluent. Maribel’s in-laws had always looked down on their peasant daughter-in-law, straining the relationship with her husband. The light of her life was her son, and she focussed all her love on him. Her dream was to plant a mango tree, together with her son, in her own garden. This class, Maribel was much less shy, and smiled regularly.

Another week and another writing class later we met again in the Dreams class. During the introductions I marvelled at how Maribel had changed. She was now always the first to answer any question, stimulating others to join as well. The exercise of the day was to name a person you admired. It could be a famous person, a neighbour, or someone in the family. It should be someone you would like to be, if only for a day. Maribel was the first to write the name of who she wanted to be on her paper, and showed it proudly to the others. She had named Cinderella. The other girls nodded approvingly. But Maribel was not looking to be rescued by Prince Charming. 

Maribel told us how her life had been like that of Cinderella. Her own mother had died young, and her rich in-laws had never treated her much better than they would a servant. She wished for the strength of Cinderella, because Cinderella never lost hope. Cinderella found love and happiness in small things. And she always stayed friendly and kind, despite her hardships. Maribel hoped she could be just like that. 

Maribel is still staying in the HOME shelter, waiting for the Ministry of Manpower to solve her case, so she can go home and plant that mango tree with her son. Maribel is not waiting for Prince Charming. She will make her own happy end. 

I believe!

It does not cease to amaze me how big my kids are getting. My eldest recently turned six. This had to be celebrated in style with a football (yes football, I refuse to say soccer) party, where thirteen six-year-old boys (no girls allowed) turned our green lawn into a mudslide. A few days later, Tijm lost his first tooth.

It had been wobbly for a few days, and during more football on our mud field with a friend, he came running and screaming. I thought the worst, but these were cheers of joy. Proudly, I was shown the enamel evidence that had come out while Tijm was heading a ball in the goal.

Later that day we discussed the tooth fairy, and that Tijm should leave his tooth under the pillow, so he could receive a shiny coin for his piggy bank. Tijm looked up at me, incredibly. He shook his head. ‘No, mama, I don’t believe in the tooth fairy. That is just weird.’

A few weeks earlier we had had a similar conversation, where the subject of Santa Claus was raised.
‘Mama,’ he had said. ‘Father Christmas does not exist, does he? Not in Singapore.’
I was dumbfounded, freaking out in silence. What do you reply a five year old?

‘Off course he does,’ I started. ‘Don’t you remember seeing him last year, at the shopping centre? You even shook his hand?’
Tijm pondered, unconvinced. He shook his head. ‘I don’t believe it.’
We talked some more, but I could not convince my headstrong boy.
‘But what about Sinterklaas?’ I finally asked, heart pounding. I had not expected this to happen for a few more years.

Tijm looked back defiantly. ‘Sinterklaas?’ he said, as if that was a completely different matter. ‘No, Sinterklaas is real. Off course he is.’
With a mama-can-be-sooo-stupid look on his face he walked away, ending the conversation, leaving me relieved and confused at the same time.

Dealing with magical creatures like Santa Claus, his Dutch cousin and precursor Sinterklaas, the Tooth Fairy and Easter Bunny (or Easter Hare, in my country) is difficult enough for any parent of a precocious child, but doing so in a multicultural community like Singapore means walking an even tighter rope. Why does Sinterklaas only deliver his present to Dutch kids, where Santa Claus seems less selective and hands them out freely, yet not to everyone? Does he visit the Chinese kids? What about the Malays? The expats, the French, Italians, German, American, Australian and British, everyone cherishes their own traditions, yet does not hesitate to borrow freely from others what seems nice as well. The resulting melting pot is great fun, but can confuse even the most keen-to-believe kid.

On the other side there is the home country, which gets closer and closer each year on TV and internet. How can we see Sinterklaas arrive in the Netherlands, having travelled for months to get there from Spain on his steamship, and then see him arrive in Singapore only a week later? How can he visit schools and parties on all continents, does he go back and forth by warp zones?

Finally, there is the most pressing question for Tijm: is all the fun over now Sinterklaas has been so generous on December 5th, or will Santa Claus bring more presents on the 25th?

Time will tell, and for now, for me, there is only one answer: to believe. To keep believing in the magic of childhood, which exist everywhere.

Wishing everyone a very merry Christmas, wherever you are, whatever you believe, and however you choose to celebrate!

A house with a history

I always like a place with a bit of history. Shining marble, or slabs of steel and concrete do not excite me much. I prefer old things, coloured with the patina of time, the cracks and scars telling their stories. With our current house, it seems I got a bit more than I bargained for.

The so-called 'Black and White' houses of Singapore, in one which we live, were build in colonial times by the British government. I had heard rumours that, emptied of their white inhabitants, they were used in World War II to house Prisoners of War. But I did not know the details. One day, felled with flu, I lay in my bed, reading a novel about a lady interned in a Japanese camp in Sumatra. My flustered mind started reeling, imagining myself lying just here, in that same spot, on a much less comfortable bed - on the floor even- struck by malaria, the Japanese on duty marching past the window. A European ‘expat wife’ like myself, in those days, would have been the enemy of Japan, and therefore, would have to be locked up. 

Sketch of Sime Road Camp by artist unknown (taken from http://www.fepow-memorial.org.uk/)

A few days later, with a much clearer mind, I remembered my feverish dream. The thought of it would not leave me alone, and I planned to find out the truth about my house. Were women like me really imprisoned here during the war? I had read that civilians had been send to Changi prison, completely on the other side of the island.

My search for the history of the house led me to Jon Cooper, a British historian who works for the Changi Museum in Singapore. He has been doing a lot of work on the Adam area, first by investigating the battle of Adam Park, just across the motorway. And more recently, Jon and his team have started exploring our own little drive. Emails and phone calls were exchanged, and one evening last week Jon came by to share the history of Adam Drive with all our neighbours. The reason I had not been able to find out more myself, was that the name of the street had been changed. During the war, this area was known as the ‘Sime Road Camp’. 

Overview of Sime Road Camp, drawn by internee (given to me by Jon Cooper)

The led up to the war in Singapore was chaotic. Most people believed Singapore was like a fort that the Japanese would never take. Defences were aimed at the sea in the south, but the Japanese took an unexpected route: overland, through the dense jungles of Malaysia in the north. 

Before the Japanese invasion, the British Army and Royal Air Force decided they needed to centralise their control, and they started to build new headquarters on Sime Road. The road that I can see behind our back garden, from the very desk I am typing on. They also started building new houses to house the military. But the Japanese arrived before these were finished, and only concrete platforms and drains had been realised. General Percival and his staff had to abandon their new headquarters, and retreat to Fort Canning.

Initially, like I had rightly heard, both western Prisoners or War and civilians were interned in Changi Prison, on the East coast of Singapore. The Japanese took up their headquarters on Sime Road, in the same ‘Green House’ on the hill, the outbuildings of which can be seen from the back of our garden. Later, both British and Australian Prisoners of War were moved to Sime Road. They were set to work in McRitchie reservoir, building a Shinto Shrine commemorating Japanese casualties during the campaign. They were housed in huts they built from wood and attap, on the concrete platforms the British had build. Later again, these prisoners were sent to Siam and Burma, to work on the railroad. 

In the last years of the war, Changi prison became full to the brim. Now civilian internees were moved to the fresh air and greens hills of Sime Road. More wooden huts were built, on the existing platforms and around. It was a large camp, part of it now covered by the motorway. Only one area remained intact, where after the war new, stone houses were built on the platforms, again for the military. This is the area we now call Adam Drive. It is one of these houses in which we now live.

And what had this area been in the Sime Road camp? The women’s camp! So my dream had not been that far from the truth. Maybe not in my current stone house, but in a wooden one on the same spot I was laying, white women like myself had been interned during the war. From the map Jon gave me, a copy of which you can see below, it seems likely our house is in the place of hut number 10. 

Painting by Leslie Cole, showing the inside of a Sime Road hut with women and children

 At the end of the war, the Sime Road camp housed over four thousand people, including around a thousand women and a couple of hundred children, and was like a town in itself. There was a hospital, a farm area, church, carpentry, school, and even a pub called the Flying Dutchman. 

To find out more about life in the camp, I read the ‘Diary of a girl in Changi’, by Sheila Allen, who stayed in both Changi Prison and Sime Road camp. Having read much about the life in Japanese camps in Indonesia, I am impressed at the relatively good circumstances in these camps. There was electricity, and hot running water. The women busy themselves with organising concerts, school, Christmas parties, and other activities to keep them busy. They are separated from they husbands by barbed wire, but still, babies are born, showing some contact must have been possible. Still, life was extremely hard and uncertain, food rations were very low, and many people died of malnutrition and disease. 

Map of Sime Road Camp (made by Jane Booker Nielsen of the Changi Museum, oct 2013)

When we now walk around Adam Drive we see it with different eyes. Our mind will erase the trees, which look century-old, but of which we now know they are much younger, as the area was open and grassy then. Everywhere we try to recognise camp pictures and settings of stories. We mentally erase stone houses and plant wooden huts in their place. We picture the farm at the spot where my kids like to play on the swings. We search for entrances to the mysterious tunnels. We plot the image of the Flying Dutchman pub over the carport that is now in it’s place. The work of Jon and his team is on going, and they have found some new researchers in us. Who knows, what we will unravel?

The last mile

The typhoon Yolanda shook the Philippines upside down, and the rest of the world as well. As always with a disaster of this scale, aid organisations tumble over each other to provide help quickly. Money is transferred; clothes, food and medicine are collected. But do these goods actually reach their destination?

In the maelstrom after the tsunami it became clear that not all well-meant help is equally useful. Affectionately collected articles of clothing sometimes were deposited on the roadside, by desperate chauffeurs, simply because there was nowhere to store them. They rotted away in rain and mud. Depots in harbours and on airports overflowed with donations that were direly needed just a few miles down the road. For many people on faraway locations foreign help did not reach this ‘last mile’.

Getting involved

Nine years ago Arnout Mostert, Dutch expat in Singapore, sat behind his desk, feeling itchy. He felt helpless. He wanted to do more than just draw his chequebook. With two friends he boarded a flight to Phuket, to see with their own eyes how they could best be of service. On landing in Phuket they found, to their surprise, supermarkets and ATM machines well stocked, and aid organisations setting up and struggling to get started. They heard about areas on the north coast, forgotten areas, that were difficult to reach, and where no film crew had been. 

On the road

The three Dutchmen rented some pickup trucks and set to work. They filled their trucks with everything that they were told was needed, baby food, drinking water, tinned foods, medicine, and gruesome but true, a type of local tiger balm that people rubbed under their noses to combat the ever-present rotten stench of death. 

From Phuket, Arnout and his friends drove their laden trucks to faraway fishing villages, handing out help where needed, and back to replenish supplies. Back and forth. Through email they raised funds amongst friends and relatives. Costs of hotels and other personal needs, the friends paid for themselves. 

And, again

Now a new disaster has struck on his doorstep, Arnout felt the same pull, especially after last time's success. The first time I heard about his plans was through one of his friends, my husband in fact, who asked my permission for a donation. Not much later Arnout’s story went viral on Facebook. The Dutch community in Singapore, and many others, jumped in with money and their time. The gym teacher of the Hollandse School was given a week off to help. So many people joined, that this week several teams will be able to hit the road. 

Together with local volunteers and the Philippines army and police force, Arnout and his team are working hard to bring much-needed goods to far-off, forgotten locations. Goods are bought locally, and packed and transported under police protection to places where no organisation has been yet. 

Progress

On his Facebook page Arnout tells his about his work. About his problems to rent trucks, because the Canadian Army took most. About his attempt to get 500 plastic bags without having to pay a peso. About locals asking for building materials, as the damage to houses is significant. About how bad the damage is in places, but also how great the locals are in helping with efforts like his. 

At the moment Arnout and his crew are on the island Panay, in the west of the Philippines. The plan for the next days is to fill gaps around the towns Capiz and Estancia, where the Canadian army has not been able to get. 

The work is by no means finished. 

Do you want to help, with cash or with deeds? 

Check Arnout’s facebook page for more details: 

https://www.facebook.com/arnout

Disclaimer: All photo's are taken from Arnout's facebook page, and reprinted here with his permission. Arnout can be seen in the top picture, middle right in white polo shirt, next to Martin, the HSL teacher present on site. The lady on the left is Mylene Herbilla Yanga, a local volunteer. 

I spy, with my spiky eye

When you walk past the stretch of jungle at the beginning of our lane you can smell it. The king of fruits. Loved and hated by many for its distinct flavour. Sweet, pungent, creamy, fragrant. Overpowering. To us, the scent of durian smelt like an expedition. From the street we could not only smell, but also see the fruit, deep in the wood, a tantalising fifty meters high. Looking at our flip-flopped feet, and the snake-infested, bushy undergrowth, we realised our expedition was ill prepared. We searched the ground for fallings of the rambutan tree next to the road instead, but the monkeys had left us only shells. 

Then we spotted them, further down the road, in solid boots and gloves: durian pickers. They were loading their catch in the back of their truck, and we rushed over for a look and a chat. The durian pickers told us that the best trees were deep down in the darker jungle. And, that there was an old man sitting there, guarding his favourite tree, waiting for the fruit to fall.

I pointed at our shoddy footwear, and told them I was afraid to go in. It didn’t seem safe. ‘I wouldn’t want one of those heavy, spiky things falling on my kids heads,’ I shrugged. 
The pickers laughed. ‘No,’ one of them assured me, ‘that won’t happen. You see, durians have eyes. They see. And they aim.’
I smiled too. ‘So do they aim to hit my kids, or to miss?’
He laughed again. ‘No, they aim to miss.’
‘But the snakes won’t,’ his mate added. ‘Don’t go in. Here.’ 
He rummaged through their catch, and handed me a pristine specimen.

We thanked the pickers warmly, and on the way home the durian’s spikes pricked painful red holes in the palms of my hands. 

One needs to get past all its clever defences before the fleshy delights of the durian can be savoured. First, the smell. The smell of a fresh, uncut durian has no equal. Buildings have said to be evacuated, just because someone smuggled in a durian - a gas leak was suspected. 

The durian reeks so persistent that is not allowed to take the fruit in buses, subways or even taxi’s. When our own car stank for days, Roel forbade me to transport the fruit there as well. 

Those who have accepted the smell, and smuggled the forbidden fruit home, have to put up with the next defence: the thorns that cover it’s round surface can make nasty cuts, and only a strong knife can cleave the thick skin. Only after all that has been overcome, the king of fruits will divulge its creamy rewards.

Durian flesh is, to put it mildly, an acquired taste. Me? I love it. There is a film of me, maybe six years old, savouring the fruit eagerly, and ever since I have been hooked. My family is not yet convinced. The next day, when we eat the velvety, fragrant flesh of the fresh forest fruit, Roel admits: it is not too bad. Actually, it is almost pleasant. And yes, I can quote him on that.