Learn through play

The neighbour’s boy hovers around the patio.
‘Can Tijm come out to play?’
‘Sure,’ I nod, and call inside, ‘Tijm, come out, your friend is here to play.’
Tijm pokes his head around the door.
‘No,’ he shakes. ‘I am doing my homework.’
‘I think you have done enough homework,’ I reply, ‘come out, it has stopped raining for a minute.’
‘No, I want to do more homework,’ he yells back.
I walk over, and, after a heated struggle, have to forcibly remove him from behind the computer.

For me, being Dutch, a five year old doing homework at all is freaky enough. Five year olds in the Netherlands learn through play. At least, that is what I think; I have not actually set foot in a Dutch primary since the late eighties. It does not surprise me though, that it is the English department of the Dutch international school issuing homework first. At age five, Tijm loves it. With this kind of homework, what’s not to like? 

The program has to be American. Together we log in, and start reading. Every time Tijm listens to a book, he earns stars. Every time he reads a book himself, he earns more stars. If he records his reading for the teacher, bonus stars. All the questions right on the quiz? Extra super bonus stars. As the stars accumulate, Tijm’s rank climbs. From private to lieutenant-commander, he is now a captain. With stars earned he can buy prizes. To do that, he has to take his rocket, and fly to one of his planets. For thousands of stars he can purchase new planets, in fancy colours. That is, if he saves them, and stops spending. On his first planet Tijm has a room where he can store his star purchases. So far he bought: a cactus that grows cupcakes, a pirate-gorilla-robot, a red desk chair, a furry orange creature, a floating squarish robot, a telescope, and a funny plant with eyes on sockets.

As soon as Tijm gets up, or gets home from school, he rushes to the computer to earn more stars. He reads, reads, and reads. One book a week, the teacher suggested. The first day, together, we polish off level aa, around fifteen books. The next day, when I am not watching, he clears most of level A. Together we record some of his level A reading for the teacher, and I must admit, I am impressed by my five year old, smoothly reading the words in this language that is not his first. When I am away in the afternoon he finishes level B. The next day, together, we try level C, and he struggles. Past tenses, played instead of play, ate instead of eat. I start to explain tenses, past, present, future, and wonder how far ahead we are getting? In his Dutch class they are learning to spell ‘I am’.

At the suggested rate of one book a week, he would have reached C in about a year. But there is no stopping Tijm. And I find myself pondering a question I never thought I would: How can I dissuade my son from doing so much homework?

The tree, the sequel

As mentioned before the biggest problems in our jungle home have not been of the animal kind. Falling branches, spiky leaves, and, most annoyingly, the tiniest of all: funguses. 

After I send home the landlord’s last attempt to free us from our roof-threatening mango tree, it took only two months of gentle reminders, annoyed emails and angry phone calls for them to send reinforcements. Not one, not two, but four Indian blokes turned up this time, professional-looking in their matching green T-shirts and yellow helmets. Having not seen much tree cutting before, I got myself comfortable for the viewing.

The first thing to do with any job, is extensive observation. The four guys stood and stared at our tree for a good ten minutes, taking pictures on their phones from all angles. Then, a heated debate followed. In Tamil, and I assumed it was about the right way to attack the tree, whilst making sure it would not fall on our recently repaired roof. It seemed there was a problem. The manager had to be called. As their English was not much better than my Tamil, it took a while to sort out the muddle. Finally, we cleared it up. They had been told to deal with a fallen tree. Our tree stood tall and lofty. After this was established there was not a problem at all. Tools were brought in. 

First, a rope needed to be attached to the tree. After several throws with a weighted rope, almost breaking the aforementioned recently repaired roof, one of the guys took of his boots, and with an impressive speed he climbed up the trunk, as smoothly as our macaques. The rope fastened, I saw why four people were needed for this job. One busied him with a chainsaw; the others pulled the rope, coaxing the tree in the right direction. Just before the tree came down with a thundering crackle, a crimson sunbird settled in the crown of the tree. In the green leafy mayhem that followed I lost the flash of bright red. The roaring sound of the tree’s trunk was followed seconds later with a loud thunder in the sky. 

So now they are dragging out the remains of the tree in the pouring rain, while I sit typing away under my dry, undamaged roof. But I have work to do too. First, make the wet guys some hot, warming coffee. Then, I have to get a soapy cloth and fight my next battle. The hardest one, against the smallest enemy: the mould. Especially in this supposed dry season, that has proved wetter than any monsoon should be. The de-humidifiers I bought made a great difference, our house no longer smells like a bowl of mushrooms. But we need to stay vigilant. The terrorist black spots keep crouching up, and in, from every corner. I dream up an equally efficient crew to battle those, small as ants, dressed up in matching green T-shirts and yellow helmets, snapping pictures on miniature mobile phones, and calling tiny managers, before bringing out brushes that can sweep up mould from the tiniest of nooks and crannies. Sigh. Well, a girl can dream, right?

Cock-a-jungle-doo

After the first night in our new house, the cock-a-doodle-doo of a distant cockerel woke me. Sleepily, I thought, cool, the neighbours 
have chicken. We should get some too. 

Later, I realised the neighbours had a large dog, an impressive ridgeback, that easily chased monkeys from their modest banana plantation. He would never allow poultry on his turf. I must have dreamt the cockerel. But I heard it again and again, until I realised where it was coming from: the jungle.

A quick google-search told me we were dealing with the Red Junglefowl. Gallus gallus. For the less scientific: wild chicken. Not just runaways, but the real deal. These chickens are the ancestors of our domestic chicken. My stomach growled. Finally, free range chicken! Hormone free as well. We should catch some, so we could not only sleep longer, but enjoy a decent meal in the bargain. The eggs, I mean, off course. Reading on, I saw we could not. Red Junglefowl is on the ‘endangered list’ in Singapore. We would not want to threaten an already struggling chook. 

It was not long before we got to see the fowl in all its glory. First a mother hen, with a trawling family of small, dark chicks. She was not much to look at. A dark, wild brown, white speckled on the breast. The black chicks cheeped behind our fence. They fled into the green when I approached, camera in hand, aiming to at least capture them on film. 

The next day daddy made his appearance, under the trampoline. A gorgeous, large cock, flaunting a tail of long black feathers, a red copper breast and a long neck, crowned with a firm red crest. Haughtily he strutted through the garden, picking around in the dirt. When I approached him he flew flapping over the hedge. Junglefowl are shy birds. They do seem to be getting their strength, and numbers, up. We already spotted some at the school, and at a friend’s house in a suburban neighbourhood. Like their progeny they seem well adapted to life around humans.

He got me inspired though. I started dreaming of owning chicken, and a daily supply of fresh, free-range eggs. The friends I asked about it shook their heads. Surely, that was not allowed in Singapore. Singaporeans like their chicken cleaned, chilled and wrapped in cling-film. Or, better even, on a plate with rice.

The government website told me keeping poultry is actually allowed, as long as you keep them in an enclosed run, so they cannot breed with their wild cousins. Out of fear for bird flu.

My hopes up, I googled on, hoping to find a forum of likeminded, full of tips and places to go to get a run build, get feed, and most importantly, live birds. No such luck. My search finally yielded someone who, four years back, supplied some live chicken. Fifty dollars each. No wonder he went out of business. Then I came across quail. Fifteen dollars each. The guy selling them had no idea where to get a run, but would be happy to show me how to care for them and feed them.

So now I dream, not of cockerels, but of quail. And I lay sleepless, thinking about how to get a run sorted, protecting them from monkeys, snakes, and toddlers. 

(As I could not catch our chooks on film, photo courtesy of Singapore NParks)

Home

We are in the park. It is busy, and as always our blond, blue-eyed kids gather attention. A friendly, older gentleman asks Tijm and Linde where they are from. I look up, curious for the answer, more curious than the asker. I see my kids hesitate. I see them look at each other, and, without words, weigh the options between them. Uncertainly, Tijm answers. England, he mumbles. He looks at me for reassurance, and I nod. It is not wrong. It is a right answer. One of them.

They have been asked this question before, and each time they give a different answer. For them, it is a difficult question. Born in England, living in Singapore, and holding a Dutch passport. My own situation is the same, if anything more complex, as the list of countries I have lived in is longer. And, the more places you live in, the less you will become ‘from’ any one of them.

When we moved to Singapore I felt at home really quickly. Was it because it reminds me of Malaysia, one of the countries of my childhood? Maybe, that as well, but I don’t think it is the only reason. I think an important reason is that Singapore is, above all, an immigrant city. Any Singaporean can be asked how long they, or at least their ancestors, have been here. Off course there is a difference between the different groups. There are the ‘Singaporeans’, holders of official citizenship. They are from a predominantly Chinese background, followed by significant groups of Malay and Indian descent. Then there are the expatriates. The richer ‘expats’, from Europe, the US, Australia or Asian countries like Japan, China, Korea, Vietnam. There are the ‘foreign workers’, less affluent, maybe from Indonesia, India, Sri Lanka, the Philippines. Expatriates are either visitors, who stay for a brief posting, or more grounded ‘permanent residents’ that plan to stay. And then there are Eurasians, and many others of mixed descent.

Compared to other countries, I have encountered not too many people in Singapore that feel that they have been here longer than others, and therefore have more rights. More often, Singaporeans will judge you not by how long you have been here, but on how long you plan to stay. Just visiting to have a few comfortable expat years? Just a foreign worker? Then keep your opinions to yourself. But if you are here to stay, and are willing and able to contribute, you will eventually become part of the melting pot that is Singapore.

For me, the wandering nomad, only time can tell how long I can and will stay. No job means no pass, unless we get the coveted permanent residency. Or in a few years I might, again, develop an itch. Singapore has a niche for people like me: a thriving expat scene. Maybe that should be my answer if the dreaded question pops up again. Me? I am an expat. A constant expat. Happy to live in a city where I am not the only one.

It is a stupid question, really. I live here. I am a snail, carrying my home on my back, happy with my nomadic live. Looking at my kids, struggling with the same questions I do, makes me realise something very clearly. It does not matter where I am from. I know exactly where my home is. Home is where my family is.

Eight weeks

Eight weeks is a long time. Eight weeks of no school, of three kids at home that need entertaining, eight weeks of no time left for anything more than the bare minimum. Especially if you decide to move house just before the summer holidays, so that on top of the kids there is another demanding entity: the new house. Luckily, there was relief in the middle. After three weeks of haze, beach, garden work and play, we boarded a flight. Destination: Europe.

The thing I most remember of those three weeks away is the smell. The smell of Europe. The smell of my parent’s garden in the early morning, just after we alighted from our plane, green, fragrant, flowery, and above all so fresh. Fresh on that first day, chilly to us, partly cloudy, and just over 20 degrees. The salty smell of the North sea, so different from the clammy waves at Sentosa, where grilled satay and fries predominate, and just as different from the smell of hot sand at Asia’s more deserted beaches. Which is again nothing like the smell of a Dutch dune baking in the sun.

The heat wave that settled steadily over Western Europe after that first cool day fooled me into believing Holland is, after all, a great place to live. Whilst poor daddy had to take off to work on the sunny terraces of London town, we played with grandparents, cousins, friends, at the beach, the dunes, in gardens. The next week, with daddy home, albeit slightly hung-over, we drove north, to Friesland, which again presented it’s own smells. The muddy, earthy smell of its lakes, the indescribable smell of wet sails flapping in the wind, and off course that of rows and rows of black and white Friesian cows, mooing in a barn.

After Friesland we travelled south again, to Portugal this time to visit the in-laws, who live in countryside surrounded by endless woods of pine and eucalyptus, a smell so strong, fresh and overwhelming I cannot imagine anyone in that area ever developing a cold. After fun in the pool and the woods it was time for the long journey home. Home began when we entered Schiphol airport, where half the children’s school was waiting to board the same plane.

I always thought I loved the tropics especially for its smells. For the heat that soothes my rheumatic pains also makes everything smell so much stronger, headier. Aren’t I, above all, a smell person? But when we entered our new house after three weeks of absence I cringed. Right now, for me, the tropics smell rotten, mouldy, like the house that has been covered with a thin layer of green, stinky nastiness.

Off course Europe in autumn and winter will not be as alluring as it has been the last few weeks. It will be cold, and wet. There is a reason that I left. I also know, and smell, that our tropical house has much improved with airing. Still. I will now say something I did not think I ever would: Sitting in my tropical garden I sometimes miss the smell of a Dutch flower garden. The freshness. The crispness. The cleanliness.

Luckily there is not much time for sentimentality. Of the eight long weeks there are still five days to go. And I need to go buy a dehumidifier, quickly.

Further encounters

After our first brush with the primate neighbours, the monkeys and us have lived together peacefully. The macaques roam around the forest, and only visit occasionally. On those days I have learned to keep windows closed and bananas out of sight, so they will play in the garden quietly and snack on palm seeds instead.

There is plenty other wildlife to encounter too. In the morning the cock-a-doodle-do of wild roosters wakes us. Roel has spotted one of the flying lemurs this area is famous for, squirrel-like creatures that come out in the twilight, gliding between the trees. Little brown, non-flying, but extremely agile squirrels abundantly whirl through the trees around us, as do colourful birds and butterflies. We are less impressed with stories about a wild boar molesting one of the neighbourhood’s dogs, and the next-door neighbour who had a nest of baby black spitting cobras. We have been in awe of a monitor lizard that stretched over a meter, leisurely strolling over the road, and remain unperturbed by his smaller cousins, the chi-chaks and geckos, that roam freely through the house. They are friendly little creatures, feeding on insects and mosquitos, the only annoying thing about them being the little droppings they leave.

No, the real hazards of living on the border of the jungle have been botanical rather than animal, at least so far. The decorative grasses in the garden cut my hands with their razor-sharp thorny leaves till I bleed. And after two weeks of drought and haze, it took only the smallest of tropical storms for the old mango tree behind the house to drop a large branch, on top of our roof. Neighbours told us roof damage by falling trees was a common problem. A large part of that same mango tree had fallen on the roof before, and the former tenants experienced a mayor leakage in the bathroom. The landlord, the Singaporean government, was so slow repairing the damage, they finally left. By the time we moved in, the house had gotten a brand-new roof. So when we complained that we wanted the tree gone we were curious what would happen.

Surely, the next day a smiling Indian bloke arrived with a small chainsaw. Unfortunately, it was the same twenty-odd year old boy who had done the ‘professional’ cleaning of our house, dirtying kitchen cabinets I cleaned before him with his muddy rag. The same boy who clumsily mutilated the palm trees in the front garden, which bought me disapproving looks from the professional gardener I later hired. When I saw him, the only thing my brain could do was shout: No. Drop the tool. No. I am not letting you anywhere near my mango tree. No. I could only picture the whole thing smack down, bang in the middle of our shiny new roof. He smiled again, offended, assuring me it would be no big deal, he had cut bigger trees. But I stood my ground. And so does the tree.

The Haze Craze

In Western Europe life grinds to a halt when more than a few centimetres of snow falls, or the thermometer creeps above thirty degrees. No one will talk about anything else than the weather.

In Singapore heat or torrential rain faze no one, but we do we have something else: The Haze. Every year in the dry season Indonesian farmers set fire to their land. To clear out old crops, wasteland or forest, to fertilise it with ash. Palm oil, predominantly, but also other crops. The smoke caused by these slash and burn farming techniques drifts over the narrow sea straits to Singapore, where people will have a cough, and a few days where they think the neighbours should really stop having so many barbecues.

This year it is different. With a larger than normal amount of fires, and an unusual dry and cloudless spell, the haze has reached crazy heights. For days the Pollutant Standard Indexes (PSI) have been soaring, from below 50, Singapore’s normal, fresh air, to the first shocking time the ‘unhealthy’ 100 mark was crossed. How we now long for that clear 100 PSI sky…

From 150, it went to 200, ‘very unhealthy’, and while everyone was glued to screens showing latest figures it kept creeping up, to 300, ‘hazardous’. Today, for the first time ever in Singapore, the mark of 400 was crossed. This is no reason for a celebration. A PSI of 400+ is simply extremely hazardous. People are recommended to stay indoors, whack on the aircon, wear facemasks that are sold-out nationwide, and refrain from doing any strenuous exercise.

And just this week we moved to a rickety pre-war bungalow, without aircon, with leaky doors, where we planned to spend most of our time outdoors, in the large and lush garden. Initially we rejoiced. When the haze hit central Singapore we stayed relatively fresh in our forest, the high trees filtering out the worst of the mess. But day-by-day the smoke crept through leaves and now it has reached us too. In the morning we wake up with a headache, a sick feeling in our stomach and a soar throat. Our hair smells like a chip shop.

Only yesterday I complained we were all a bunch of spoiled expats, who just got too excited. Facebook was fuller with haze than the sky, with questions about where to get air-purifiers, or the best ways to get out of this place. Today, with a PSI over 400, I can’t even speak to you about those more important things, about the poor locals in Indonesia living in what must be an inferno, the affected wildlife, the Western countries that share responsibility for this problem, as it is us buying these products, us not wanting to pay more so these farmers can use other, more sustainable, expensive and time consuming methods to clear land. I don’t have the energy. My head hurts too much.

How long this will last? No-one knows, days, weeks, or even a month. It all depends on the weather, but the haze blocks our red stinging eyes looking up at the sky, praying for rain. Rain that still has not come. So we stay inside, play games, shuffle the furniture, watch films, and try to entertain the kids. Today the summer holidays have started. Expats rush out of the city, flights back home have sold out. We are not going, not yet. So we will have no outdoor play, very little friends, and aching bodies.

This afternoon, we will attempt a rain dance. Will you join us?