by Tom McLaughlin
Across the river from where I live in Kuching, are several kampongs all to be torn down to make way for either high rises or a park where people can walk along the river. I am not sure which. The following is a report on a visit to the area.
We were awaiting the sampan which took us to the other side of the river. We stood on the dock for about 15 minutes. A stiff northwest wind was blowing, the skies were cloudy but no rain. It was the monsoon season. We lived on the town side of the river.
The sampan was old with many layers of paint. I had to duck to get inside under the roof into the seating area. The ride took about two minutes. Torn-down houses were evident on the far bank. The sampan glided to a stop. Old cement steps came down into the water. The top three or four steps were covered in slime and algae. I carefully climbed up, my tennis shoes almost sliding off the steps and into the river. I pulled myself up following my wife who was just ahead of me.
I glanced around and my imagination took me back fifty years ago where children were playing, the fruit trees were dropping their durians and rambutans and people swam and fished in the river. Then, girls swam topless and boys up to 15 or 16 swam nude. The thought of sex was far far from their minds. Now, these scenes were gone and workers who laboured in the shops across the river slept. They were rental units, not very well taken care of. Of course, there were the proud homes and mansions where the elderly lived and some children but by and large, the kampong deserved to be torn down. The people had either moved away to better lodgings or transferred to K.L. or Singapore where the wages were much more than they could ever earn in Kuching.
I noticed an old dark orange jar sitting atop a wall that walked almost to the river. I knew the jar was old. It was half filled with rainwater and an old plastic Pepsi bottle floated upside down. Ancient paint dribbled on the inside. I made a note to tell Suriani I wanted it. I knew if I asked the price it would be four times as much as me being a white man.
We walked down the alleyway and I notice cages on the ground with a rooster in each one. They were white and multicoloured. Loud crowing was issued from those that were allowed to run free. I stopped and admired them commenting on the colours and the scales. I recently learned about scales from a recent article I wrote. I admired them and told him what a wonderful hobby he had. I knew better and so do you.
I sent Suriani back to negotiate the price for the old jar. They talked for a few minutes. She paid RM20 for the jar. I wasn’t sure if it would clean up or not. About an hour later, a guy drove up on a motorbike and told Suriani the jar had mystical properties. He said to take it home and put a piece of yellow cloth around it. If anybody in the house had bad dreams then to dispose of the jar. We took it home and it cleaned up rather well except for the paint inside. So nobody would have bad dreams, I placed it on the balcony.
Each lot had a place where a house had been torn down. Rubble and cement covered the ground. Anything and everything worth saving had been extracted from the houses. Most were not of any historical value. There were only two houses I wanted to save.
In the kampong when one of the children got married they usually built a place on the father’s land near the main house. Three or four of these smaller homes adjoined the larger house creating a small neighbourhood.
Two months ago, between bouts of Covid, I travelled over there to see how the destruction of the kampong was progressing. On the boat was a young man, about 25 or 26, very proud that he could speak English. He stated he received RM95,000 plus a new home for his shack. I peered over at the hovel and was amazed at the price he had received.
On the same trip, I met three generations of women who were very angry with the amount they received. I don’t know the amount but when they had to divide the amount by three, I understood. The inheritance law, such as it is, divided the ground by three people and the house, which was on the same ground, was inherited by someone else. Two months later, when I happened to visit them again by accident, they were pleased with what the government had given them and liked their new house over on Darul Hanna. I never understood why the new Kampong was called Darul Hanna. According to my research, Darul Hanna was in Santubong, miles from Kuching.
“Why were they tearing down the kampong?” I asked. Most told me they going to build skyscrapers on that side of the river as they had on the opposite side. Huge towering buildings some 24 stories high had been constructed and were rented out for people to live. We first lived on the top floor where only 2 out of five units were rented. When we wanted to rent the real estate agent took us to 35 units. I could not imagine any sane person building more rental units when Kuching was way overstocked. Someone told me they were going to build a walkway like the one in front of the Chinese section of town. I looked at the land along the river and decided that was not possible. At least in my lifetime. I am 71 and hope to make it to 91.
You see, the back gardens fronted the river and all sorts of waste were dumped into the river. Garden, fish and human was deposited there. Fishing boats lined the back riverfront portage. The front of the houses was located along the inner road where people the world over sat and greeted friends as they walked down the road.
They are going to build a museum in a tall concrete house up on a hill. According to the locals, the house was owned by the Minister of Women in Kuala Lumpur. I was trying to figure out who would visit being about 4 km from the nearest sampan landing point from the city. The closer points were only used by workers entering the city. It certainly was a long walk. Then I wanted to know what they were going to put in it.
As I said there are two houses I would like to save for historical reasons. They both have vertical boards on the side, and according to architectural friends, I know they are old. One is a house where it was said, the Japanese stayed during World War 2 and another was an ancient home. The world war home had beautiful paintings inside. You can see them on my website www.borneohistory.net4
I was looking for anything written that would be a clue to the area’s history. I figured since they were cleaning out the homes something would show up. Something was written in Malay or Jawi. Nothing did. I also talked to the oldsters and asked for any history they could remember. None did. Someone had told me there were many secrets in the kampongs held by the old people. But the old people were long gone taking their secrets to the grave.
The people all had secrets. Secrets they could not tell even my wife who spent the first thirty years of her life there. Origin secrets, secrets about mysticism and just general secrets not to be communicated to this white guy or his wife. I had always found people willing to talk about their knowledge of history. But not here.
We walked about 4 km along to the other end of Jalan Rajah Brooke. We asked old people along the way if they knew any history of the villages where they must have lived all their lives. They all knew somebody but they had died long ago. We bought some homemade Mee soup and some fried chicken for dinner that night and crossed the river to Mcdonald’s for lunch. In any case, after a generation, Kampong Panglima Seman Lama and Kampong Semarang will only be found in old books like mine, gathering dust on the shelves in the libraries.
To help save the two houses please send an e-mail to: pr*****@sa*****.my reference my website Borneohistory.net and write “save the two houses”.
