Nothing But Memories: Somapah Village, Changi & The Old Singapore

My Dad, now 87, the kind of guy who took the time to learn a bit of the local lingo while in Singapore, and whose penchant for foreign languages I have inherited, was sad and nostalgic and told me he was envious when he learned that I was taking my son to Singapore last week. But I think he would be overwhelmed by the cityscape, and even more saddened by the last forty years or more of changes. Somapah has all but been demolished, in the mid nineteen eighties by all accounts, the local people, for better or for worse, ‘relocated’ to high rise flats in the nearby area of Tampines.

We made it out to Changi last Wednesday on the bus, which passes directly by our condo in Geylang, and thence to the relatively unchanged if somewhat de-populated Pulau Ubin, on a bum boat from Changi Jetty, where we cycled around the island. I could not, however, bring myself to visit what remains of Somapah Village, which by all accounts is a flattened wasteland with dead end streets.

From 1967 to 1970, we lived at number 10 Jalan Pergam, near Somapah, in a bungalow-style house allocated to my Dad, Corporal Cedric Webb of RAF Changi (I've since been told our street was in the area called 10 Mile- for more detailed information and a link to an old map of the area, see Stanley Ng's comments below this blog post).

My brother and I were born in Wales, when my  Dad was stationed there after signing up for the British armed forces, having left South Africa, restless and disillusioned with Apartheid, making his way around the Mediterranean as a steward on the Union Castle shipping line and finding himself in England with nothing better to do. The story goes that his companion, whose contract on the ships was also almost up and whose bright idea it was to sign up, twisted Dad’s arm into applying for the RAF, but flunked the entrance tests himself, whereas my half-hearted Dad was accepted!

 A lifelong lover of planes who had earlier in his life saved up and learned to fly small aircraft as a civilian,  Dad did stints at RAF Locking, RAF Valley (Anglesea Island Wales), Little Risington (Cotswolds, near Weston-Super-Mare) and finally RAF Changi in Singapore, before emigrating to Australia where Mum’s Anglo-Burmese-Indian family had settled some years earlier, 1949, after the second world war and India gained independence.

Mum meanwhile had trained as a nurse at Kalgoorlie Hospital and then headed to London to do some further midwifery training. They met at a dance in Coventry, where she worked for a spell as the infirmary nurse in a school for blind kids. The rest, as they say, is history.

I openly admit that my nostalgia for Singapore is influenced by the subsequent demise of the family, and my parents divorce. Our time in Singapore represents a time of relative privilege- although my working class Dad never flew and never got past the lowly rank of corporal, we were technically British ‘white folk’, who after all could afford an amah (housekeeper), at least by day. But more than that, it represents the halcyon pre-conflict days, when we were an  intact family and my parents were still in love, in a hot climate, in a land of many wonders.

 Anyway, memories of the Old 1960s Singapore, of Changi and Somapah, both the human landscape and the natural  landscape and coast around them, are indelibly etched into my psyche as something precious and never-to-be-repeated. This and my Mum's family background have deeply influenced my Asian-leaning sensibilities and my food preferences!

I will never forget wading out across the squelchy mudflats at low tide, watching small fish writhing asthmatically on  the naked seabed, small hermit crabs  scuttling to safety, molluscs burrowing frantically away from the marauding humans, ancient Rickety-legged Chinese women gathering these fruits of the sea in their pointy woven hats, smiling toothlessly and extending small maritime offerings when they spotted us kids. The underbellies of wooden boats exposed, marooned  on land until the waters returned at high tide.

Chasing small, yellow butterflies in the garden with filmy, gauzy green nets purchased at the bric-a-brac shop in the village; playing with local and other RAF kids in the deep monsoon drains which flanked the road. On one occasion, seeing something which looked like a leach, and my Dad having to be summoned to pluck my terrified four-year-old self out of the drain!

The various mobile vendors that visited: ‘The Barbit Man’, so named because of his spruiking cry as he rode past on the top heavy tricycle laden with buckets and brooms for sale; the bread  van, the back doors of which opened to reveal delicious delicacies;  eating sherbet bought from the mobile greengrocer, who also sold us kites which we flew on the green expanse at the end of our street;

The kampong directly opposite us with its coconut trees,  audible chickens and pig farm, and girls who let us taste their exotic rambutans; buying things in Somapah village and Changi; the loud and scary Chinese funeral processions down the main st (Changi Rd?).

Turbaned, bearded Indian wood carvers who paid house calls, spreading out their white sheet and demonstrating their craft on our tiled living room floor (my Dad still has small, carved teak 1960s style bedside lamp and a coffee table bought from them); Indian snake charmers skilfully luring mezmerized cobras out of baskets.

Dinners at the lantern-lit night market at the end of our street, where we would go to eat al fresco satay and nasi goreng and drink sugar cane and coconut drinks in ‘ju bags’- plastic bags fastened with a rubber band, like the sort of transit bag you get in Australia if you buy goldfish to take home.

Passing Changi Gaol (the white façade and guard posts have been transplanted but are still there, just as ominous) on the school bus, with all the kids chanting “Changi Gaol, Changi Gaol” to deal with our attraction-repulsion kind of fear.

Visiting my expectant Mum in Changi hospital with offerings of grapes and bananas, bought in a market, then excitedly coming home from kindergarten to meet my new baby sister.

Learning to swim at the Changi pool, where apparently I could not float, but would wiggle my bottom like a fish under water, and every so often be lifted out by Dad for a breath!

More grimly, I recall one of the kids in my brother’s Chinese classmates being either killed or maimed or blinded  by some sort of landmine planted in the vacant expanse of green at the end of the village where kids used to play. My parents were worried  for our safety after this, and certain places became off-limits.

Since returning home on Friday, I myself have been experiencing a wave of nostalgia and sadness. I’ve been surfing the ‘net hoping to find information about what happened to our house and our street. I've  found people- both ex-RAF and local Singaporeans- with similar sentiments about a Singapore ‘lost’ to modernity, ‘progress’ and development. The most detailed of these is an award-winning  blog by Singaporean Jerome Lim, who didn’t actually live in Somapah, but recounts his fond memories of holidaying there. Go here http:// for an interview with Jerome, and here for the actual blog complete with old photos (a similar one about Changi Village can also be found on his blogsite).

I also like the informative comment posted by Koh (details contested by other commentators) in  response to Jerome's Somapah account:

"Somapah started as a plantation in around 1850 when Mr H. Somapah, originally an India convict (due to some family dispute back in India), became rich in Singapore after his release and purchased many pieces of land in Singapore, one of which is Somapah (Changi). He passed on the land to his son W.L.S Basapah. Basapah was involved in a peculiar murder case in 1919; he killed his brother-in-law Ram Mohan Singh. You may read the story here. http://newspapers.nl.sg/Digitised/Article/straitstimes19191118.2.57.aspx. By the way, Basapah was later released.

The land (about 1000 acre of coconut plantation) was then purchased by the Quek brothers (郭巨川 Quek Kee Suan， 郭镜川 aka 郭新 Quek Shin). The Queks were originally poor. They helped out their father in tapioca plantation in Malacca. They later became rich. The Queks were prominant Hainese leaders in Singapore and Malaysia. They donated land in Somapah Village for Red Swastika School (www.redswastika.moe.edu.sg), Kwang Boo Martial Arts Association (http://guangwuwushu.com) and the Sinchew Hainanese Association, which are all located within the vincinity of the “market” in Somapah. Their contribution can be read here: http://www.hnszw.org.cn/data/news/2009/06/44019/ and http://www.hnszw.org.cn/data/news/2009/06/44022/.

I walked by these buildings everyday in the 70s and 80s."

Time for a slideshow I think. Dad used to inflict these on us, but now I want to see them. I want to convert all the old format slides into digital ones, as my unique contribution to documenting and preserving memories of a time that has passed, in a Singapore that no longer exists.



 

 Somapah village in the late '60s (Courtesy of  Singapore National Library

via Jerome Lim's blog The Long and Winding Road)