My Mom Has Returned Home

Hi all!

For now, I will just share with you guys what happened last Sunday. It perhaps might be one of the most important or significant day in my mom's life. But first, a super brief summary to provide a sense of background knowledge.

My mom was born and raised in Pulau Ubin till she reached her twenties. Following the death of her father in 1981, life has been gradually difficult to cope on the island, eventually leading to a necessary shift to the mainland in the hopes of a better life in 1989. In doing so, the house has been left abandoned on its own accord, without any external influences. Since then, my mom has never been back home ... till July 23rd, 2018.

A quick side note: I have in fact found the house earlier back in April 22nd, 2018 together with the help of my colleagues from National Service (NS). However, my mom has not yet been brought to the area due to her health and also because of the rough terrain and dense forestation. I will be writing about this in a later post!

I regret not having this blog created much much earlier so that I can bring you guys along on the latest developments, but I hope you may forgive me as I break this blog up into different sections and stories but not in a chronological timeline. Hopefully, when all the past events have been told, I can stick it back to a chronological manner.

On Sunday morning, my mom and I woke up early to prepare ourselves for the big day. By 7.30 a.m., we left the house to catch the bus to Changi Village. Upon reaching the bus terminal, we decided to head down to the hawker centre to hopefully buy some goreng pisang or kuehs, but the stalls were not yet opened even when it's 8 a.m. on the dot. Instead, we just went back to the provision shop nearest to the terminal, and bought ourselves some bread and a small bottle of mineral water, so that the load wouldn't be too extreme when we were to trek into the forests later on.

We noticed that there was quite a crowd when we made our way down to the ferry terminal, mostly consisted of cyclists and people decked in fishing gear. Fortunately, the wait was not too long this time round and we hopped on to a pretty huge and spacious bumboat - in fact it was my first time riding such a boat; and that's coming from someone who has been a frequent traveller to the island lately! As we approached the island, my eyes were glued on the numerous waving national flags on the jetty as the entire island prepares itself to celebrate Singapore's 53rd National Day in the weeks to come.

When we reached Pekan Ubin just after stepping out of the jetty, we heard someone shouting "Selamat Pagi! Selamat Pagi!" at us. Considering the fact that there were pretty much no other Malays around us, we were quite certain it was aimed at us. As I would have suspected, that familiar voice was that of Cik Azman Hamid's.

Cik Azman is a person whom I've met and became close friends with on the day when I uncovered the remnants of my late grandparents' house. He is an extremely friendly and helpful person. He works as a taxi driver on the island, ferrying lots of people to and from the jetty to whichever destinations they would like on the island. More info about this uncle in a later post, too!

He informed us that Nenek Piah, the wife of Pak Ahmad, was unwell and has returned back to the mainland to stay over at their son's house in Punggol to recover and that Pak Ahmad was still at home on the island. My mom and I agreed to pay Pak Ahmad a visit later on our way back to the jetty.

Pak Ahmad and Nenek Piah are among the most prominent Malay residents on Pulau Ubin, and in fact play a crucial and huge role in my Ubin adventures. More posts in the future will definitely be involving them. Perhaps, I might even create an entire post describing who Pak Ahmad and Nenek Piah are.

We rented our bicycles from the usual store and rode our way down our usual path to the house, however we decided to take a detour right into the path where I would name it Jalan Sungei Durian as it was just an earth trail that led to the houses in Kampong Sungei Durian. In fact, my mom and I have never travelled down this path before in our numerous getaway trips to the island - so it was a first!

We came across many houses, many of which my mom had a hard time remembering, but when we came across a pakcik along the trail, he reminded her of who they were and it soon struck her head. All those houses belonged to her friends and neighbours, and she would know all of them; despite living so far away from where her house was! This just proves the point that people in Pulau Ubin knows everyone. I managed to snap a picture of one of the houses, and we believed it to belong to a person called Rahmat Bin Yusof.

Rahmat Bin Yusof's house is painted in a beautiful shade of red, I was afraid to take a closer look as the windows were opened, meaning to say the owners might be inside.

We came across five complete sound and firm houses along the path and we finally came back to the main road, Jalan Durian. As we passed by Kelichap Hut and went uphill, I came across a family of three who were sitting down of the path with their legs stretched forward. I was a little worried for them and asked them if they were alright, and with a huge smile on their faces, they replied that they were just taking a break from all their constant cycling uphill. I was glad to know that they were fine and we then brought our bicycles past Cik Asiah's house, which has been cordoned off with a green zinc fence by NParks. My only guess for it could have been due to the recent asbestos scare when they found traces of it in some of the houses on the island - but I cannot confirm this.

Playing safe, we kept ourselves a fair distance away from the fence and we walked around it as the way to enter to my late grandparents' house was by going through the back. We had to go down the steep dirt slope filled with sea shells and cut through the trees. My mom picked up a fallen branch and used it as a walking stick as we make our way to the house. After about two minutes navigating around the vines and spider webs, my mom's nearly three decades long absence has come to an end.

My mom has returned home.

My mom seen standing inside the kitchen area. The cemented perimeter of the house was the only remains that we could remember by for the house.

Oh and also the well, which till this day still has a lot of water and was seen to be clear.

The tempayan which was just discovered on that day itself at the back of the house. Apparently my mom told me that there were quite of few of these water container pots at their home back then.

We also cleared lots of leaves and debris, reestablishing the path that once led to her home. In the background, the notorious pokok gawa, an important landmark and wayfinder for anyone who wants to know where my late grandparent's house was. It is still standing tall and strong!

My grandparents grew a lot of trees, most famously was the sireh tree plantation the size of a small football field at the back of the house uphill leading to the rubber tree plantation. But while the sireh and rubber trees are no more, the curry leaves survived the test of time!

What you see right here is where my grandparents' house used to stand. What remained today is a sign of the power of nature and time. The house is no more, but the memories continue to remain strong, perhaps even stronger after my mom has reconnected to the place she loved the most in all of Singapore.

I pledged to return again with the intention of clearing the leaves and debris from inside and around the house, making it clean again and to also reestablish the path, at least from where we drop from that sea shell slope to the house itself.

To end off the historic reconnection between my mom and her birthplace, we headed down to Pak Ahmad's house as initially planned and drank from his coconuts. 

We had a casual conversation over the well-being of Nenek Piah and also about plans to rebuild the house. He affirmed to us that he strongly supported the idea of rebuilding the house, but informed us that it was going to be extremely difficult to get NParks to approve, given their current rules and regulations since they have taken over the entire island two years ago.

Nonetheless, we must remain optimistic and push on to achieve our dreams and ambitions, and Pak Ahmad has given his blessings too. In fact, a lot of the former residents that I have become acquaintances with too has given me their undying support, encouragement and blessings to persevere in having the dreams of rebuilding the houses back on the island.  Their hopes and dreams are the same as mine, and I do not wish to disappoint. I will, in whatever way I can and respectfully, push for the rebuilding of not just my late grandparents' house, but the entire lost village of Kampong Surau in the long run. Together, we can make Pulau Ubin thrive again.

UPDATE: There's a new post right after this one, and it's chronological! Click here for the next story!