The Business Times: The Heritage Keepers; Syazwan Majid - Pulau Ubin's Custodian
SYAZWAN MAJID
Pulau Ubin's custodian
By: Tay Suan Chiang (5 Jul 19)
As a child, Syazwan Majid wasn’t entertained with fairy tales or nursery rhymes. Instead, his mother would tell him stories about kampung life in Pulau Ubin, where she grew up.
The stories used to irk the now 22-year-old who failed to see the relevance “given how I was growing up in modern Singapore in the 2000s.” But as he grew older, he began to appreciate his mum’s nostalgic pining for kampung life.
His mum, Noorriah Sulong, lived on Pulau Ubin for over 30 years before moving to the mainland in 1989. During the school holidays, the family made day trips to Pulau Ubin, when she would rent a tandem bicycle, and they would have a picnic by Chek Jawa before visiting former neighbours.
“It was mum’s vision of a kampung being her true home that sparked in me a desire to find this joy that she missed,” says Mr Syazwan, who made more frequent visits to the island in the last few years to learn more about his late grandparents and the family’s former home.
In 2018, he started an online journal to document his visits and interaction with Ubin residents.
He also set out to find 818K, the family’s old home. He succeeded after a few months with the help of old archival maps and speaking with residents. The wooden house had been abandoned for three decades, and only the foundation stones remained.
“Even then, I was so relieved and excited. I felt like I was reconnected to a heritage I had long been apart from,” he says. “I felt the same as my mum did at my age, and I felt a closeness to my grandparents just to be at the exact spot where they raised my mum and her siblings.” His mum was on the verge of tears when she saw that the house her father built from scratch was no more.
Mr Syazwan is now a Pulau Ubin community liaison officer, “engaging with the residents to find ways to improve their quality of life while advocating for the preservation of the rustic charm of kampung life,” he says.
He has also started a monthly cleanup exercise on the island with a group of volunteers, helping elderly residents to trim their yards and clear bulky refuse. “It’s the least I can do for them to help maintain the beauty of their kampung homes,” says Mr Syazwan.
“I hope that my journey of retracing my family heritage will inspire others to do the same,” he says. “Everyone has their own stories and it is in each of these stories that we’re able to build our own identity.”
See details of WUJ Kampong Clean-up at https://wansubinjournal.blogspot.com.
Read straight from the source at The Business Times!
--
Read more from the "Ubin In The News" series!
--
Like WUJ on Facebook!
Follow WUJ on Instagram!
Follow WUJ on Twitter!
Have any enquiries? Send an email to wansubinjournal@gmail.com
--
Come join me on Ubin as a volunteer to clean up our kampongs!
Comments
Post a Comment