The demolition of those villages foreshadowed our own fate. Our hearts were in our mouths. Much as we looked forward to the idea of a home where there was electricity, running water and a flush toilet, we were not sure how we would cope with not having our village, the sense of space, the ease of camaraderie with our neighbours and our way of life. How could we have a similar way of life in a block of concrete flats?
“It won’t be long before they reach our kampong,” Pak Osman said. “Our attap houses are doomed. They are terrible fire hazards. Remember the great fire at Bukit Ho Swee? Plus, only one family can live in one attap house. But if they build it out of concrete and stack them up, the same space can house 10 to 20 families!”
“I love our kampong, but that does make sense actually. Especially with our growing population,” Uncle Krishnan said, always the loyal civil servant. “If we want better living conditions, then it’s inevitable that we have to eventually move lah!”
“I certainly would find it more comfortable in my old age to have a flush toilet,” Pak Osman agreed. “But I don’t know if I can adjust to living in a flat.”
“But I don’t want to live so far off the ground!” Nenek Bongkok cried. “If God wanted us to live so high up, he would have given us wings!”
Nenek was the Malay word for grandmother and was also an honorific for very old ladies. As her spine was curved very badly, she earned the moniker of bongkok. Nenek lived in a one-room attap hut where she sold her delicious dry white bee hoon, mee siam and nasi lemak from her front room-cum-kitchen; its floor was mud-packed. She cooked all the food on a dapur arang or coal stove and its smoke would drift into her windowless bedroom.
Mr Yap, Suhaimi and Ananda from the PA visited us again, this time not to tell us about recruitment of our young men for NS, but to tell us about the numerous jobs waiting for us at the factories at Kallang Basin nearby. Many of the factories making shoes, clothes or parts for cameras and various goods had assembly lines, and they needed unskilled workers, whom the businesses were prepared to train.
“No need to be educated!” Mr Yap said in Hokkien, as Suhaimi and Ananda translated into Malay and Tamil respectively. “A little bit of English helps, but as long as you can work, they want you! They need you! Very good pay! 30 cents an hour! If you work 8 hours, you will take home $2.40 cents a day. Every month, you will get at least $84! More if you work overtime. The factories need men and women, machine operators, assembly line workers, supervisors, janitors and jagas. They are going to work round the clock. If you work the graveyard shift, the companies will take you home in their buses, so no worries about walking home in the dark by yourself.”
“Wah!” one young lady said. “Got transport as well as money!”
“But Mr Yap,” one clever villager remarked. “I thought there is a law that prevents women from working after midnight?”
“Yes, yes, that was last year,” Mr Yap said. “But that law has been changed. Our country is rapidly developing so we need everyone who can work to be working.”
The news created a happy buzz in our village. People who had no hope to earn money before were suddenly showered with a sunshine of opportunities.
“Phine! I can go and work!” Fatima said excitedly to me. “I can earn my own money! But I need to persuade my parents to let me. What about you? Do you want to work in the factory?”
“I was about to tell you that I have passed my exams and have got my Senior Cambridge Cert. I’m going to apply to be some kind of nurse,” I said. “I’ve got an interview with the Public Service Commission (PSC) next month.”
At this period, most girls took up shorthand so that they could become secretaries. But the course cost money which I didn’t have. In any case, I did not want to become a secretary.
I wanted a job where I was not stuck in an office. I wanted to be of service to the sick and needy. I had to earn money for the family.
All over the country, teenage girls and boys, women and men, crawled out of their homes in droves to start work in the various manufacturing factories around the island. Our villagers also found work in the staff canteens, selling noodles, nasi lemak and other foods during the meal breaks. Suddenly, any able-bodied person from the village was no longer unemployed. There were jobs for everyone. Prime Minister Lee’s plan was working. We had jobs, so we had food in our belly. Since they say that a hungry man is an angry man, we had no need to be angry anymore. The companies sent out the more skilled workers and better educated individuals to their home bases in Germany, France, UK and US to train as supervisors, production engineers, quality control managers, et cetera. These people would then train others when they returned. The revolution had begun. The process of our country’s progress had started.
Life in the kampong invariably changed. Pandora’s Box had been opened.
The old languid way of doing things, wandering about the village with time on people’s hands, was becoming a thing of the past. Except for homemakers and caretakers, the other villagers were now cycling and walking faster, their strides long with the determination to get to work. This was inevitable; the tide of change could not be stopped. Swarms of people
