“You try everything that comes along and are always distracted. You have no focus and never finish anything......
That’s your big weakness and because of it, you will never go anywhere....”
Six years ago, jealous, controlling, narcissistic ex
boyfriend from hell shouted at me – because I was using the internet to look
for new job opportunities.
Six years ago, jealous controlling, narcissistic ex boyfriend
from hell spat, literally, at me - because I had allowed a male acquaintance to
touch my arm whilst saying goodbye after a dinner out:
“You are too open to other
people – it’s dangerous! And one day you are going to wake up with your legs
apart and you will realise that you have been fucked!”
When you are exhausted and sinking so low that you can’t
raise your head high enough to search for your own conviction, you grab the bad
advice offered to you as if it were a generous lifeline and fail to acknowledge
the small piece of good advice, a little bit of sense amongst the madness,
letting it slip through your fingers, disappearing, along with your
self-respect, into the depths of your now-confused world. And so, I chose to
close myself to others whilst continuing on a path that was increasingly
chaotic, actively choosing self pity, blame and anger over resolve, positivity
and self-belief.
“One for sorrow.....” I had reasoned, whilst deep down I no
longer believed that two was necessarily for joy. I knew that the two of us were standing
together yet were completely alone. Consequently,
it wasn’t long before I was unable to hold a single thought, focused or
otherwise, in my head at all.
When he spat in my face, I felt a pain like nothing I have
ever known before or since. It was as if he were spitting at my very being – at
everything that I am – the good and the bad. It was
a hundred times more painful than the time that he kicked me in the thigh as I
was sitting on the ground, putting my shoes on, after he ordered me to leave
the house in the middle of another fight. Because at least that time I was able
to stand up again and walk away on my own two feet.
Six years prior to that, Aunty Hendy had seen me off on my
new adventures in China with her customary humour and wisdom - a note with very
different words of advice: “Remember, if you walk around with your
mouth open, someone will feed you!”
Knowing Aunty Hendy, it might have meant any, or all, of the
following: “Don’t waste any opportunity
that comes your way”, “Smile and be open and people will be receptive to you”, “If
you don’t ask, you don’t get”, “Expect the best, trust that you deserve it, and
don’t be too proud to ask for help”, “Fight like hell for what you want”, “It’ll
all work out in the end”, “Be
resourceful, try anything – cheat if you have to!”, “If they don’t like it, bugger ‘em – someone will!”
How far I had strayed from what I had been taught. I wish I still had that note and hadn’t
carelessly let that too slip through my fingers. I would put it in my wallet as
a reminder to never forget myself again.
I should have given it to Mum for safe keeping. She keeps absolutely everything........
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“Why the bloody hell do you have a huge
box of unused soaps up here?!” I shouted down to my Mum who was looking up from
the attic stairs, through a small opening, into what can only be described as a tardis
where a huge amount, and all manner, of crap has been collected, hoarded and
put aside for a rainy day. It apparently
hasn’t rained for 20 years.
“Soaps get better as they age” she
reasoned, unconvincingly and with a knowing laugh.
“Yeah right, like off-milk is delicious”
“It is!
It’s called karne melk – yummy!”
she teased
“And there’s a big bag full of used xmas
paper here... can we chuck that at least?”
“No, we can reuse those”
“But they’ve been here for years and you‘ve
never reused them. Besides they are all
crumpled”
“I’d forgotten about them. And it’s ok if
they are crumpled... Hendy even irons hers!”
During my last trip to UK, I decided to
tackle the attic in search of old photographs for this blog. Just the day before I left to return to
Bandung, I finally emerged, filthy and slightly un-amused, with three boxes:
one of photos and two full of papers, drawings, telegrams, birthday cards,
notes and letters documenting our entire lives.
Having only enough time to go through one
box, I hurriedly stuffed some photos of interest into an envelope to take back
with me and left Mum – who hates mess as much as I create it – with all three
boxes sitting, like an additional three obstinate children, in her hallway. “I’ll go through it all at Xmas and put them
back in the attic Mum, I promise. We
might as well have a look – I’m sure there are some amusing things in there
from when we were kids”.
A month later, I received an excited Skype
call:
Waving a piece of paper in the air - out
of camera shot - she shrieked “Look at this!
It’s your Oma’s ID card and it’s dated 29th December 2602
[Japanese year which means 1942]. I
can’t read much of it but it says Tjihapit Camp on it and there’s an
address: 126 Riowstraat. There are a
couple of other documents here but it’s all in Indonesian or in Japanese. I’ll have to get Andrew to scan them to
you. He’s coming on Wednesday for
dinner. Darling, I have to go to Tai chi
now – call you soon.”
_______________________________________________________________________________________
Wandering around the Cihapit area, with a map of the old
Tjihapit camp and a modern map in my hand, feels all the more poignant because
I now know that they walked these same streets, under the outstretched,
protective, arms of the same sturdy Grandfather trees.
“We walked around in the camp, which was like a huge, leafy,
estate, wearing dresses made out of old sheets. Nothing was wasted – everything
had value and was reused and reincarnated time and again. Our dresses were tied with big bows at the
shoulder because Tikus, bless her, wasn’t very good at needlework! She was a
conversationalist, a linguist, very intelligent and extremely charming. That was her strength”.
Tjihapit Kamp (North and East section of this map). The gedek (bamboo and barbed wire fence,
marked by a dotted line) ran along Jl Riau (Riowstraat), Jl Ahmad Yami (Groote Postweg), Jl Cihapit (Tjihapitweg)
and Jl Supratman (Houtman straat); The
Southwest section is the Bloemenkamp, a camp for men and women who were deemed
useful to the Japanese administration –
and their families. Eventually the men
were sent away and the women were relocated to Tjihapit Kamp proper.
Walking south on Jl Riau, I approach the North Western
corner of what was the Tjihapit camp, arriving at number 125 which stands near
the intersection where Jl Cihapit meets Jl Riau. Eerily, a temporary fence, partially hiding a
small building site, runs North up Jl Riau and turns right onto Jl Cihapit in
exactly the same spot where the gedek once stood.
The builders respond to my curiosity with enthusiasm, posing
for photos and showing me around the site.
The building, I am told, is “keeping the old style”. In fact, part of the old house still stands,
and a newer, larger structure is being built around it. “Ada Hantu!”
I am then told. I know this word,
I have come across it many times already in Indonesia: “There are Ghosts!”.
Part of the old house at #125 still stands
One builder is making “ghost” actions with
his hands
In my head I am recalling Bart’s response when Boudewyn and I
had asked him his opinion about Mum and the executions that she said she had
seen over the gedek fence:
“ The [north western ]area of the camp was a favourite place for the Camp women to go
“biliken”, also called “gedekken”. It meant that Indonesian traders would
approach the fence and cut a hole in it, whereupon waiting camp women would buy
food and soap etc. in exchange for gold or jewellery [that they had managed to smuggle
in and hoard]. Afterwards, they would run away, but often the Japs and Hei-hos [Indonesian
guards] lay in waiting to arrest them: the women were taken to the Kempeitai
[Japanese military police], beaten, and returned with their heads shaved. What
happened to the trading Indonesians I don’t know, but it is possible they were
executed”.
I notice that there are some old, two storey buildings along
Jl Riau, the road along which ran the Western gedek wall, whilst almost all of the older buildings in
the area are bungalows. “We were told to
black out the windows on the 2nd floor so that we couldn’t see the
men being executed and thrown in the ditch. But we saw it anyway.” – Mum’s
statement no longer seems so unlikely.
On the opposite side of the road I expect to find number 126
– but strangely the number is way off.
A small group of becat drivers are sitting, casually, in the
back of their vehicles, lazily smoking Gudang Garam clove cigarettes.
Apart from a few of the main roads, most of this area is
un-harassed by Bandung’s noisy and obnoxious Angkots (minivans), and becats are
still used by some locals to get around.
I decide that Pak Pandon, from Garut, who has the friendliest face and
biggest laugh, will be my companion, and hopefully guide, for the day.
We proceed South down Jl Riau in the direction of number
126. After around 700 metres, we reach
the gated semi-circular Pramuka park – previously named the Orangeplein and
where the camp gates used to be, opposite which I find number 126 - now a pizza
hut. It stands diagonally opposite a
tall, colonial-era building, now housing The British Institute (TBI). This was the old Japanese office, just
metres away from Chinook bar where the “BBC” gig had been held not so long
ago.
Inside the TBI / Japanese office building
Whilst the house opposite 125 would have been just outside
the camp, 126 as it stands today would have been within the Bloemenkamp, directly
opposite Tjihapit and separated only by the gedeks and by Jl Riau.
Some daring young women used to cross from Tjihapit into Bloemenkamp
to “visit” friends via one of the selokans (open drains that became used for
sewage and waste disposal due to the deterioration of public services during the Japanese occupation). Others, via another selokan that emerged
outside the camp, volunteered to get medicine and food for the very sick and
also to try to deliver messages to friends of internees who might have still
been on the outside.
“Paying
a visit. Riowstraat Tjihapit Kamp; Riowstraat Bloemenkamp”
Jl Riau Tjihapit side 2012
This selokan, to the West of the Pramuka park ends up on the other side
of Jl Riau, at the edge of the Bloemenkamp.
Bart continued:
“Through the [larger] creek/sewer running into the camp underneath the
Tjimanoek street [and the Tjiliwoeng St, not far from jl Riau / jl Cihapit],
occasional brave smugglers would enter the camp and deliver food to people they
had been referred to”.
“My mother was one of these. The men came in the middle of the night,
stark naked, their skin rubbed with coconut oil (to make their arrest
difficult!), rapped on the window and deposited their heavy “bukusans” in our
little room on the Brantasstraat. My mother gave them jewellery and they
disappeared into the night again. If people like these were caught they were
executed, so they told my mother”.
Tjiliwoengstrasse Selokan. Views
from both sides. Today a white wall stands in the same place as the gedek would
have been, as shown in the above drawing by Oliemans-Statius
Muller J. http://www.geheugenvannederland.nl
The selokan still runs underneath
the road at the end of the narrow Cibeunying park and the same two trees, one
on either side, are clearly distinguishable
Anneke Bosman, 16 years old when interned in Tjihapit, wrote in her
diary:
“When [men] (from our army) visit
the [area of the] camps, the Japs, with their bayonet on their rifles, always
accompany them. Once in a while, they
punch with those knives through the [bamboo gedek or] bilik to scare away those
women standing there trying to get a glimpse of their men. Once, someone had put a pair of shoes right
under the [gedek]. Soon they arrived.
The jap noticed the noses of the shoes and thought: “Ahh!” and started
shouting in his own funny language that they had to move away from there. Thereafter, he punched vigorously through the
[gedek]. The shoes stayed there. So he punched and he punched again....
Finally he grabbed the shoes and noticed that nobody was in them. Angrily he threw them over the fence. We had a good laugh.”
The following warning was posted on
the bulletin boards within the camp: “Do
not climb trees or on roofs in order to speak with men of the 15th
battalion [working outside the camp wall]” (From
Tjideng Reunion by Boudewyn Van Oort)
There are references also to men being sent to work within the Karees
women and children’s camp nearby: Anak
Bandung recounts the following story on the BBC People’s War website forum:
“In the beginning some men were
allowed occasionally into the enclosure to do some repairs and when that happened
the women were ordered to turn their backs towards them to prevent any
contact. One day my mother recognised
one of the men walking past her. From the corner of her eye she saw him
throwing a crunched up piece of paper at her feet. Surreptitiously, [....]..
she knelt down to pretend to adjust her shoelaces to pick it up. Below follows the anonymous poem dedicated
“to all the decent women in the Dutch Indies”:
[.............] We see their shoulders held up straight
despite the war waged against them
and the language of these women’s eyes
stills our heart and touches deeply.
For by their courageous and hard work
amidst this dire, darkest hour,
they mean to strengthen us as well!
That is powerful, that is great!
Oh, if we would only realise this
and also really comprehend,
then a debt arises
that never can be settled.
Now nothing more does rest us
than do our tasks, small they may be
compared to theirs. Yes, we shall,
we must be worthy of Her.
They ask us not to fail them
whatever life may throw at us.
…that debt, we will have to repay
once we are outside again.
We must give what they ask for
and stay United, Courageous and Faithful.
God, willst Thou support the vigour
of our strong and brave Women!"
Both Mum and Aunty Hendy have talked
about Max, a very sweet and gentle young Dutch man who would somehow manage to “throw little parcels of food over the gedek”
for little Henny and Lottie and their mother Tikus. They knew him while they were on the outside
and they think that he was somehow linked to my Oma’s dear Indonesian friend
whom she nicknamed Moesje.
At some point, he was sent to work,
digging within their camp, not far from the garden of the house in which my
family occupied a single tiny room – their little nest where they watched over
and protected their remaining few belongings.
Hennie and Lottie would stand with their backs to him and pretend to
talk to each other whilst receiving and delivering messages – messages they
believe were between Tikus and Moesje, who remained at liberty.
Such was the impression of his courage
and kindness that the two sisters always believed that it was because of what
he did for them that he was “forced to do hard labour in the camp”. It is possible however that it was his
internment in a nearby camp, and the work that he was sent to do within their
camp, that gave him access to help them in the first place during that early
period of internment when the camps were still “Civilian” rather than “Prisoner
Of War” and weren’t yet under a formal Military regime - before everything got
unimaginably worse. Whatever the chronology of these events, the inevitable did
happen - a savage contempt that struck the disbelieving eyes of two young girls
like a bullet, fragmenting a guilty memory that has lasted for 70 years:
“The Japs got him and
they put a hose in his mouth, forcing fast water down his throat. They continued for a long time, holding him
down. And then one of them jumped on
his stomach”.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Riding along, the chicken and the duck comfortably vocalise two parallel inner dialogues. By now Pak Pandon is resigned to the fact that
I’m not quite normal. Pak Pandon, who is
a little bit wide, has accompanied me to jump over a locked park gate in search
of an empty hole in the ground; He has
made a surprisingly quick getaway after I am ordered out of the Military
barracks I wonder nonchalantly into; He
has waited patiently for me to take photos of street signs, builders and other
people’s homes; He has watched with a little confusion whilst I survey drainage
systems; He has heard snippets of curious stories about Dutch ghosts and a
Japanese prison; And he has followed me hesitantly into the homes of two random
strangers for a cup of tea and a bit of a natter.
If I didn’t have the old camp map, (provided by Anneke
Bosman and adapted by Boudewyn for his book “Tjideng Reunion”) to help me
locate the Orangeplein and the Japanese office, if I hadn’t known already about
the selokans, there would be no sign that anything ever existed here other than
the nice residential neighbourhood that I see today.
I look for the signs.
I see a palang (barrier) and guard hut at the end of Jl Jamuju and assign them, immediately, a wicked past. In fact their purpose is merely to keep the people inside safe and the streets quiet at night.
Hut and “palang” (barrier) at the end of
Jalan Jamuju- the street that runs south from the former Houtman Plein. The gedek ran just in front of the long
building opposite, where Jl Jamuju meets Jl Anggrek (Orchideelaan) before
turning a corner, North, onto Jalan Supratman (Houtmanstrasse).
My Oma’s nickname, TIKUS, echoes repeatedly off the
concrete walls – but merely as advertisements for “Electronic Mouse Repellent Appliances”.
My heart jumps when I see a sign with the word “Jepang”
and I imagine how their hearts would have jumped whenever they saw a Japanese
soldier riding his bike along the streets of Tjihapit.
But the sign is simply advertising courses in
Japanese!
I find it impossibly difficult to reconcile this place with
what it once was. How
could such a lovely place be so cruel?
How can such a cruel place appeal to me so thoroughly?
Within Anneke Bosman’s Diary I find a similar contradiction
: “The weather is beautiful now: blue
skies, white clouds, a gentle breeze, a slowly setting sun and the trees of the
Bengawanlaan, that carry such a nice green foliage, that it just looks like
spring”.
“Halo mister!” “Ke
mana?” strangers ask us. Pak Pondon
answers with a chuckle and a shrug “tidak tahu” “I have no idea where we are
going”. I continue my quest to find
someone, anyone who can tell me something about the camp.
The guys who run the Delmans for kids around Jl Cimanuk don’t
know......
Three generations of women on Jl Rasamala don’t know.......
Evita on Jl Salem (De Rijpwijk) doesn’t know, but invites me in for a cup of tea
anyway.........
The snack seller (oleh oleh Bandung!), outside the busy fashion boutiques on Jl Kamuning
doesn’t know.......
The coffee "shop" guy doesn't know....
The
Mobile Monkey man I meet on Jl Pasang - who travels around entertaining the kids – doesn’t know....
The
young people I meet certainly wouldn’t know.............
The children who play here so happily.....
And the children who work here, with smiles just as big, shouldn’t know about such things.
No one seems to have any idea what is beneath here, what ghosts
might walk these lanes. How can they
not know? Did no one care to remember?
An answer can be found amongst the evocative words of an
ancient Javanese prophecy (The Joyoboyo Prophecy) which describes, with stunning
accuracy, a predestined course and willed outcome that would have overshadowed
all other considerations:
For ten generations a great white buffalo will plough the rice fields
of Ismoyo (Java). This will be a time of
suffering and deep sorrow. When the people have finally accepted the Divine
Will as their own, God, in his mercy, will send them an ally. A little yellow monkey from the island of
Tembini will rule over Ismoyo for the life of one maize plant. Only then will
Ismoyo return to its people, to its right rulers, to the sons of the earth*.
(*From “The Forgotten
Ones” by Shirley Fenton Huie )
Some might argue that we need to keep the memory alive,
to ensure that it doesn’t happen again – isn’t that why we make these
pilgrimages? I have continued to follow the discussions on
the BBC’s People’s War Forum where a group of formerly interned children, now
in their 70s and 80s and scattered all over the world, tell their tales – and
those of their parents. What is it in
our nature that drives them to relive and me to seek and read their stories? Why, when for so many years they blocked it
out in favour of “just getting on with life” are they here, now, helping each
other to navigate new technologies, to chat to each other, to connect? http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ww2peopleswar/stories
“Rose of Java”, chatting to “Anak Bandung” reasons: “The mental torture that comes with
consciousness would have come later in life”.
However, what
strikes me is how readily they move on to discuss lighter memories - Javanese
treats, the odd word in Bahasa, funny stories about settling into a new culture
in NZ, Australia, USA, UK or Canada - as well as the present: their families,
their daily lives, their hopes and frustrations, their forgotten Dutch. And I am amused and heartened to see that
their fighting spirit remains very much intact:
“What you
think, are we taking up too much space here on this site?” “We can take
as much space writing as we want. If they throw us out, we can e-mail!”
This place is living, breathing, evolving. It’s not lost. It’s not for nothing. It’s not some macabre
prison site. It tells you that life goes
on, things get better. Tomorrow’s
another day, as my Mum always says.
As the war progressed, the Japanese
position weakened and a renewed fear of allied attacks meant that air raid
sirens started to be heard again. On
the sites where meagre rations of unpalatable boiled rice, sajur and starch or
thin, tasteless soup were doled out from makeshift kitchens carefully, each
portion strictly controlled from an ever dwindling supply, now the call to
prayer from a Mosque at the end of Jl Saninten competes with one on Jl Mangga
at the other end of the camp, echoing those siren sounds. It’s 3:15pm – time for the Asr prayer - and by
now Pak Pandon and I have parted ways.
Mangga Kitchen (now a mosque), not far from
which the old Ellenbroek Bakery
still stands. Instigated by the internees themselves, the Bakery was reopened to make and distribute bread.
This part of the gedek marks the Southwestern corner of Tjihapit, where Jl Riau
(Riowstraat) meets Jl Ahmad Yami (Groote Postweg)
Jl saninten, site of another former
makeshift kitchen (now a mosque), near jalan Rasamala, Jl Bengawan, Jl Manglit
and Jl Kihiur. The gedek delimits the
North Eastern boundary of the camp, where Jl Cihapit runs south onto Jalan
Supratman.
In this area, the houses
are smaller, more densely compacted.
A middle
aged woman is pushing a bicycle out of the gate of a small house on Jl Kihiur.
She sees me hesitate,
looking up at the buildings and down to my notebook. I turn to look at her and I smile and
introduce myself. She asks me whether I
need help. I slowly communicate my
purpose in simple English. Without
hesitation, Maria tells me to wait and disappears into the house again,
mentioning that she has a friend who has lived here a long time, who moved to
Tjihapit in 1945 from Cimahi. Five
minutes later, she emerges and starts to push her bike again down Jalan Kihiur whilst
another, older lady, dressed comfortably in a long dress and sandals, is locking
her front gate. “Come. We are going to walk” the older lady says to
me in Dutch. As Oma Korry accompanies
me to Maria’s house and we turn left onto Jl Baros, I record the following video. When I ask about her father, she suddenly
turns her face to look intensely into the camera. Her unexpected words stun me:
“Achter”, “behind”, behind the gedek...
She must be referring to one of the
men’s internment centres (15th battalion Barracks, Anti Aircraft
Artillery Barracks, Dick De Hoog School, Tjikoedapateuh...) that dotted the
periphery of the Tjihapit camp.
“So before
you lived in Cimahi?”
“Yes, with my
Mother”
“And your
father?”
“My father
was ACHTER (behind), here in the kamp”
“In the
Kamp?”
“Yes, he was
taken prisoner because he was in the Military”
“ So this
area was the kamp?”
“Yes,
kamp..... Tjihapit Kamp... “
“And
around... bamboo?”
“Yes, around
with bamboo... “
“It was a big
area, no?”
“It went all
the way around, from Cihapit, round to Supratman Street....... very big”.
I have stumbled upon an aspect of
the war on Java whose consequences I have not yet considered: The local military
men, the Indonesian KNIL
(Royal Dutch military), who fought and suffered alongside their Dutch comrades
and whose stories – and those of their families - are very little documented.....
.....If
you walk around with your mouth open, someone will feed you.
Over Italian coffee and chocolate
biscuits, bits and pieces of three different languages manage to find some common
understanding: “Other people don’t seem
to know anything” I tell her. “I have
walked around all day, asking almost everyone I have met and no one has any
idea about the camps. Except you”.
“Tidak tahu”, she tuts, shaking her head and waving her
hand, “Zy weten het niet”.
They don’t know.
“Those with [the magpie as] totem[animal] often find that their
interests are varied which makes master ship of any one thing difficult,
although not impossible”*
I refuse
- weakness or not, distraction or otherwise - to shut out, without at least a
moment of curious consideration, the chatter of my magpie mind. With all the focus I can muster, I am getting
closer to completing my search and feel privileged by the openness and receptiveness
of everyone I have met so far along the way.
___________________________________________________________________________-
*
(Sarah Messina – Animal Communicator)
