7
Floating Pork!
Waking up on the train was a bit of a blur. It was still pitch black outside, but you could tell it was dawn – that weird in-between time. Getting to Bahau felt just as crazy as leaving Singapore. It was all "hurry up and wait," which is basically my least favorite thing. And to make matters worse, little Kenny, who'd been tearing around with the other kids, had managed to lose one of his shoes on the train. So, while everyone else was trying to grab their bags and get off, I was on my hands and knees in the dark, feeling around for this stupid shoe. Eventually, I found it, thank goodness, and we finally got all our stuff unloaded.
As it turns out, our new "home" was still a solid eight kilometers away, deep in the jungle. It was called Fuji-go, which meant Fuji Village, named after the famed Japanese mountain. They said there would be trucks to take us the rest of the way to our home, which sounded great.
Except, of course, the dirt road was a complete mud bath. After only three kilometers, the trucks just... stopped. Stuck. So, we had to walk the remaining five kilometers, lugging everything we owned. Seriously, our entire lives were in those bags. Luckily, we managed to hire a bullock cart for Mum – she was carrying baby Roy, bless her – and we piled our giant mountain of belongings onto it.
Bahau was super hilly, so we were constantly trudging up one side of a muddy hill and sliding down the other. As the oldest, it was my job to keep all the younger kids in line, and I had a special eye on Kenny, making extra sure he didn't lose another shoe to the mud.
On either side of the road, the Malayan jungle just swallowed everything. It was so dark and imposing, and you could hear monkeys calling from somewhere deep inside, hidden by the thick trees. We'd been told there were wild elephants, deer, wild boars, and like, a million types of snakes. They even said the odd tiger roamed around. It felt less like we were just walking down a country road and more like we were stepping back in time. All the bright lights and bustle of Singapore suddenly felt light-years away.
I have no idea how long it took us to walk those last few kilometers, but we finally made it to Fuji-go. It was literally in the middle of nowhere. The settlement itself was tiny and so crude, just rough timber huts with thatched roofs. It was honestly a pretty depressing sight. Definitely not the "rosy picture of country bliss" the Japanese had been selling.
The village had a small administrative office in the center, and a little sentry outpost with a few Japanese soldiers. They mostly just left us alone, which was a relief. There was also a cluster of buildings for the nuns (a convent!) and another for the Catholic brothers and priests. They even had a small clinic. I didn't notice it at the time, but right behind the clinic was this empty patch of land. That space, I later found out, was reserved for a cemetery. And it would soon be filled with so many little white crosses.
Locals from Bahau and another town called Kuala Pilah were there, supposedly to greet us. They'd parked their old cars and rusty pickup trucks by the side of the road, ready to sell us veggies, chickens, and pretty much anything else you could think of. While they seemed friendly enough, I couldn't help but wonder what they truly thought of us. Behind their big smiles, I bet they figured none of us city-slickers from down south had a prayer of surviving out here in this desolate wilderness. Maybe they just saw us as an easy way to make a quick buck, and honestly, who could blame them? Everyone was just trying to get by, and our struggle was only just beginning.
They crammed us into these big communal longhouses, called bangsals, which were supposed to be temporary until our own house was built. We also had to wait for our plot of land to be sorted out. Luckily, Uncle Orgie – he was sort of the head of our family – had already arranged for some local Chinese carpenters to build our new home. They'd been working on it for weeks, so the wooden house was almost finished by the time we got to Bahau. Uncle Orgie wouldn't be staying with us because he still had a good job back in Singapore. But in the months that followed, he’d visit often, bringing us essential food, seeds for planting, and much-needed cash. He was literally our only lifeline to the outside world.
Just like the train, the longhouses were packed. Seriously, you practically slept head-to-head with total strangers. Each one held about 50 people. Like other families, we’d arrange our bags around us to create a sort of mini-wall, guarding our precious little space. With so many boys around, Mum made sure my sister Noreen and I stayed well protected in the middle of our family huddle when we slept.
One of our neighbors in the longhouse was the Oehlers family, who were really nice. The dad was a dentist, and they had a baby with them, plus two surprisingly well-behaved dogs. Even as cramped it was, everyone really tried to get along. I remember one of the young boys there, Andrew Deans, used to run little errands for Mum, which was very helpful.
Because the longhouses were so squished, there was no way for families to cook their own meals. So, the Japanese provided food initially. At mealtimes, we would all sit in rows, and someone would dish out our portions. It was usually just rice in this really watery soup. If you were lucky, you’d get a tiny bit of pork thrown in – usually just a thin slice of meat attached to a big, tasteless glob of fat. Someone would always yell out, "Eh! Floating pork!" and we’d all laugh. It seemed pretty funny at the time, but we had no idea then that any kind of meat, even "floating pork," was about to become an absolute luxury.
For bathing, we just had rainwater collected in these big, hand-dug ditches. Fuji-go did have some wells with clear water, but those were strictly for drinking. Junior told us this hilarious story he’d heard about the drinking wells. He said no one liked bathing in the muddy ditch water because you ended up dirtier after than when you started. So, one night, a boy, Roland Cornelius, decided to use the well outside the brothers' and priests' home. No one was around, so he stripped down and was happily soaping himself when, of all people, the bishop himself walked by! Roland was apparently bowing and apologizing repeatedly while trying to cover himself at the same time. He still got a stern telling-off from the bishop for wasting precious drinking water!
Thankfully, we didn't have to stay in the longhouse for too long. It was only about a week after we arrived that our own house was ready. Finally, we were about to see our new home, and I honestly couldn't wait to settle into something more permanent. From the center of Fuji-go, it was another 15-minute walk to our plot of land. And then, after everything we had gone through, we were finally, actually home!
