'Sudah Balek Kampong'

Many years ago, after my own family left me, together with losing my businesses and farm, I had ended up in London.
There I met a delightful Malay lady and her husband, Scottish of course, and family, because I greeted her in her own language,  we have remained very close ever since.
She 'adopted me' into her family.
For those last ten years, in London, I had found the love of my life, and luckily had a wide circle of friends in the arts and theatre world.
All this too came to a sad end.
So, one day ‘mama’ gave me the order to stop complaining about life in general, and put me on a plane to go and live on Langakwi. I could only just remember where this was.
They had been coming here for many years and had a lot of friends, who might help look after me as well!!

If anybody wanted to know……
I was born, third generation, in Hong Kong, and was educated at a Public School in England.
I seem to remember being forced to learn Latin, then of course French the language of the 'diplomat' , which many were expected to follow. At one point German was added as an alternative...
During National Service in The Royal Navy I was very fortunate to be commissioned as an officer, if only an insignificant Midshipman. Luckily I was favoured by being sent to Hong Kong and was able to see my uncles and old family connections. My uncle a Commissioner of Police and very famous, spoke many Chinese dialects, and was disgusted at my not being fluent in Cantonese.
Soon after I was transferred to Singapore and spent two fascinating years, 1956/57on the Admiral Far East Staff, and in Naval Intelligence. As it happens I did spent a very short time on a very dangerous mission against the Communists, into the jungles of Malaya.
 
So just to point out, I was here just before 'Merdeka'.!!!

I returned in early 1959 as an Assistant Manager, to try to become a 'Planter', to a rubber estate in North Pahang, so still had to avoid the Communists again... 
Then I was luckily soon sent to a safer place up the Samak River in Perak, to learn to be an Oil-palm Planter, on one of the original oil-palm estates in Malaya.  It was the first estate after the war to clear jungle to plant new oil-palm, an interesting task, which I got lumbered with!.

In those days we all were forced to learn to speak Tamil, on the plantations, very difficult
However I spent my first year in a swamp jungle with a very nice young Malay from a local kampong, who gave me help in learning the Malay language, and taught me a great deal about the ways of the jungle. In addition I was privileged to meet with a group of Temiar, the famous aborigines, who from time to time lived at the back of the estate. They taught me amazing things about the origins of life in jungle, which I will never forget.
But then I am prejudiced. I heard at the time of an Englishman, called Pat Noone, who studied these incredible people, but disappeared during the great war against the Japanese. Thirty years later I found a book that gave the story of his fascinating life and studies, and sad death.
I have always promised to have a film made of that wonderful love story, the fantastic jungle knowledge of the aborigine peoples, and their way of life, now mostly not passed on and lost..

It is here I suppose that I should mention the origins of a personal ambition which is to try and relate some of the fascinating stories of the ‘old boys in bygone days’ in Malaya.
So perhaps after 15 years in similar circumstances I might have become one of ‘them’…..
I have tried, and should continue to try and pass them on, in my series of ‘tales’ called VERANDAH STORIES………….
I will attach them in file form to the web-site so that they can be down loaded and read at leisure later

 
So I get 'head-hunted' to go to North Borneo in 1960 to start an oil-palm estate from scratch in the real wilds of the jungles. So you see I was there before it joined Malaysia, and became Sabah...
It too was a dangerous place, with the pirates from the Philippines trying to kill us on the way from town by sea to our river, and later the Indonesians threatening the whole country but...I was happily protected by my beloved Ibans from Sarawak. Once again I was in the hands of real experts in jungles and hunting, and tried my best to keep up. 
 As  it happens I left them all with heavy heart in 1971, by then we had progressed from a row of attap huts,including my own, to a thriving community with hospitals and schools and I built our own airport. This I dedicated to my famous father who was one of the pioneers of flying in the East, it is still there…
I just remember saying at one time that in the two thousand or so souls working for me, there were I believe  languages and six religions.
So we mostly got by in Malay…. Luckily  for me.

With a heavy heart, I had to decide to move on, and to go to UK with a young family, hoping to do some farming of my own..

However I was dragged to Sumatra in 1975/76, to advise a City investment group about the possibility of some land there. Once again deep in the last jungles, I was expected to find out how to turn it into a major Oil-Palm Estate, and factory.
I must say that having seen a few tigers in the jungle in Perak, I was amazed there to be followed daily by them almost like having pusseycats about the place.
I was very kindly received by all and sundry from The Governor of Sumatra down to the local jungle wallahs, because I could converse with them all.

I started coming back on long holidays in the following years, mostly staying in Malaysia, even though I also returned to Sumatra on a few occasions.

So after many disappointments in a life in UK, I was happy to be back in Malaysia but especially on Langkawi.........
I consider my 'home’ to be here, now, to which I have 'returned'….
(Balek kampong. Return to village…This is a very well known expression in Malay, meaning to ‘return to one’s family origins’ and is still popularly followed as all important to reunite the generations.
Especially at Hari Raya Aidilfitri, a great festival at the end of Ramadan, which is something similar to ‘going home for Christmas’ or for ‘celebrating Deepavali’, or ‘Chinese New Year, in this great multi-cultural society .

Once, recently as I was getting onto the plane in Kuala Lumpur for Langkawi, a charming stewardess asked me “at which hotel are you staying, Mr White??”.
To which I replied "t’ak, saya balek kampong lah!!!" ( No.. I go home really !!) to great laughter, as I do feel this is where I am happy and hopefully can fit in.

So I look forward to next year when I too can claim to have been in Malaysia from 50 years ago, if I last that long....................

SO welcome to everybody next year, to join with us all 

  ‘”Visit Malaysia 2007 celebrating 50 years Merdeka”………….