LIFE IN MALAYA

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 77, 3 February 1942, Page 7

LIFE IN MALAYA

STEAMY ENERVATING HEAT XI I SON AIRMAN’S DESCRIPTION Though written in mid-Novem-ber this letter from Pilot-Officer .1. H. Kcmnitz to his friends in Nelson Wives a good impression of life in Malaya. He was at the time stationed at Kedah, which. like Pen - ang and some of tlie other places mentioned, is now in the hands of the Japanese. not too heavy, this highly enervating climate saps your mental energy, for living here is for all the world like spending one’s days in a perpetual hothouse. he writes. The heat and humidity are such that eggs will hatch out at atmospheric temperature without any incubation whatever. That gives you some idea. After a leisurely but comfortable trip or 33 days from New Zealand on an old and small Dutch ship of about 4000 tons, we reached Singapore, where a month was spent on a general course to prepare us for our future duties. It was fortunately an easy and pleasant course, because when you are adjusting yourself to a trying, hot. damp climate, as well as to a strange new life in the East, everything has to be taken at a moderate tempo. At the beginning of September 1 was one of four New Zealanders sent to this outpost of Empire in N.W. Malaya in the Unfederated State of Kedah, presided over by the Sultan of Kedah, whose residence is at I Alorstar. 38 miles north of here. I was i not keen on the move, but conditions here are good, and I like the lffe much better than in Singapore. It is as , warm and damp and sticky here, but i the nights are cooler, and a refreshing change from the steamy nights of .Singapore, when rivulets of moisture trickled down you all night. Singapore ; has an average variation between day and night temperature of only 5 degrees. with a like variation also between summer and winter. At present we are in mid-winter, which brings little relief from the heat, only an abnormal amount of rain. The difference is not between summer and winter. but between dry and wet seasons. Just now it is light at 6.30 and dark again shortly after 6.30 in the evening, but the hours of daylight are not appreciably greater in the dry or summer season. WELL WAITED ON We are in the middle of a rubber plantation, which gives some relief from the sun. though there is not much scorching sun from a blue sky as it is usually very cloudy. However the trees also deprive us largely of the all too few breezes we are favoured with, and sunshine to dry out our clothes and bedding. If you leave your clothes hanging in the room overnight, in the morning they are so damp you would think they had been left outside in a dew. Unless you tuck matches away in a drawer overnight, they will be much too damp next morning to strike. The officers’ quarters are good and I have a nice large room to myself in a new wooden bungalow built amid the rubber trees, which, by the way, do not bend if you bump into them. The room is complete with bed and mosquito net. dressing table with mirror and drawers, writing table, reading lamp etc. We each have a Chinese boy to attend to our wants, and are so well catered for that you soon reach the stage of doing nothing for yourself. On occasions I may feel energetic enough to put a pair of cultlinks in a shirt myself, so I fear I shall be most unbearably lazy on my return. We have a lot of fun trying to make our wants known, as the boys cannot speak English, and our knowledge of Malay is confined to a few simple phrases. I have always had a regard for John Chinaman, but am now convinced that the Chinese preserve some measure of a fundamental dignity and decency of human life which is lacking in other native races. DAILY ROUTINE Our usual daily round starts at 7. with a breakfast break from 8.30 to 9.15. and then we work on till 1, with an afternoon shift two or three times a week. We are less than 6 degrees from the equator here, while Singapore is less than 100 miles north of it. As far as I can see. the secret of living in the tropics is don’t eat or drink too much, and don’t work too hard, but have a moderate amount of regular exrecise. We are well provided for, and there is a tendency to over-eat. Here is our usual fare: Breakfast, pineapple or papaya (tropical fruit), bacon and eggs, toast and marmalade and coffee. About 10.30 there come round the NAAFI (canteen) lorry, from which may be bought tea. cordials, sandwiches. cake, bananas, etc. Tiffin (as lunch is called here): soup, cold meat, potatoes and vegetables, sweets, coffee, and there is always plenty of bread, butter, cheese, spring onions and bananas. At 4 the boy brings over to you a cup of tea and a sandwich, and dinner: (from 7.30 to 9.30) soup, fish entree, hot meat, potatoes and vegetables, sweets, savoury, fruit and coffee. Many of our rations are necessarily tinned foods, and it seems strange to eat carrots, turnips, onions, canned in Australia. In Singapore there is a huge dairy farm where production :s pushed to such a level that the cows are milked 4 times a day, so you get splendid bottled and pasteurised fresh milk there, but here it is all tinned or from powder. Canned milk, strangely enough, comes from England, as do tinned bacon, bully beef and herrings. Milk powder comes from Australia, as. do nearly all our other tinned foods, such as butter, cheese, jam and vegetables. PENANG—AS IT WAS When we feel like escaping from the ever present rubber trees, we go to the Island of Penang, a 30 mile trip by road and ferry. Georgetown. Malay’s second city, with a population of about 400,000. is on the N.E. tip of Penang, and must be one of the cleanest and most pleasant cities in the East. Known as the "Isle of Paradise.” Penang was a trading post centuries ago before Singapore was thought of. exporting the spices grown on the terraced slopes of the island. The industrial development of the 20th century, however, made rubber more profitable than spices, and so to-day Penang is thickly covered with rubber plantations, groves of coconut palms fringing its shores, and acres and acres of padi (rice) fields, all water-logged, carving up its lower levels into regular patterns. I was fortunate in meeting on the train on the way up here a delightful young American who has been two years out here, teaching at Ihe Anglo-Chinese High School in Penang run by the Methodist Mission. Through him I have met many hospitable American and British people in Penang, and he has also been responsible for my talking to both the boys’ and girls’ high school on drama and speech, also to the Methodist Church Epworth League, and addressing the Penang Rotary Club, where I put in some publicity work for New Zealand and for my favourite hobby-horse. Anglo-Am-erican Co-operation. SNAKE IN AIRMAN’S BED One surprising thing over here is that heavy work, such as shovelling earth, pushing trucks, and mixing concrete. is done by women, the men indulging in softer tasks. These Orientals truly have some excellent customs. It | it highly amusing to watch the Chinese . women in black pyjamas, red neck j

scarf and broad, straw coolie hat as they work away steadily from 7 in the morning till dusk at night, Sundays included, for which they receive 9d a day. We call them [ “cement" or “concrete" lizzies. There are a few snakes round here, cobras and black mambas, and one of the airmen recently found one in his bed. Our quarters are out of the snake area, and the only time I have seen one was crossing the Sungei Patani golf links, a mile or more from the camp. In most of the nearby woods are shoals of monkeys, and numerous tree squirrels. An interesting nocturnal inhabitant of the rubber plantations is the firefly. Sometimes you wake up in the night to see a bead of light bobbing from point to point, and as you’re wondering where you were the night before, it dawns on you that it is a firefly. But of all Malayan creatures perhaps the most interesting is the cheecha (lizard ), lovely wee fellows with big. frightened eyes, which run along the walls, and upside down on the ceiling, falling off sometimes to fall with a great flop on the floor, where they will lie dazed for a couple of seconds and spring off with one bound. Every now and then their amazingly long tongues dart om to catch an unwary mosquito, so we naturally encourage them to help keep down these pests, which are dreadful at night time. Often the only way to read or wrote in comfort is to get into bed under the protection of your mosquito net.