Earlier this month, during the Chinese New Year holidays, we were visited by
many friends from Hong Kong and Bangkok. One of them, a Thai history professor
who is about to embark on a history of Indonesia, asked me to write down some of
the recollections I may have of the last days of the Dutch colony of what is now
the Republic of Indonesia, just before the Second World War.
A
typical turn of the century Dutch colonial house in “Batavia”.
Of course, it has to be realised that I was a child at the time and not totally
objective in my observations. Children are inclined to adopt many of the
opinions and biases from their parents until old enough to have their own set of
prejudices and “hang ups”. A good example is the following: When my mother said
that garlic was a despicable herb with a horrible rancid flavour, I accepted
that without question, although, as proved later, we used it in Indonesian
cooking and called it “white onions” after the Indonesian name “Bawang Putih”.
She simply didn’t know what garlic looked like and probably had inherited the
notion from her mother as a child.
My father, being a government schoolmaster during the depression years which we
called the “Malaise”, was not a wealthy man, although compared with most
Indonesians we were well off. My parents were not particularly racist, at least
not more so than the norm in those days. They socialised with some Indonesian
and Eurasian families occasionally and our Eurasian family doctor was also a
friend with whom they kept contact in later years. Also, my father invited his
Indonesian students to the house to listen to our radio when there was a
football match in Batavia (Jakarta) or Holland and my mother served the young
men snacks and refreshments. But my mother had some funny ideas which again I
took for granted. For instance, she used to point out to us that certain
Caucasian ladies must have had Indonesian blood because of the way they swayed
their hips when walking. Obviously she did not realise that this was considered
an asset for admiring gentlemen.
I, being the only Dutch boy attending the so called “Europese Lagere School” or
the European Lower School” in the small mountain town of Tondano where we lived
for five years, had several Indonesian and especially Eurasian friends. This
could hardly be avoided. However, for educational reasons, my father strenuously
objected to the colourful Indonesian-Dutch patois we adopted. He would say: “You
either speak Dutch or Malay (Indonesian) but not something in between.” Later in
life I was grateful for this advice as I learned to speak my own language
reasonably well but it does not keep me from having a slight accent, especially
when I am together with my peers from “Insulinde”, a name for the beloved
archipelago given by one of our most controversial nineteenth century writers
“Eduard Douwes Dekker”. Writing under the name “Multatuli”, he was one of the
first to question the Dutch colonial system.
Like the British in their colonies, the average Dutch family had several
servants. First of all there was the “Djongos”, or the Indonesian butler in his
starched white drill uniform. He taught me to make kites without a tail and the
glassed thread to fly them, so we could fight with other kites in the sky, a
popular game I have never observed in Thailand.
The other male in our entourage was the “Kebon” or the gardener, lower in rank
than the “Djongos” but still very important to us. Besides tending the garden
and my mothers vegetable patch, he would climb coconut trees, kill snakes and
large centipedes, which were extremely poisonous, and help us in many projects
like building a tree house for instance. After my mother, the most important
woman in the house was the “Kokki” or cook. Kokkis had lots of authority and the
one we had during our stay in the mountains of Sulawesi was called “Meenah Jawa”
because she came from Java and our cleaning woman, or Babu Chuchee, was also a
Meenah but she came from the province of Minahassa where we lived so we called
her Meenah Minahassa.
Often these motherly ladies like Meenah Jawa were stricken with a certain
nervous disease called “Latta”. I never did understand why this affliction only
seems to occur among middle aged ladies of the Malay race. It manifests itself
by repeating what startles them. In the process they may become quite
hysterical. If we, for instance, suddenly would say “Awas (beware) Kokki!”, she
would say “Awas!”, “Eh, Awas, Awas!, Eh, Awas!” repeating herself and when you
told her to throw something she had in her hands she would do so and which
startled her all over again. Children are cruel and we often teased her in that
way although we loved her dearly and after lunch when my parents had their
siesta, I would go to her little room in the back of the house and join her for
a plate of rice, dried and smoked fried tuna or mackerel and some “Sambal” (hot
spicy chilli and onion mixture). This activity was however covert and strictly
forbidden by my mother who at that time still thought that native food would
cause us to come down with cholera or dysentery, if not worse.
After dinner my father would often take us for a stroll and we were always
equipped with an “Eveready” as we called a flash light in those days, because
there were no street lights. He would point out the constellations and the
individual stars in the sky, tell us about them and also about his youth in
Groningen, a northern province of the Netherlands, about the winter, snow and
ice skating, things we only read about. On holidays he would take us for hikes
in the mountains and bicycle trips around the huge lake of Tondano. We would
visit the waterfalls of the Tondano river (four or five in a row) . At other
times we went fishing on the lake in a dug out canoe with outriggers and
sometimes, together with the neighbours, we would rent a car and drive to
Langoang on the slopes of the active volcano “Soputan” where we bathed in a
swimming pool, with hot water from a well. There also was a machine which made
artificial waves I recall and the air would reek of sulphur like rotten eggs.
In 1940 we moved to Batavia or Jakarta and soon afterwards the war ended the
years of innocence and bliss.
