My 2 Years Living in Kampong Ubi

My 2 Years Living in Kampong Ubi

Contributed by Jerry Lee

When I was 9 years old, my family shifted from our 2 room rental flat in Blk 15, Merpati Road in Macpherson Estate to a terrace house in Kampong Ubi. It was a totally different environment. A stream ran by the back of our house. The toilets adopted the squat bucket system. You had to go into a cubicle to defecate and urinate into a bucket -with flies fluttering around the faeces.

My house was one in a row of 4 terrace houses owned by our landlord- a pig breeder and abattoir practitioner.

School

I had to transfer school- from Macpherson Primary to Elling South Primary School at Upper Paya Lebar Road. I got adjusted well. I did well in school-top 4th in class most of the time. I was in the best class. Extra-curricular activities were as exciting as studies. I join the choir, learn to play the fiddle , played softball and chess. Art lessons in class also involved carving a turtle from a soap block given to us.

Games and Activities

Kampong life with 2 boys neighbours to contend with was fun. My neighbours, Stanley Chia and Johnny Chia , collected seeds from the bead plant as bullets for our wooden guns. We were shooting beads at each other. My sisters breed guppies in dragon urns at the back of our house. Guppies were nice stream fishes with rainbow coloured tails.

Evenings were spent listening to stories, by our neighbours’ mothers and our dad. The adjourning house is The Chia Sister’s and the next The Chia Elders Sister’s family. The first house belongs to a pirate taxi driver’s family.

The Murder

One day, when I came home from school, I was told not to come out for the next 2 hours from 3 to 5 pm. We were curious. We climbed up to see the outside of our houses from the walls of our bedrooms. Then we heard some swift running movements and some clanging sounds then a scream from the bedroom of our landlord’s house. It was a revenge by a gang to kill one of the landlord’s sons.

Landlord’s Father Struck Lottery.

The landlord’ s father, an old man was seen in dark garbs and smoking rolled cigarettes. It was said that one late night whilst he was smoking under the coconut tree, a woman in white clothes walked through our kampong. She handed him a slip of paper with a 4 digit number. With this number, the grandpa struck lottery and became rich but the wealth was a harbinger of more problems in their family. The second son was arrested for gang activities. After being released from prison, he did not last long....died from internal injuries.

Howling Dog in Private Taxi Driver’s Family House.

Then the dog in the first terrace house started to howl loudly at night. My grandmother said the howls sounded like it saw some kind of evil spirits- they were fearful howls.