#pulauseking

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“Mr Teo Yan Eng, 90, used to help two of his younger brothers who ran a provision shop on Pulau Seking. He says there were 58 families on the island and the 400 to 500 people there "all knew one another”.

The Teos were the only Chinese family there, but felt totally at home. He says: "Neighbours dropped by to chit-chat even if they had nothing to buy.”

He and his brothers did not fish, but their fishermen neighbours often shared their catch.

During Malay weddings and Hari Raya, the brothers exchanged gifts - usually something from their provision shop or a hongbao - with their neighbours, who gave them kueh and nasi briyani.

Although the islanders mostly interacted among themselves, with some inter-marrying, they also caught up with those from other southern islands, where they had relatives.

There was an annual sports meet called the Pesta Five S, drawing participants from the five islands of Sudong, Semakau, Sakijang Bendera (now known as St John's Island), Seking and Seraya. Pesta is the Malay word for carnival.

The islands took turns to host the games, which took place over a few weekends. There were land games such as tug-of-war and soccer, as well as water games such as sampan races.

Mr Rosli Manan, 51, a constituency support executive who was born in Pulau Sudong, recalls turning up with other village children for these meets. "It was a very lively time for the islanders," he says. Life was austere then, as most of the islands lacked running water and sometimes, electricity.

Mr Teo of Pulau Seking remembers using kerosene lamps at night. To get fresh water for cooking and drinking, his brother took 15-minute motor boat rides to Pulau Bukom, returning with big covered pails of water.

Pulau Bukom was one of the more developed islands in the south because Singapore's first offshore oil refinery opened there in 1961. It also had a hospital where Mr Teo's brother was sent to when he got a sharkfish bone stuck in his foot while walking on the beach.

Living so near the coast also made them more vulnerable to the elements. A big storm once blew off the roofs of a few attap houses, including that of the Teos’.

Despite these challenges, Mr Teo has fond memories of his island life. He says: "The air was fresher and we had fresh fish to eat every few days.””

Wee, L. (2016, January 19). Lives of residents of Singapore's southern islands captured in documentary. Retrieved from https://www.straitstimes.com/lifestyle/travel/lives-of- residents-of-singapores-southern-islands-captured-in-documentary

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(19) “What might be the cultural motivations behind such a house construction? From the above description fo the house, what tends to stand out as important are two areas - the verandah and the kitchen, which are connected by a narrow passage way. Geoffrey Benjamin’s historical analysis of the evolution of what he calls ‘Malay’ type societies has suggested that in such societies because of their early preoccupation with trade, the men tended to dominate the extra-domestic public sphere, whereas the domestic sphere became the special concern of the women. This is a different social orientation from the other societal types in the peninsular, namely the Semang who were hunter and gatherers and the Senoi who were sedentery farmers. Given that collecting for trade necessitated the men establishing relations with domains outside the village, domestic and village organisation normally tended towards a matrifiliative bias and the sister-sister links became the conjuctive components. In a personal discussion, he made the plaustible suggestion that such an ideological orientation towards division in spheres of activity could then have been manifested in their house construction - the physical separation between the verandah and the kitchen. The verandah then, as observed in Malay villages - is the place where the men usually sit around and interact in a relatively formal, etiquette-ruled manner, can be thought of as the ‘public’ domain of the house. The women on most occasion gather together in the kitchen - the ‘domestic’ domain of the house. There are usually two doors, as mentioned above one leading right into the verandah and the other just besides the kitchen door. This again seems to mark the separation of the public and ‘domestic’ domains of the house. The passage-way at the exterior of the house then (as the door leading to the kitchen) among other things of course provides for the women’s easy access to their domain, the kitchen. There is thus no interruption to whatever that is going on in the verandah. The other significant characteristic about most of the houses on Seking is that the doors are at the side of the house, thus facing the neigbouring house along its side. Having doors at the front of the house would mean on the other hand, facing the open ground of the island, or the various community structures, or just the hilll-side for the peoiple at Sebelah Sebong. This preference to face one’s neighbours is to my mind a reflection of something fundamental in Malay culture - that is the need to extend social relations to others.”

Manap, N. (1983). Pulau Seking: Social History and an Ethnography. Unpublished Honours Thesis, University of Singapore.

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“The rhyming of 'Meleking' with 'Seking' is not accidental: in older Malay, me-, le- and se- (or si-) are Austronesian prefixes carrying a variety of meanings. In particular, the S- that begins the names of so many islands throughout Riau and Singapore's Southern Islands, is an abbreviated form of the individuating, humanising prefix si-,”

Wee, V., & Benjamin, G. Pulau Seking: the final link to pre-Raffles Singapore.

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At one level, the issue of malayness plagues Seking. Coming out from tribal sea-nomadic background and orientating themselves to the ideal model of malayness as embodied by the people of Penyengat and Pangkil. I found that different sections of the community appear to be at various stages of transition towards those upheld ideals. The village community on the island is divided into factions as a result of conceptions held by some sections of the population of themselves as being better Malays. The divisions [sic] is reinforced by close kinship links between members of each side and these links become in a way the mechanism of solidarity by which members of other factions are effectively kept out. The same kind of criteria are also used in their dealings with foreigners on the island, other Singaporeans or visitors from Riau. There seems to be a kind of conceptual cline of malayness, from non-malayness at one end moving towards an ideal conception of malayness at the other; against which individuals, regardless whether they are foreigners or natives, are placed and dealt with accordingly.

Manap, N. (1983). Pulau Seking: Social History and an Ethnography. Unpublished Honours Thesis, University of Singapore.

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The Seking islanders acknowledged themselves as Orang Selat, and considered their homeland to be in various parts of Southern Singapore, such as Pasir Panjang, Kampong Bahru, Telok Saga and Pulau Brani. Significantly, some said that their ancestors had moved to the Southern Islands because of their dislike of the British.

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To casual eyes, Pulau Seking appeared to consist of a single continuous village, but it actually contained four named areas of habitiation, which reflected differences between kelompok ideantifiable by kinship alignment and micro-ethnicity.

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Tanjung Berkat (blessed headland), to the east of Kampung Tengah, was inhabited mainly by Orang Selat who moved in from Pulau Bukom when the Shell refinery was opened there in 1961. Like the people of Kampung Tengah, these islanders were mostly engaged in wage labour on Pulau Bukom or the mainland. This was the first section to be vacated in the late 1980's as some people moved away from the island. (p. 198) 

Wee, V., & Benjamin, G. (2001). Pulau Seking: the final link to pre-Raffles Singapore.

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In the last days of the settlement on Seking, when the entire community was being relocated, there was a palpable mood of grief and loss. The once house-proud villagers reluctantly left the houses they had built for themselves to go to rack and ruin, eventually to be demolished altogether. They sold their boats, thereby giving up their means of transport on the sea. Their relocation from Seking to Singapore was not just a move from a small island to a bigger island. More fundamentally, it ended an indigenous way of life oriented towards the sea that had existed since long before the British colonisation of Singapore. (p. 210) 

Wee, V., & Benjamin, G. (2001) Pulau Seking: the final link to pre-Raffles Singapore.

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Some habits die hard, especially for a group of former residents of Pulau Sudong, an island south of the Singapore mainland.

Every Saturday and Sunday morning, about 20 of them set out from West Coast Park on their motor boats packed with traditional fish traps called bubu. These are conical iron-mesh traps placed on the seabed during low tide.

One of these dedicated fishermen is delivery driver and father of four Hamzah Mohamad, 60, who says he seldom buys fish from the market.

He says: "Having grown up by the sea, you get used to eating fish fresh from the sea. They have a kind of sweetness to them."

He now lives in a three-room HDB flat in West Coast with his wife and youngest daughter.

These weekend fishing trips hark back to a simpler, more rustic "island lifestyle": the fishing culture common to Pulau Sudong and the southern islands of Singapore. […]

In any case, most islanders resettled on the mainland between the 1970s and 1990s for various reasons. For instance, Pulau Sudong was turned into a military live firing area while Pulau Seking and Pulau Semakau were joined to enclose a rubbish landfill. […]

Wee, L. (2016, January 19). Lives of residents of Singapore's southern islands captured in documentary. Retrieved from https://www.straitstimes.com/lifestyle/travel/lives-of-residents-of-singapores-southern-islands-captured-in-documentary

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“At the other end of the Singapore Straits, Raffles Light marks the outer and south channels round St John’s island to the Singapore roads as it has since 1855.

On Pulau Seking, where nearly 80 families still lived in 1983, even the dead could not rest in peace but had to be brought for burial to the main island because there were plans to develop Pulau Seking.

Nowhere is the work ethics more pervasive than in the southern islands, once largely uninhabited but for small fishing villages.

Pulau Bukom started work in 1892 and has yet to retire. As children, we call it Shell Island, a name which has little to do with the seashell which is its corporate symbol and everything to do with the international oil company which still runs one of the largest refineries in the world on Bukom, originally a storage centre for kerosene.”

“Before its determined transformation into a holiday and recreation spot, Sentosa, the Isle of Tranquility, bore the deliciously romantic if undeniably sinister label of Pulau Belakang Mati, which translates as the island where death lies behind.”

“Pulau Brani, Island of the brave, was once home to the Orang Laut, Singapore’s sea gypsies whose sampan armadas treated passing boats as a fair game.

The island became a coaling station for British naval vessels and a small repair dock was built there in the 1860s… Brani, which used to be a 10-minute boat ride from Jardine Steps when the current was right - 20 minutes if it wasn’t - is now home to the Republic of Singapore Navy.”

[1985] Irene Ho, “Pleasure Islands? No, the work ethic rules”, Straits Times, Aug 4, 1985, p. 3.