In the last episode, we found ourselves swept into the rhythm of life in Seria—where the mission house buzzed with character, the church stood proudly as the town’s finest landmark, and Chong Kee, with his green fingers and boundless energy, kept everything running with a kind of quiet magic. Between the camaraderie of Shell’s early oil‑men, odd local superstitions, and the slow but certain shift toward a new era of bureaucracy, the days were full of warmth, surprises, and the occasional shock. It was an episode coloured by companionship, change, and the lingering sense that the world around us was beginning to turn in ways none of us could quite predict.
The long school holidays were those observed throughout Asia and Australia, namely mid-December till the end of January. After the months of travel and adventure, I was now to be bound to a regular way of life. The day came when I followed Leo, the school principal, and Dan Maher, all dressed in white cassock, over the short distance to St Michael’s School where what seemed a vast array of boys awaited us. There must have been about 700, in grey pants and sparkling white shirts, ranging from Primary One to Form 5 at the first assembly of the new school year. The teachers made me very welcome in the staffroom. No doubt chaos reigned outside-as was to be my experience in the years ahead on the first day of the year-but I have no recollection of that. I was on some kind of Cloud Nine. The primary teachers were mostly the wives of Shell workers, Indians, Eurasians whose language was usually English. This was an asset in an English-medium school. The secondary consisted of a Indian husband and wife, both Science graduates, and two unqualified Singaporeans and one other local man, all natural teachers. Dan and myself completed the secondary staff. I was to teach English Language, Literature in the upper forms and History in the junior secondary. As this latter was Asian history, it was a new field for me to explore. Dan Maher was the stalwart Maths and Scripture teacher for the lower forms. A quiet, diffident man, yet in class he was very effective.
Just two years previously, the Franciscan Sisters of St Joseph, who worked both at home and in the missions in collaboration with the Mill Hill Missionaries, had come from Sarawak to open a girls’ school, St Angela’s. Under the dynamic Mother John Bosco, it took off and became the best in the State; four other sisters worked with her. There is never any question in my mind in the debate on co-education that single-sex schools are better; the girls, coming from simple homes, where English was unknown, learned quickly both to write and speak good English. A businessman once told me that he could tell a St Angela’s girl by her neat and legible handwriting. Away from the rough and tumble of the boys, the girls advanced at their own pace in their own school, a modern-type building of brick and concrete.
If St Michael’s had been ahead of its time, St Angela’s was the type of building that Brunei Government was putting up in the 80s. Mother John Bosco, as can be imagined, was no ordinary nun. She was only two years in Sarawak when she was interned by the Japanese for the rest of the war. She was very decisive and clear-headed. It is not surprising that her school was the wonder of the day. She was able to talk on terms of equality with everyone, including bishops. The bishop in question was John Vos. Hence one wag came out with the famous question, ” Who’s running this vicariate-John Vos or John Bosco?” Now in retirement, she still enjoys those stories about herself but since all the sisters have reverted to their family names one has to explain this joke to the young ones.
Through the years, both schools maintained their high standing, academically, in sports and all the extra-curricular activities. Examination results are as eagerly awaited there as football results are in UK; the local newspaper and radio station in those days were always quick to give out the news. It was always a time of great soul-searching for the Education Department that these mission schools with their very limited facilities could achieve such results. Later, with Independence, when government departments could more or less do anything they wanted to reach their own ends, the Education Ministry abolished the publishing of exam results. Later again, they thought to deliver the coup de grace by preventing mission schools from hiring overseas teachers. They wanted in fact to close the mission schools but the problem of where to accommodate the displaced pupils stops them short. Many of the pupils went to UK to continue their tertiary education in pre-Thatcher times and went on to great things. Among them come to mind a Jesuit, a Redemptorist, 3 diocesan priests, Little Sisters of St Francis, Carmelites, doctors, lawyers, and even from among the Malay students, a member of the Brunei UN delegation, and the present Commissioner of Police for the State. Given the present discrimination that exists, most of these unfortunately for Brunei are living overseas where they are settled immigrants in places like Perth, West Australia and Vancouver and Edmonton in Canada.
The school absorbed me. There were opportunities around every corner. But the biggest challenge was for me in the classroom. I was the senior English teacher. It was an English-medium school. Each year the school presented its Form 5 for the Senior Cambridge Overseas and English was a compulsory subject. Few of them had been educated completely in the school; most had joined us from the Chinese-medium schools at different levels. Although their parents sent them to us to get this valuable qualification, the boys themselves had a cavalier attitude towards English which they rarely spoke even in English class. If a boy turned to his neighbour for advice, it would be either Hokkien or Malay. It was quite a hurdle for an English teacher. In a previous time, a boy would be fined 10 cents if he was caught speaking English in the playground, but now several generations ahead they were not even speaking it in class. I used to remark how fluent the older people were who had learned English in the mission schools. The old priests must have had “ways of making you talk” English.
I estimated that a good showing in an essay would make the Cambridge examiners more lenient, so I piled essay upon essay on them, which had to be marked carefully. It was an endless task, and I must confess, at times fruitless. I provided them with model essays based on subjects that might be asked and I encouraged the most disadvantaged-as we say today-simply to memorise them. I trawled through all the common errors, especially in the sequence of tenses which are most irritating to a born English- speaker and to me most of all with my background of teaching Classics at home. Chinese and Malay indicate time by sticking an adverb into the sentence. Apart from this, there were the other items from the local way of speaking English; “electricity” was always and, I suppose will always be, “electric city”; it was so enshrined that one felt forlorn when saying it correctly. ” My father sends me to school” means he brings me to school, “I follow my brother” means I go with my brother. These were institutionalised errors.
But there were always the flights of fancy- ” My sister goes to school by bicycle; I by leg”. I never liked to humiliate anyone in class but I would show them to Dan afterwards; he of course had a ten years’ start on me in this regard. Passing the primary classes on the ground floor sometimes yielded gems like, “Two and two make four. Yes or no?”. There was no corporal punishment, perhaps someone might get a rap across the knuckles. Somehow it did not fit in with the local culture. In general one might say that the teachers wanted to be there, they liked the atmosphere and they were teaching one another’s children, or their cousins or nieces and nephews. Relationship is important to Asians. Looking back through the mists of time, perhaps being unduly sentimental, I have the feeling now that it was-yes, I have to say it-a big family; but to call any school a big happy family is surely stretching the truth.
In the house we got on well together, more or less keeping the peace with one another. Dan and Leo could reminisce, while I listened. The young Chinese priest, Paul Tong, looked after the Chinese parishioners, few of whom were able to speak his language, Mandarin; the Borneo people unless they are educated in a Chinese school will speak all the dialects, including Malay, but not Mandarin. Paul was one of the seminarians who had to flee before the Communists and completed his education in Macao. His English was very poor. We got on well together, with reciprocal help in our mother tongues. On a Saturday morning, leaving school behind, I would get aboard the pillion of his motor-cycle and head for the tennis courts where we would labour mightily unto exhaustion and then finish off in the swimming pool. Our energy and enthusiam, if not our skill, were widely admired. And this in the heat of 32 C.
Occasionally the school soccer team would ask me to join them when playing against an adult X1. In my first match, I happened to score the only goal in the game-which shot up my reputation overnight. None was more pleased than Leo himself who for weeks would introduce me in company as one who “scores goals”. During the Brunei Rebellion at the end of the year, I was to be grateful that one of my team mates turned out to be a lieutenant in the rebel army. Truth to tell, I was never much, a plodder at most, except that during the PE at Jordanhill, I had rubbed shoulders with several students who were signed professionals and no doubt I picked up a few tricks that had not been seen in Borneo. There was no TV then to bring football into the awareness of the Third World.
Walking in the heat was a great trial, even the short distance to the post office or the shops. Dan had never learned to drive and walked everywhere but I was keen to get around and visit the parishioners. The parish was quite extensive just in the town area alone. It was a company town laid out symmetrically. Shell was not given to looking up the stories of the largely fictitious heroes of Brunei folklore to provide names for the streets. They designated the areas with a combination of numbers and letters, after the Canadian practice. The Labour Force lived in the area next to the jungle; the Regional Staff, usually Asian, occupied the houses starting from the town area and going in increasing seniority towards those occupied by Senior Staff. In this part of the town were two beautiful clubs, one for the Regional Staff and the other for the European Senior Staff. Both were magnificent, with all the sporting facilities. Here were fought the great battles of the Regional v Senior Staff cricket teams. With so many Indians and Sri Lankans, the standard was very high. Likewise the annual soccer match between Holland ( it is the Royal Dutch Shell ! ) and Great Britain was a great occasion.
I knew that I could not expect Leo and Paul to shuttle me around forever. I decided to get a motor-bicycle. I suppose today if a young priest had the money and skill he could buy a spacecraft without any questions raised. I had to ask Leo for permission. As I was not asking for the money to buy one, it was no problem for him to give me the go-ahead. George Newn Ah Foott was a Chinese business man in Brunei Town; he had been the catechist before the mission was established and his name was to be found frequently in our baptismal register. He ran a business of selling engines of all kinds and none of the priests thought of going elsewhere. He had donated the land on which the mission in Brunei Town stands; the school still bears his name. The original church was St George but over the years when the first proper church was built it was decided to dedicate it to Our Lady of the Assumption. Today his grandson Fr Ivan Fang, a Mill Hill Missionary, is parish priest. George then readily supplied me with a Honda 125. All I had to do now was to learn to ride it, my previous experience being a pillion passenger. The school had a spacious playground, part grass, part gravel so I assiduously did my rounds every evening with the encouragement of the teachers who lived in the compound. I was soon able to get a licence and was on my way.
A sense of freedom and independence filled my life. Coming back at sunset along the coast road was a wonderful experience and roaring into the compound like a TT rider was the climax of my day. Paul was a daring rider and could manouevre his bike in intricate patterns. But he had his eye on higher things. One day he persuaded me that we should visit our colleague in Brunei, a distance of some 90 miles, through a lovely patch of the country, with sea on one side and jungle on the other. In those days, this part was largely uninhabited. I mentioned this casually to Leo; I use the word “casually” for I guessed he would not be too excited about our making such a trip. It was indeed a lonely road. I pointed out there were two of us. We set out, but I cannot say, with his blessing. We did the run safely and enjoyably. Leo was happy to see us back again. From that time onwards, we would think nothing of riding there if there was a holiday. Later one of the priests made the trip in a Lambretta and was toppled off by an iguana crossing the road. We were most surprised to hear of this mishap for a Lambretta was not in the class of a Honda for speed.
After all my long distance driving, I had still to meet my Armageddon and that very close to home. One Saturday morning, I was riding down to the shops which are quite close by when a boy of about 12 suddenly darted in front of me. I swerved but I could not avoid him and knocked him down. I was very anxious for him for I could see blood trickling from his ear as he lay on the ground. A crowd gathered. A Chinese man whom I knew quite well came behind me and pulled me away. I resisted because I could not leave the boy like that. He insisted and forced me to hurry up to the police station, telling me that I must not hang around. The policeman on duty was taken aback, I suppose, when this “orang puteh”- white man- began telling his story in Malay, for I could see that the poor man knew little English. Shortly after this, two “top brass” arrived, one being Stephen Liew, the superintendent at Kuala Belait, and the other Benjie Carvalho, the superintendent of the Field Force, the armed branch of the police. They came in and looked at me critically, ” Are you all right, Father ?” I was wondering at this solicitude and told them I was fine but how was the boy. Benjie said, ” Did anyone try to hurt you?”. Then it struck me that they were concerned about whether I had been attacked by angry relatives. Nothing further came of it. Later one of the government Malay language teachers asked me about the incident and told me that the boy was mentally deficient and therefore not responsible for himself and was allowed to run freely around the streets.
As a newcomer I was unfamiliar with the reaction of people at an accident; the driver had to get away from the scene as soon as possible to avoid being beaten up. Simple people, I suppose, are overwhelmed at the sight of this machine which can go anywhere and they are unable to understand why the driver is not its master. Perhaps this is how they reason. Shortly after this, a carload of very distinguished guests were involved in an accident in a village on the way to the wedding of the present sultan; the village is in the Kedayan district, the ancestral home of the Brunei pirates, practitioners of the black arts and much evildoing. As was their custom, they assaulted the travellers very severely and left them lying at the roadside. The sultan was enraged when he heard about it, came down in person to the village and handed out severe penalties on the spot. He was a forward-looking ruler and was trying to raise the standards of his country. This type of thing was always happening to besmirch the public image of his new country.
As the dust of festivities finally settled and the bright clang of gongs faded into memory, I felt the old rhythm of life shifting once more—subtle at first, then unmistakably urgent. Little did I know that the next chapter waiting just around the bend would be stranger, livelier, and far more tangled than anything the New Year celebrations had thrown my way. So come along—there’s another episode brewing, and it promises a fresh mix of surprises, mishaps and the odd moment of wonder, just enough to keep you wanting to read on.
