My Good Home: "My Malaysia" Photo Series (6)

Malay Dwelling House, Singapore

Sometimes I take on some personal battles, which I really care about. In Indonesia I was among the founders, in 2016, with two of my friends from Bandung, of a large photographic community called “Laskar Kampungku”, or the Fighters of Our Village, with the intent to defend and preserve in memory, with photography, the beauty and tradition of the villages. Over the years we have come to be a thousand from all over Indonesia, made photographic exhibitions, donations, built a meeting place for the poorest kampungs or helped during the floods and earthquakes.

In Malaysia, I tried to do the same, as I told you in the previous article. Here I found something that made me remember the first moments when we founded that community, that is what is happening to traditional Malaysian houses.

In these two years I have traveled far and wide the various regions of Malaysia and, wherever I went, as an explorer (it would be better to say an archaeologist in this case) I started looking for these houses: The House of the Kampungs, or Rumah Panggung (Stilt House), Rumah Melayu. If you have never seen it, you must believe me, it is wonderful.

I had the details and the stories told. They are very large wooden houses resting on poles over the ground. There are many types, depending on the region (and for me the houses in Taiping remain among the most picturesque to see).

They consist of several parts: the main part called “Ibu Rumah”, not surprisingly called “ibu” (mother), and the annexed part “Dapur Tanah”, which is the kitchen annex. Usually the main part is the raised one, to welcome guests or for ceremonies (weddings, circumcisions or prayers for the deceased), while the kitchen is the back part, family and private, and usually the place for women. Then, sometimes, there is the front porch, the Anjung or serambi, in which to rest or chat, and finally the part that defines the real Rumah Melayu, the Kolong, or the empty space under the house, used as a closet, to prevent rain water or animals from entering the house, and also as a play area for children, protected from the sun.

Kampung Alor Ganu, Anak Bukit, Alor Setar. Kedah, 15 December 2017

The old houses do not use nails, each wood is interlocking with the others, and usually the stones at the base of the wooden stilts are marine ones.

There are still many left, but the stories I have heard from their owners, or from those who once were, leave much sadness. And many are now abandoned to themselves: the “Rumah hantu”, the houses of ghosts, as children call them.

Wood costs a lot, it is not easy to maintain them.

“The new wooden houses you see now belong to the wealthy Malaysians, not the kampung people,” many told me.

Once the elderly parents are dead, the children have no desire to bear the maintenance costs of these imposing houses, much better to move to new apartments, condominiums, much safer and more modern.

Makcik in front of his hundred-year-old Rumah Kedah, destroyed by a tree that fell on the roof due to the strong wind. Kampung Rantau Panjang. Daerah Tikam Batu, Kuala Muda. Kedah, 11 December 2017

In these years I have photographed quite a few, and often still alive, inhabited, as in Kampung Umbai, in Melaka, where in the same kampung there were many houses even more than a hundred years old, and the owners told me that, if desired, they can be maintained.

The first stage of their transformation is the masonry of the kolong, to make them more stable. There are many wooden houses in the upper part and masonry below. In this way it's still possible to live them for a long time.

Whether these modified houses can still be defined as Rumah Melayu is a question that is difficult to answer, everyone has his own heart.

Kampung Umbai. Melaka, 28 September 2019

I learned to know them, to photograph them in their inner breadth that only the wide angle can fully grasp, and their poetic natural light that falls from the slots in the roofs to give air and lighting; each with its own style, number of pylons and name depending on the region or also on the type of wood and architecture used.

Kampung Telekong, Kuala Krai. Kelantan, 22 July 2018

Honor to the Rumah Melaka, to Rumah Kutai located in Perak and Selangor, to Rumah Perabung Lima of Kelantan and Terangganu, to Rumah Gajah Menyusu of Penang, Rumah Bumbung Panjang in Kedah, Perlis, Johor and Pahang.

The same royal residence – Istana Kenangan – in Kuala Kangsar, in Perak is a wooden palace from 1926.

Istana Kenangan - Royal Palace. Kuala Kangsar. Perak, 17 December 2017

What makes me more angry is that every time I show these photographs to the Malaysians they are overwhelmed by nostalgia and memories, but the houses are abandoned, in ruins.

One day I spoke with a man, on the birthday of a friend's daughter, in Balik Pulau in Penang, where nearby I had photographed a beautiful inlaid but abandoned wooden house.

Kampung Terang, Balik Pulau. Penang, 19 September 2019

We were sitting in the parking lot of a ten-storey block of flats. The children took me to the top floor, in the morning, to show me the rice plantations and some traditional houses in the nearby area. The condominium had three blocks and the front area was already set to place the construction of the last block that would have closed it square, which, in less than a year, would therefore have precluded forever the view on that green land. This is the last photograph you will see of this panorama.

Pangsaspuri Rimbun, Sungai Batu. Balik Pulau. Penang, 15 September 2019

 

So, I asked the man if it was worth it to come and live here, if he liked.

“Our children want it that way,” he replied. “The government buys the lands, forces us to come and live in these condominiums, we don't have much choice. On the one hand the children who want to live in comfort, on the other the laws that regulate the land.” 

“But being able to choose, Pak, would you prefer to live here or in the old wooden houses in the kampungs?”

“You don't even have to ask,” he replied, inspiring the cigarette for a long time, and looking far. “We are orang kampung, village people, those are our homes.”

Kampung Suluk. Penang, 7 October 2018

 

Rumah Melayu (1960). Kampung Simpang Empat. Permatang Buloh. Penang, 16 September 2019

Kampung Parit. Sungai Besar. Selangor, 3 August 2016

Kampung Kubang Pasu. Kelantan, 15 October 2019

I still remember when in Misai, in Johor, I asked to stop the car to photograph a red wasteland, with a single hill with an altar for prayer, where the construction of terraced houses had begun, there would be hundreds of them. That red of the earth looked like the blood of the wounded earth. 

Bandar Putra, Masai. Johor, 25 May 2019

Just as, with the same intent, I went to look for in Kuala Lumpur, under the hypermodern profile of the Twin Towers, Kampung Baru, an area of 230 hectares developed by the British in 1890, whose oldest and most famous house is Rumah Limas of 1913, a real landmark of a territory which, however, is in the process of being dismantled to accommodate a new modern commercial area, to which its inhabitants are opposed.

Kampung Baru. Kuala Lumpur, 27 October 2019

I come back here to repeat one of the most beautiful words I learned from the study of foreign languages, which is “valobasha”, love in the Bangladeshi language, which is the union of two words: “valo” (good, good) and “basha” (home). Love is the good home. There is no place that better tells the identity of a people; we are our homes.

When I visited a village in Sungai Siput, in Perak, which had been donated by the region to the Orang Asli, the native tribe of Malaysia who usually lives in the forests or in the depths of the mountains, I was pleased to note that it was they had left the possibility to choose between live in brick houses or in their traditional wooden and thatched houses, and many of them chose the later. It was good to see all of them happy living together in the type of house they had chosen.

Kampung Yum, Pos Yum. Sungai Siput. Perak, 15 August 2019

Here it is, I believe that the possibility of a choice should always be left.

The ghosts in the wooden houses have nothing to do with the spirits, but they are the ghosts of a tradition that is left to die for itself.

Those houses cry.

A little will, paint and a lot of love is enough.

That is the real good home that lives in the heart of every Malaysian.

 

“Malam ini merendang jagung,
malam esok merendang serai,
malam ini kita berkampung,
malam esok kita bercerai.”
(Pantun Melayu)

 

“Tonight the maize for roasting's set,
tomorrow it is a lemon grass,
tonight we together meet,
tomorrow on our way we pass”
(Malay Proverb)

 

Kampung Suluk. Penang, 18 August 2019

Hidayah Amin: “Malay Weddings don't cost $ 50, and other facts about Malay Culture” (Helang Books, 2014)

“The Malays – A cultural History” by Richard Winstedt (GB Edition, 1988)

Suggested song: Saloma “Istana Cinta”

Italian version