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derivative filename/jpeg
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363-05923 to 363-05928.pdf
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Digital Object Identifier
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363-05923 to 363-05928
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Title
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Article about modernization efforts in Brunei
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Description
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Article written by Beverly Keever for the AP about modernization efforts in Brunei
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Transcript
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- Page 1
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Robinson Road
Singapore.
2nd of 3 drafts.
BRUNEI TOWN, BRUNEI
This tiny Sultanate, 200 years
ago a thriving pirate's hangout, has developed a modern and
unique way of life in an isolated part of Borneo, the third
largest island in the world.
The "modern", made possibly by rich oil fields lying
within its borders, has produced the highest per capita in-
come on the continent and the largest mosque in Southeast
Asia.
The "unique" is Kampong Ayer a city on stilts built
entirely on the waters of the Brunei River. In the Malayan
language, kampong means village; ayer means water.
Brunei, an independent Malay Sultante under British
protection, totalling 2,226 square miles, or about twice the
size of Rhode Island, is situated in the middle of the
northern coast of Borneo.
The capital of the country, Brunei Town, is built on
the coast of the Brunei River. It is a charmingly quiet
city of Chinese-owned shops with windowless store fronts
opening directly onto the streets lined by deep monsoon
drains. It is the largest Malay city in the world, but
15,000 of the Malays live in Kampong Ayer, which historical
accounts date back to 1500.
(MORE
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In the mid-afternoon at high tide, my launch made a
tour of the broad waterways and narrow alleys between the
houses of the 30 villages composing Kampong Ayer. Women do
the laundry on the front steps of their houses, hanging it
on the narrow porches to dry. Children can take a swim in
their "back yard". Traders on Oriental gondolas paddle
from house to house selling their wares.
The more inexpensive houses have floors with large
cracks between the wooden slats. I found it dangerous for
high-heeled shoes. But it is not only more economical for
the Brunei Malays, but also makes housekeeping simple. Dirt
is pushed
not under the rug
but out the holes. House-
hold garbage is dumped down the hatch
not out the back
E
and the tide below eliminates the need for street cleaners
and garbage collectors.
Houses are built in small clusters connected with
boardwalks, but there is no bridge to Brunei Town on the
mainland. Outboard motors outnumber cars in Brunei by 20 to
one. Boats are parked under the houses built on 16-foot
piles, with about four-feet appearing above water at high
tide. A few boats had special "garages" built for them
a thatched roof over a small elongated shelter.
Eighteen government launches transport the children to
and from schools built both on land and on the water. A
broad platform in front of the school serves as a playground,
though some children take a dip in the brownish water during
Kampong Ayer also has its own clinics, shops and
recess.
meeting places.
As my launch zipped down the big waterway, a sign read
"Water Main," which warned that boats could not be anchored
there. A man with his two small sons in a row boat stopped
at one water filling station to get a barrel-ful of drinking
water.
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As we made a right-hand turn passed one house, a small black
tin can on a rope dropped down between the slivers of the
floorboards, then up again. A modest soul was taking a
drip-drip bath. The immodest ones just hop out the back
door to take theirs and with 80-degree temperatures and
oppressive humidity the more baths a day the better.
My launch driver invited me to his house, built on the
water just two years ago for $14,000 Malayan ($3 Malayan to
US $1). The house was shared with his brother and his family.
We parked the outboard motor boat by the front steps, a
ladder-life affair, and scrambled up.
The driver, a Haji
one who had been to Mecca
Mother
Alew an
introduced me to his moter-in-law, a spindly, small-boned
woman, whom he claimed was 102 years old.
The house with large, spacious rooms, was clean. It
had brightly polished floors of a red-wood, freshly painted
walls decorated with large palmleaf food covers shaped like
coolie hats, and a minimum of furniture, but all first-class.
In one end of the front room was the master's bed, a high-
posted bed in French Renaissance style with a silky pink bed
cover reaching to the floor, a high canopy covered with the
same material and the mattress piled high with pink-cased
pillows. A portable radio-phonograph combination and a
typewriter lay on tables and, like many of the homes, a
radio aerial rose from the roof.
Asked why the Malays preferred their houses on water,
the driver replied, "It's our wish." He also said it was
cheaper than building on land. Originally the kampongs may
have been built on water for defense, for sanitation reasons
and probably for climatic reasons; the air on water being
cooler than the heat on the land. The government is en-
couraging the families of Kampong Ayer to live in new
settlements on land.
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I then stopped at a government-operated shop where
silversmiths produce their famous works, made of 93% pure
silver. I was shown cigarette tins and flower bowls, all
with simple floral patterns, and a few pins. Only 30 or
Living
so persons, all in Kampong Ayer, practice the silver craft,
which has been handed down from generation to generation
for about 450 years when it is thought to have been in-
troduced from Java. The shop also sold the beautifully
handwoven sarongs (skirts) with gold thread, which cost
from US $30 to US $100.
In the morning I had visited the largest mosque in
Southeast Asia an elegant, chalky structure rising high
above Kampong Ayer and the two-storied shops of Brunei Town.
The 145-foot minaret, where the muezzin calls the Moslems
to worship, the gold leaf onion-shapped dome surrounded by
8 cupolas of glistening gold mosaic and the exterior of
blinding white made a remarkably stately sight for such a
small country. Total cost of the mosque upon its opening
in September, 1958, was $7.7 million Malayan or approximately
US $2.6 million.
I walked down the spacious floors of toothpaste white
marble and admired some of the millions of pieces of gold
all imported from Italy. As it was mid-morning and
not a scheduled prayer time, the green handwoven rugs from
India were rolled back.
leaf
Nearly all the material used in the structure were
imported. Granite came from Hong Kong.
From Britain came
the bronze doors and four huge chandeliers designed by His
Highness the Sultan, the biggest weighing four tons.
It is
so heavy that when it is lowered to the floor for cleaning,
it takes two men three hours to raise it to its place in
the dome.
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It is undoubtedly one of the most modern mosques in
the world. A radio amplifying system carries the readings
from the Koran throughout the building. An elevator carries
the muezzin to the top of the minaret. That is, it does
when it is working. I had to walk up the 268 steps.
Electric lighting is utilized inside and outside.
that was not imported was a beautifully handmade incense
burner of Brunei silver and it had been made electric.
One item
On a dark night, the coastline of Brunei can be spotted
It is aflame like a
from the sea one hundred miles away.
gigantic bonfire set for a mammoth weiner roast.
The flames
spring from 14 torches scattered along the oil fields to
burn exhaust natural gas. The fields have yielded in recent
years an average annual revenue of $100 million Malayan in
royalties and taxes to the state treasury.
Driving east along the main road from Seria, the oil
field area, to Brunei Town, I thought I saw a double sunset.
Ahead in the east were the bright flames of the oil-made
light; in the west was the sun setting behind the expansive
jungle.
But in the past
Now the tiny country is a happy one.
it was neither small nor peaceful. For more than 1000 years
Brunei played an important part in Southeast Asian affairs.
Its swirling coast was a nesting place for the worst pirates
roaming the south seas. Coastal towns were attacked;
property looted; inhabitants captured only to be sold as
slaves. By the sixteenth century Sultan Bolkiah, nicknamed
"The Singing Captain", had extended his control over the
whole of Borneo and nearby islands.
Piracy reached its
peak in the early 1800's; then the power of Brunei began to
shrink to its present-day microscopic size.
MORE
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But the scars of the old romantic days of the pirates
still besiege Brunei. As my ship pushed down the Brunei
River, it zigzagged through a line of concrete beacons like
a soccer player with the ball to avoid a shipload of stones
that had been sunk by pirates years ago for easy attacks on
trapped vessels.
30 -
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Date
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1961
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Subject
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Quality of life--Brunei; Rural development; Economic development
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Location
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Brunei Town/Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei
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Coordinates
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4.4137; 114.5653
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Size
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20 x 26 cm
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Container
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B174, F2
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Format
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dispatches
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Collection Number
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MS 363
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Collection Title
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Beverly Deepe Keever, Journalism Papers
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Creator
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Keever, Beverly Deepe
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Collector
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Keever, Beverly Deepe
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Copyright Information
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These images are for educational use only. To inquire about usage or publication, please contact Archives & Special Collections.
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Publisher
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Archives & Special Collections, University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries
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Language
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English
