Before the Rain

A short ten-minutes-drive away from the city-centre and its icons of recent glory lies hidden a different Brunei, one still unscathed by the concrete and the glitter. Tucked away between the Markucing hills and the Kota Batu range the Subok valley could easily be 500 hundred years away. But for a narrow strip of tar that wiggles from one end of the valley to the other for approximately 10 km, along which a few colourful kampongs are strewn, the vegetation remains dense on both slopes and many of the houses are in the long-house style so typical of these parts. Surprisingly, Subok has escaped the construction boom of the 80’s and 90’s which has littered most of the land stretching north from the city to the coast with an abundance of sophisticated condominiums and luxury row-houses, and has therefore managed to preserve much of its raw tropical charm.

Belimbing is the malay word for star, and Kampong Belimbing is our village. It is here that my wife and I have chosen to live with our two daughters, intentionally away from expatriate prime locations and closer to nature and the rhythm of the locals – time measured by the call of the muezzin to prayer and by meals that bring the family together. Away from the main road and accessed by a dirt track and a rickety bridge over the Subok, a deceitfully peaceful brook at this point, our landlord explains how the house was built according to the principles of Feng Shui and blessed by the local Christian priest and as he hands over the keys we are pleased to hear that this is the wind-catchment area, one of those few places in The Land Below The Wind where a breeze sometimes blows.

You can’t see them anymore, all physical trace of their existence has been removed or engulfed by the jungle that creeps-up on everything it is allowed to, but I’ll let you know that it was here in Subok that the Japanese set-up their prisoner camps in Brunei. There is no rearranging of energy, no blessing or sufficient calls to prayer capable of dispelling the heaviness that breathes down upon you when the wind subsides and the spirits of what went on around these parts are set free. [But it’s too soon to tell of these things, I still didn’t know about them at this stage. In the early days I just kept away from the heat and made the best of the moments that preceded and followed the tropical downpours.]

I set up my studio under the car-port, a shaded space, open on two sides. From a wicker chair placed in one corner I could feel the Brunei river flowing to the south beyond the jagged ridge of Kota Batu, and to the west and north I was surrounded by the jungle that rolled down the Markucing hills into the garden. It was a magical place, so overwhelming that it took time adjusting to. For months on end all I could do was sit there listening to the rustling of the leaves, the sounds of insects and birds, waiting quietly and motionless in the hope that some monkey or wilder creature wandered closer to my field of vision – in the very early hours of the morning the bolder monkeys usually bathed in the pool. In our post-box there lived a baby monitor lizard, and I would have to remain particularly still if I wanted to catch the blue and gold-feathered bird that occasionally flew out of the thicket, across the valley and back, stopping at various trees along it's way to steal the eggs of smaller birds from their nests.

When inspiration gets overwhelming it leaves me close to stunned, unable to pass things on to the canvas. At these times I prefer to enjoy the ride and brood about what stirs up inside me, digesting it and writing notes about possible directions in a notebook I always carry around with me. In those first few months I applied myself to getting the studio ready for work, conditioning the ground with rattan carpets bought at the local market, setting up easels and extra shading for the paints and brushes I would be leaving outside throughout the next four years. The heat and the humidity were constant and the paintings too were left outside, far from the warping effects of air-conditioning. I focused on finding my bearings in these new surroundings and deciding what I was meant to do from among the many ideas that assailed me. One thing I did establish clearly from the start: I did not wish my Borneo work to revolve around the obvious theme of Magellan - the rain and the heat had much more interesting tales to tell.

Distant Memories

Bandar Seri Begawan, the capital of the Abode of Peace, does not lie on the coast but a few miles upriver along the Sungai Brunei. It is only recently that it has come ashore. Well into the nineteen-sixties the capital rested on stilts in the Kampong Ayer, the water-village, an expanse of houses made of wood and corrugated iron that stretches out of sight on both sides of the river. One of the few dwellings on terra-firma, apart from those belonging to the Chinese, was the late Sultan’s palace, a humble blue house only the most curious of tourists makes plans to visit and invariably misses.

You would be a fool to dismiss as a shantytown what you see upon arriving at the jetty that leads into the labyrinth of catwalks and bridges that give access to the kampong. They may look similar to the ones one comes across in the Philippines or in Vietnam, but upon closer inspection it becomes clear that their owners are much more affluent. Their exterior aspect belies what is concealed within and it is only when you walk across the catwalks or venture deeper on the speedboats that ferry people to and from town that you realise that this is a complete city with schools and hospitals and police stations and everything you can imagine in each sector.

We are too quick to judge the comforts of others by the standards of our discomfort. People live here because they wish nothing more than to continue to live the way their ancestors have lived since before they joined in recorded western history. For even before the first recorded encounter with people from the west in 1521 there was news of great splendour in the kingdom of Poni as the Chinese called it and the display Pigafetta describes in his chronicle is not something one readily puts up over night.

Before the Oil and natural-gas boom, Brunei’s camphor and sandalwood were highly prized and helped to establish it as a major trading post in South East Asia. Records of the Sung Dynasty which ruled in China from the 10th to the 13th century tell of the significant trade and cultural links between the two empires. Trading agreements were signed, ambassadors exchanged, and there is little doubt that the art and craft of Brunei was influenced by its close ties with China. In the late 14th early 15th centuries Brunei reached its apogee, occupying the whole of Borneo and parts of the Philippines as far away as Manila. In those times culture flourished and the 5th Sultan of Brunei, passionate for music and poetry, would have the royal orchestra accompany him on his boat whenever he visited his territories.

In the Royal Regalia Museum it is possible to wander amongst replicas of what I imagined to be the same Perahus that sailed downriver to meet Magellan’s fleet under it’s new commander, Sebastian del Cano - Ferdinand Magellan himself having been killed in Cebu. The boats are there, decorated with gold leaf and flying peacock feathers and one has only to imagine them laden with gifts, musicians and court dignitaries come to greet the visitors and take them ashore where they were then escorted on silk-covered elephants to the palace in Kota Batu, the ancient capital enclosed behind fortifications and guarded by 62 canons of cast-iron and bronze, it’s interior draped in silks and brocade, as told by the fleet’s chronicler Antonio Pigafetta.

To find myself here almost 500 years later stirs up emotions, a certain patriotic pride - the fleet may have been Spanish but Magellan, even if he didn’t make it here, was Portuguese and the spirit of his achievement is not blemished by the actions that took place four days later and started to spell the decline of this once great Empire. The distinction between the achievements of the Portuguese and the actions of the Spanish comes across quite clearly in my contacts with the local people - I feel it is like a door that is being left open to me.

Rewind...

... to July 2001

If ever there was an island that conjured up ideas of primeval times reaching into our days it is the island of Borneo - the second-largest remaining expanse of tropical rainforest inhabited until recently by unique animals and the not-so-distant memory of head-hunters and cannibalism. Ever since childhood, whenever I looked at the world-map my eyes always came to rest on that huge landmass, suspended as if in limbo between the sweeping curve of Indonesia and the gulf of Siam. And yet I don’t believe I ever dreamt that I would live here and so never really cared to investigate beyond the presumptions that I gathered over the years from loose bits of information, and it is armed with these that I fly in, full of expectation about what the next four years will bring.

The first of these beliefs is washed aside as soon as I get off the plane and make my way through the terminal to immigration: the building is sleek and organized and everywhere I look beautifully styled posters welcome me to Negara Brunei Darussalam – The Abode of Peace – and as I walk out through the sliding glass doors into the heat and the humidity, the punch-line in the slogan hits me in the face leaving me gaping for air; I have reached The Land of Unexpected Treasures!

Those few treasures we drive past on the first drive home are indeed unexpected. The Ministry of Finance, a mammoth structure of glass and steel built to the now banished and unfavourable prince Jeffri’s specifications, with its car-lift to his office on the top floor; gilded mosques, conditioned and kept cool on the inside thanks to slabs of marble brought in from Italy; lush public gardens constantly manicured by Filipino and Indonesian ‘thrillers’ [I have few doubts that Michael Jackson must have come here in the 80’s to steal the idea for a video from Brunei’s gardeners]; mansions, and more mansions, all impressive-looking and sporting car-ports for an army of cars, but seemingly abandoned; and all this while floating along modern motorways through patches of jungle from one part of the city to the next, being overtaken by cars I’d only seen before in magazines.

Awe-inspiring it certainly is, but I sense a troubling undercurrent I am still unable to describe adequately. If I were on holiday I would have thought I had reached Disney World, but knowing that I will be living here for the next four years I don’t quite know what to think or feel about this lavish display carved out from the thickest jungle.

Out of Borneo

My eyes closed, I feel the plane lift off the runway on my final journey out of Borneo and I replay in my mind the whisper I believed to have heard coming from the jungle while I reluctantly cleared away the last traces of what had been the open-air studio where I had painted for so many years:

- When you’re gone, we’ll be back…

I ease back into my seat and gaze out of the window as the plane tips to the left revealing the crystal clear sea below - overlapping shades of green and blue I had never seen from the shore littered with an array of metal structures and super-tankers - and I take in one last look of the fabled rigs that make the Sultan of Brunei one of the richest men in the world. These are the fields that sustain one of the most paradoxical countries on Earth, the Sultanate of Brunei.

For four years I lived and worked on the far-away island of Borneo where, as an artist I tended, almost religiously, to tapping in to a new raw source of inspiration and channelling it into my own work. But gradually, unnoticeably, I found myself absorbed in the building of bridges with the reclusive local artists and organizing projects together in spite of the difficulties the abyss of cultural differences brought about by September 11 placed between us. This, in a way, is the story of how Art – cultural exchange - can make a difference and affect people and things in a way, and with a reach, politics seldom does.

Writing the tale is in itself an adventure, one, I hope, you will wish to accompany me on even if I admit in my opening sentences that as I put pen to paper I don’t quite know where I want to go or where we both will end. Borneo, like so many wondrous places Man has desecrated on his quest for supremacy, has become an ambiguous place – it is and it isn’t what we dream it to be. Whatever the reason you picked this up – be it Borneo or the paintings and images you leafed through inquisitively at the bookshop - I am hoping to take you beyond those images and any preconceived ideas you still may have of the place, at the risk of shattering its mystique and loosing you along the way.