Stories from Deli

17 Dec. 1896.

I would like to pay off my debt to you before the end of the year and that is why I am already starting my epistle. It is evening, because I cannot write during the day, and I am sitting on the verandah again. The first thing I am going to tell you is how we live here. Really rural and of course very simple. Each assistant has a house, which is built on stilts, and consists of a verandah, dining room, bedroom and guest room.

The servants live in separate buildings and the bathroom is downstairs. However, do not imagine that our dining room looks like home; there is no ceiling, we look at the roof of atap, but you get used to that very quickly. There are two windows in each room, but without glass. Still, there are net curtains in front of them, and at night we close them with blinds. There are reed mats on the floor and the walls are made of wood, through the cracks of which one can see the blue sky shining. Everything is arranged so that our house is fresh and airy, and that is allowed in this climate.

As a rule, we stretch a large sail above the table, so that in rain and wind the scales of the atap, or lizards and colossal spiders, do not fall into our soup. Perhaps you have no idea what such a roof looks like. You cut the leaves from the nipah or atap palm, fold them double, lay them next to each other, then put a stick through them, to which you tie them with rattan or Spanish reed, dry them, and then you have an atap of about 6 feet long.

Such ataps are neatly laid on top of each other, just like our tiles. Such a roof is wonderfully fresh, but is not thick enough to shelter us completely during heavy rains. The veranda is of course the place where one almost always spends one’s free time; it is therefore furnished most cosily, and one protects oneself from the sun by means of blinds. It goes without saying that we keep all kinds of animals on our property. You will find pigeons, ducks, geese, chickens, cats, dogs, and usually also a few monkeys.

Around the house we grow some European vegetables such as spinach, endive and French beans. I think that they are not as tasty as in Holland, perhaps because they grow too quickly here. On extra occasions we then resort to tins. Potatoes come from China; beef is delivered to us from Medan, but bread is baked here by Bengalis, although not as tasty as at home, because the bakers here use coconut water instead of milk.

But you can even get Dutch rye bread in tins, so that you don’t have to wean yourself off the national food if necessary. Now that you know how I live, I’m going to show you around. A large tobacco company like the one where I am stationed consists of various departments or estates.

At the head of each department is an administrator under whom a few European assistants are stationed, while the head administrator runs the whole thing. Each assistant has supervision over his own fields, but we live close enough to each other to be able to exchange visits in the evenings or on days off. Chinese coolies work in the tobacco fields, under their own overseers.

We speak Malay with the latter and they convey our orders to the coolies, who understand nothing but their own language. But then we have Bataks, who clear the forests for our future tobacco fields and build roads, Javanese and Baweans who build the fermentation sheds and the houses of the coolies, etc. etc.

If you ever came to such a kampong of the Bataks, you would be surprised to see how primitive they live and how unclean they look. I believe that these people are afraid of water and only let themselves be washed off by the rain. So we have the most to do with the coolies, in the field as well as in the house.

Our cook is also a coolie; we call him boy. Just now, when I was sitting at the table with a big dog next to me, a purring cat on the table, and one on the floor, while the Chinese boy whose braided tail almost hung to the floor brought in the products of his cooking, I thought, look, you should be able to see me sitting like this in my new surroundings. Our coolies, who work in the fields, wear their tails in a roll at the back of their heads; only their overseer, the tandil, lets them hang, but winds them around the neck a few times or as a braid around the head. The head is completely shaved in front, the barber shaves them in the fields.

The Chinese coolies are diligent, but have little sense of honor and therefore do not pay much attention to remarks and comments; the Javanese are well-built strong fellows, who work hard to finish their daily task as soon as possible, but just as little as the Bataks can they tolerate remarks about their work. One must therefore deal with them in a completely different way than with the Chinese.

I came here, as you know, at the beginning of May, it was then in the dry season. But do not imagine that it does not rain at all then; then it would look gloomy for the tobacco plants in Deli. There is always some rain, but not in such quantity as at present, now that we are in the wet monsoon. The climate suited me right away, I did not find the heat as oppressive as in Europe, although the thermometer also showed 90° F. in the shade during the day and 80° in the evening. In the field we usually had 120° in the sun.

In the morning it is almost deathly calm, towards noon there is usually a little wind, and in the evening around 5 or 6 o’clock it starts to cool down a bit. Sometimes the sun crawls behind the clouds during the day, and although this is sometimes lovely, we have to grumble about it as tobacco planters, because we need the sun so much.

Now and then we are surprised in the field by heavy rain showers, the likes of which you cannot imagine. The sky suddenly becomes as black as soot. There you see the shower coming, you can already hear the rain crackling down in the distance on the foliage in the forest. If we ourselves did not stay in the field, all the Chinese coolies would flee to their homes. It is not everything, to get such a shower on their naked warm bodies, when in lVz ilur time there is 91 m.M. water falls. The only place where we can keep our notebook dry is in the ball of our hat. That is a practical garment in this land of the sun. It is about 2 cm thick, large and white and as light as a feather. The brim is green on the inside. If this headgear is dirty, it is cleaned again with chalk and some water. When we go out we wear a grey hat, which has a somewhat smaller brim.

With a white suit, white shoes and a grey hat one can appear anywhere, and that is how we also go to Medan on Sundays. I am mistaken there. I wrote an older custom of Sunday, but we do not have that day of rest here. We only have days off twice a month, on payday for the coolies and then on a few Chinese holidays. That was strange to me at first, but one gets used to everything, says the proverb. But now I am going to sleep. The clock says 9 o’clock, and tomorrow morning at 5 o’clock it will be day again for us. For you it will now be 3 o’clock in the afternoon. See you in a few days.

Eigen haard; geïllustreerd volkstijdschrift, 1897, no. 12, 20-03-1897