Stories from Deli

17 December 1896

Before the end of the year I should still like to settle my debt to you, and therefore I shall begin my letter at once. It is evening, for during the day there is no chance of writing, and I am once again sitting on the veranda. The first thing I shall now tell you is how we live here. Truly rural, and of course very simple. Every assistant has a house built on piles, consisting of a veranda, dining room, bedroom, and guest room. The servants live in separate little buildings, and the bathroom is downstairs.

Do not imagine, however, that our dining room looks like one at home; there is no ceiling, we look straight up at the atap roof, but one becomes accustomed to that very quickly. Each room has two windows, but without glass. Nevertheless, lace curtains hang in front of them, and at night we close them with shutters. Reed mats lie on the floor and the walls are made of wood, through the cracks of which one can see the blue sky shining. Everything is thus arranged to make our house fresh and airy, which is certainly necessary in this climate.

As a rule we stretch a large canvas above the table so that, in rain and wind, fragments of the atap, or lizards and enormous spiders, do not fall into our soup. Perhaps you have no idea what such a roof looks like. One cuts the leaves from the nipah or atap palm, folds them double, lays them next to each other, pushes a stick through them and ties them with rattan or Spanish reed, dries them, and then one has an atap of about six feet in length. These ataps are then neatly laid over one another just like roof tiles at home. Such a roof is wonderfully cool, but it is not tight enough to protect us completely during heavy rains.

The veranda is naturally the place where one almost always spends one’s free time; it is therefore furnished in the most comfortable way, and one protects oneself there from the sun with jalousies. That we keep all kinds of animals on our grounds goes without saying: you will find pigeons, ducks, geese, chickens, cats, dogs, and usually also a couple of monkeys. Around the house we grow a few European vegetables such as spinach, endive, and green beans. I find that they are not as tasty as in Holland, perhaps because they grow too fast here. On special occasions we then resort to tinned food.

Potatoes come from China; beef is supplied to us from Medan, but bread is baked here by Bengalis—though not as tasty as at home, because these bakers use coconut water instead of milk. One can even obtain Dutch rye bread in tins, so that, if necessary, one need not unlearn one’s taste for foods from the homeland.

Now that you know how I live, I shall guide you around a little further. A large tobacco enterprise such as the one to which I am attached consists of several divisions or estates.

(Illustrations: Tobacco field with assistant’s house and curing barns under construction; seedbeds at upper left covered with screens of dried lalang grass. / Tobacco field with tobacco under planks; assistant’s house with kitchen, stable and other buildings, curing barn under construction and coolie housing.)

At the head of each division stands an administrator under whom several European assistants are placed, while the chief administrator manages the whole. Each assistant has supervision over his own fields, but we live close enough to one another to exchange visits in the evenings or on free days. Chinese coolies work on the tobacco fields, under their own supervisors. With the latter we speak Malay, and they pass our orders on to the coolies, who understand nothing but their own language.

Then we have Bataks who clear the forests for our future tobacco fields and construct roads; Javanese and Baweanese who build the fermentation sheds and the houses of the coolies, and so on. If you were ever to come into such a Batak kampong, you would be amazed at how primitive they live and how unclean they look. I believe these people are afraid of water and let themselves be washed only by the rain.

We therefore have most dealings with the coolies, both in the field and in the house. Our cook is also a coolie; we call him a “boy.” Just now, as I sat at table with a large dog beside me, a purring cat on the table and another on the floor, while the Chinese boy—whose braided queue almost touched the ground—brought in the products of his culinary art, I thought: if only you could see me sitting here in my new surroundings.

The coolies who work in the fields wear their queue rolled up behind the head; only their supervisor, the tandil, lets it hang loose, but winds it several times around the neck or braids it around the head. At the front the head is completely shaved; the barber shaves them in the field. The Chinese coolies are industrious, but possess little sense of honour and therefore pay little attention to reprimands; the Javanese are well-built, strong fellows who work hard in order to finish their daily task sooner, but just like the Bataks they cannot tolerate criticism of their work. One must therefore deal with them in a completely different way than with the Chinese.

I arrived here, as you know, at the beginning of May; it was then the dry season. Do not imagine, however, that it does not rain at all during that time—if it did, the tobacco plants in Deli would fare badly. It rains regularly, though not in such quantities as now, in the wet monsoon.

The climate suited me immediately; I did not find the heat as oppressive as in Europe, although the thermometer during the day in the shade indicated 90°F, and in the evening 80°F. In the fields we usually had 120°F in the sun. In the morning it is almost completely still; toward midday a little wind usually arises, and in the evening, around five or six o’clock, it begins to cool somewhat. Sometimes during the day the sun creeps behind the clouds, and although this is sometimes delightful, we tobacco planters must grumble about it, since we need the sunshine so badly.

Now and then we are overtaken in the fields by violent rainstorms, of which you can form no conception. The sky suddenly turns as black as soot. There you see the shower approaching; you already hear the rain crackling in the distance on the foliage in the forest. If we ourselves did not remain in the field, all the Chinese coolies would flee to their houses. And it is no small matter to receive such a deluge on one’s naked, warm body when 91 millimetres of water fall in an hour and a half.

The only place where we can keep our notebook dry is in the crown of our hat. That is a practical item of clothing in this land of sun. It is about two centimetres thick, large and white, and as light as a feather. The inside of the brim is green. If this headgear becomes dirty, it is cleaned again with chalk and a little water. When we go out, we wear a grey hat, which has a somewhat narrower brim. With a white suit, white shoes, and a grey hat one can appear anywhere, and thus we also go to Medan on Sundays.

There—I am mistaken. I still write “Sunday” out of old habit, but that day of rest is unknown here. We have free days only twice a month, on the paydays for the coolies, and then on a few Chinese feast days. At first that seemed strange to me, but one becomes accustomed to everything, as the proverb says.

But now I am going to sleep. The clock shows nine o’clock, and tomorrow morning at five it will be day for us again. With you it will now be three o’clock in the afternoon. Until a few days hence.

t.t.