Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia - The Planter`s Bungalow: A Journey Down the Malay Peninsula is quite a piece of work. But then the authors of the book, Datuk Peter Jenkins and Datin Waveney Jenkins, are quite a couple.
They were at the Royal Selangor Club in Kuala Lumpur recently, to host a reception celebrating the publication of their work. Peter and Waveney married in Britain in 1962 and within days were on their way to Malaya, where they were to live for the next 40 years.
I assumed that Peter had been a planter himself. Not so. His career was in the construction industry until 1985, when he became the leading light of the Malaysian International Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
Meanwhile Waveney was also busy. A highly-regarded sculptor, she is also a founding member of Badan Warisan Malaysia (the Heritage Trust of Malaysia), and more recently, became chairperson of the Kandis Resource Centre, Kelantan, which preserves and promotes traditional Malay wood carving skills.
Clearly then, Peter and Waveney, though with British roots, have a passion for things Malaysian.
The idea for a book to document and record the fast-disappearing old planters` bungalows was first floated by Badan Warisan Malaysia in the late 1990s, with initially Datuk Henry Barlow (the honorary secretary of Badan Warisan Malaysia) being proposed as author.
However Barlow knew that Peter was about to retire, and dropped the project on his plate instead.
Peter and Waveney were probably the perfect choice to write the book. Peter had contacts with many active and retired planters, and plantation companies too, whilst Waveney was already deeply involved in Malaysian heritage and the preservation of it.
The retiring couple had also decided that they would be living in Malaysia and Britain and so they could carry out research in both countries.
And the research was both thorough and meticulous. Around 400 retired planters in both Malaysia and Britain were contacted via the Incorporated Society of Planters.
The CEOs of 20 major planting groups were approached. Due, I am sure, to the delightful charm of Peter and Waveney, just about every one of those contacted volunteered to help in some way.
Planters and their descendants produced a huge number of old photos, some of long-gone bungalows, background details and anecdotes, some of which were even hilarious and outrageous, perhaps not to be published!
There were also stories of the bad times — the Japanese occupation and the communist insurgency during which there was a great loss of lives.
To accumulate all this information, the authors visited many of the planters throughout Britain and Malaysia and corresponded with others.
From this research, Peter and Waveney discovered that around 120 bungalows were still standing in peninsular Malaysia.
They had been built between 1800 and 1941, the period the authors decided to concentrate on. Incredibly they then set out to visit and photograph as many of these bungalows as possible, and got to practically every one of them.
This mass of research material then had to be collated, written and laid out in a suitable format for publication. Peter did much of the writing, with one chapter contributed by Chen Voon Fee, an authority on architecture.
Waveney shot much of the location photography, with David Lok contributing many of the photos. Kasim Abas produced some beautiful drawings, which Waveney then arranged and laid out for publication.
The whole is a great joint effort which, after nearly eight years of hard work, produced a wonderful, worthwhile and important book.
The Planter`s Bungalow contains over 220 photographs, drawings and re-constructions, excerpts from old diaries and journals, and interviews with over 300 planters and those connected with planting.
It is also, of course, a narrative of the authors` journey down the Malay peninsula.
If one is interested in plantation and tropical architecture, the history and heritage of Malaysia, the daily life from a bygone age, or how the plantation system developed and operated, the book is a must-read.
Peter and Waveney — and all those involved — who devoted more than seven years of their lives to this project, should be commended for the work put into this volume and the more-than-successful end result. I suspect the authors found it both fascinating and rewarding journey.
The Planter`s Bungalow is published by Editions Didier Millet, supported by six of Malaysia`s top plantation groups, and can be found in bookshops in Malaysia and overseas (James Hipkiss).
Source: www.nst.com.my (15 Maret 2008)
