Mission Road, Sibu

In 1977, the area used to be known as the Mission Road was completely demolished to make way for a fantastic, modern riverine esplanade. In fact for about ten years, slowly every old wooden building was being taken down and even the two important schools, St. Elizabeth Convent School and Sacred Heart School, were demolished to make way for urban development.

Today no sign of the old Mission Road could be seen to even identify its existence. I believe that no one had even painted a picture of it. Perhaps in some photo studios there would be a few photos in black and white. Well, I will wait for something to turn up eventually. One would never know.

Any mention of the term Mission Road would resurrect a lot of interest, good or bad, amongst Sibu residents who are already in their forties and fifties! I was mentioning the thought to a friend and he got really excited and responded, "Ah yes, the whore place!!" He was but a small Form Two boy then.

And true enough, after half a century, many memories have faded but what remains clear was that area was known as the red light district. Any town or city would have a red light district, or what ever name you would like to call it. It could even be just called squatter area.

The Mission Road was named so because the Sacred Heart Church was first built there in the 1930s, the La Salle Brothers had their residence there and they founded the Sacred Heart school, which later moved to Oya Road in 1967.

It was about 1967 that the Mission Road, Red Light District, was also demolished, to make way for urban development or urban sprawl in sibu.

Lots of stories have been told about Mission Road. In fact, although the Sacred Heart School and the St. Elizabeth Convent School were the more legal,sacred and important social institutions of Mission Road, the name more often and not evokes memories of short skirted, tough legged and loud speaking "perempuan jalan" or ladies of the night.

According to school friends, these ladies could be had for a stick of cigarette. One of the plays I have written for staging in school was based on a stick of cigarette. However I portrayed these prostitutes having hearts of gold, and they saved a young pretty girl from going into prostitution (circa 1969 and May 13). The play also has a reference to the Sarawak Border Scouts who saved a lot of lives in Kuala Lumpur during the May 13 riot.

The squatter area was all wooden and built just above tide level. The grounds were completely muddy when the tide was low and you could see lots of condensed milk tins, milo tins and what bric bracs people could throw out of their windows.

The plank walks were dangerously constructed, one plank upon two poles, and then another plank and then another pole until the hut is reached. A hut would probably have only one bed room, a kitchen which opened out to a roofless platform or sundeck where a huge oil barrel would act as a water storage container and rain water would be collected from home made gutters. These homemade gutters were made from kerosene tins which had been flattened out and then bent in semi circles to form the gutters. All the roofs were zinc.

Every rubbish would be thrown out of the kitchen into the river. When the tide was high the solid waste was taken far out and into the mighty Rejang. And very often, when the tide was low, every waste or rubbish would be exposed. A keen researcher could even write an article on the obvious nutrition of the squatters, just based on the evidence provided by the empty canned food, empty milo tins,etc.

Occasionally a dead chicken would float in the water . And sometimes a dead dog.

In the 50's urban hygiene was not priority. Cholera ,leprosy, TB , goitre, and STD were of epidemic proportion. But kids just grew up like mushrooms!! Many of the children born in Mission Road and also elsewhere would not have birth certificates as the first really important identity cards were made only in 1965, when teams of the National Registration went around to register the citizens of Malaysia.

(I remember having my own identity card made in the school hall when I was in secondary school in 1965, alongside all my school mates. It was a proud moment when I collected my blue IC!! I was wondering how it was possible to have an IC without our parents vouching for our identity.)