Can you guess what this building is? If your answer was ‘outhouse’, you are correct – but this was not taken in Singapore. It was taken in Skudai, a town in Johor Bahru. FOYers Chun See, Wee Kiat met up with another FOYer Cha Aun in his hometown of Skudai, and there show us some household kampong items that are no longer found in Singapore.
Chun See writes:
This is what a typical kampong toilet looks like. Notice that the roof is simply made of a couple of zinc sheets nailed to two beams. I deliberately avoided the toilet bowl because it looked too modern and would spoil my photo. Leaning against the toilet is a home-made ladder. No need to describe how to construct one, I think.
To find out what other kampong household items Chun See and gang find in Skudai, read his post here.
1 Response
It’s interesting how you said you “…deliberately avoided the toilet bowl because it looked too modern and would spoil…” the photo. Through our selective use of the camera, we capture (or avoid) images so that the final photos can conform to our expectations of our ‘ideals’ (and not with what is ‘real’). For example, your photo does not show the modern toilet bowl on purpose, because you feel that a kampung toilet should not have a modern toilet bowl. Our realities are constantly manipulated by us to fit our notions of the ideal past – really fascinating!
Posted on April 5th, 2011 at 1:04 pm
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