Numerous stories, pix depicting the olden days of Gaya Street

Numerous stories and photos depicting the olden days of Gaya Street have been collected for the community heritage exhibition, “Bonding With Gaya Street”, in conjunction with the City Day celebration.

The exhibition is organised by the North Borneo History Enthusiasts (NBHE) in collaboration with City Hall, with support from the Sabah Tourism Board, Information Department, Sabah Museum, Sabah Archives Department and the Daily Express, among others.

These old nostalgic photographs and collection of stories will be on display at different parts of Gaya Street on Feb 11 and Feb 12 during the event.

Tina Kinsil, of NBHE, shared some of the stories and experiences which they gathered from the community.

“A customer was having his lunch at Kedai Kopi Sen Chong Wah (where the NBHE collection booth is set up), when he noticed a photo of his father, Justin Abiu, featured in one of the photos pasted on the stories collection booth.

“He was so excited that the next day he took the whole family – father, mother, brother, sister and children – to take a look at the photo,” said Tina.

According to Abiu, they were called “Delivery Postmen” and issued with bicycles by the Government to deliver mail to the shops (not houses) from 1968 to 1970, adding that no delivery was made when it rained.

Another story is about Ah Pui who has been working and living in Gaya Street for the past 47 years and happened to be at the Syarikat Eng Leong shop in Gaya Street when the NBHE research team dropped by.

“Call me Ah Pui as in ‘pui’, like the sound you make when you spit,” said the 82-year-old, Sino-Dusun.

According to Tina, Ah Pui is originally from Kota Belud and it took him a day’s walk to Tenghilan from Kota Belud where he stayed overnight at a police station before proceeding the next day to Jesselton in search of work.

He arrived in what he refers to as Api-Api or Jesselton in 1964 and his first impression of Jesselton was a town with three neat rows of low-rise shop houses.

A Dusun policeman took pity on him and let him stay at the police station, which, according to Ah Pui, was not unusual for those coming from the villages to use as overnight accommodation during that time.

Since then, he has been living in Kota Kinabalu for the past 47 years where home to him is the workshop behind Mee Kwong Wing Kee Enterprise Sdn Bhd, glass, mirror and frame makers located at No. 15 Gaya Street.

According to Ah Pui, what he remembered most about his life was his experience during the Japanese Occupation in North Borneo.

He was 14 year old when the Japanese arrived in Kg Tombolian where he was living and he recalls the Japanese soldiers having Taiwanese origins.

“They were unlike the Kempeitais who were Japanese and had bayonets so long it reached up to their necks,” he said, recalling how he heard the Kempeitais speaking in Malay to the villagers.

“The soldiers liked to swim in the river and often asked me to join them for a swim,” he said, adding that many villagers at that time had very little to eat and so did the soldiers.

“They stole chickens from the villagers and asked them to cook it with sweet potato leaves.

I used to carry water for them from the river to be used to clean the chicken, which earned me a few sticks of cigarettes,” he said.

Running errands for the soldiers meant there was food and clothing for Ah Pui and, of course, cigarettes from the packets that had pictures of a horse, bicycle or the rising sun Japanese symbol.

Ah Pui and the other villagers had to learn the Japanese language which was taught by a Shanghainese, and during the Occupation, villagers had a difficult choice of whether to obey the Japanese or risk losing their lives or starve.

Later, he left Kg Tombolion for Kota Belud where he found work planting groundnuts and cutting grass, recalling seeing leaflets that had distinct red edges being dropped from airplanes by the Allied forces.

He stayed in Kota Belud and later Tuaran for some time until that fateful day-long trek to Jesselton in 1964 in search of a better life.

Source: Daily Express