Tetengga

Taken on a recent trip to the city of Makassar in the South Sulawesi islands of Indonesia, Tetengga, meaning neighbours, is a series of street photos of Makassar life. I grew up listening to my dad tell stories about his childhood growing up in the kampong villages of Singapore. The seemingly rural, backward, underprivileged society communities he described were often a harsh example of showing me my own privilege and modern luxuries. To me, these were bygone eras in the rapidly-developing landscape of Singapore's bustling urbanisation. But upon arriving in Makassar, I felt like time had somehow overlapped itself and thrown me into the stories my father told me of kids playing with tyres, washing clothes in the drain, cockfighting.... Yet, despite the innate sense of contentment with life that was palpable in the Makassar people, rapid urbanisation of their city, (in a conscious effort to make the city more and more like Singapore, no less) continued happening around them. I then took a 2 hour flight back to my home, a neighbouring country, feeling like I had just entered a wormhole. And I wasn't quite sure which I preferred.