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Same country, different place

By Nick Choo

September 17, 2009

Mia Palencia
Mia Palencia (All pics courtesy of Mia Palencia)

SINGER-songwriter Mia Palencia echoes the sentiments of other artistes from Sabah and Sarawak who recognise the disparities between East Malaysia and the peninsula.

The 25-year-old recording artiste, whose first solo album Finding My Way was released in April 2008, writes in her Facebook profile on 11 Sept 2009: “[…As] my awareness and understanding of the East Malaysian plight deepens, I have become increasingly disturbed and frustrated with the way things are and seem to be adamant on continuing to be.”

Mia Palencia singing
Frustrated by the East Malaysian plight

Recounting the contract signed between Sabah, Sarawak, Malaya and Singapore on 16 Sept 1963, and the subsequent withdrawal of the island republic, she says: “When four people decide to gather their assets and set up a company, they sign a contract, which states that they each own four equal parts of the company. When one of them decides to leave, naturally, the previous contract has to be revised and rewritten.

“Apparently it wasn’t so natural at all to request this … [T]oday, 46 years later, my nation that signed a contract with three others to become a fourth of a country has been reduced to a 13th.

“… As long as Sabah is treated like 1/13th instead of 1/3rd, as long as Malaysia Day is treated as a state holiday instead of a national celebration, we cannot become the united nation that was envisioned in the original plan,” she concludes.

The Nut Graph interviewed Kuala Lumpur-based Mia via e-mail on 11 Sept 2009 to learn more about her family and growing-up years in the East.

TNG: Where were you born, and where did you grow up?

Mia Palencia: I was born in Kota Kinabalu (KK). In the beginning, we moved around the state a lot. I think we finally settled in KK again when I was four or five. I spent the rest of my childhood there and moved to Kuala Lumpur when I was 17.

Can you trace your ancestry?

Back in the days when foreigners were being sent to Sabah as soldiers or managers, they sometimes took local wives. I believe I am a product of that generation.

My paternal great grandfather was a Belgian soldier who married a local woman. They had two children before he was called back to his own country. He later returned to find that she had remarried a local. Heartbroken, he took his son back to Belgium and left his daughter with her. That daughter was my grandmother, Lydia Brabon.

Mia's birthday party
Mia and her late paternal grandmother, Lydia Brabon Palencia, share the same birthday and celebrated it together every year while she was alive

She married a Filipino man named Thomas Palencia and had nine children, the youngest of whom is my father. She named my father Brabon, and so my father, Brabon Palencia, is the marriage of both surnames.

My maternal great grandfather was Australian, believed to be of German ancestry. He was sent to Sabah to manage a plantation, and took a local wife even though he was already married with children in Australia. He sent their children to a convent to be brought up estranged from their Sabahan mother and her family. He died of malaria in Sabah and was buried there.

My grandfather, Henry Brand, was a very tall Eurasian man. He later fell in love with a lady of Filipino and Spanish descent named Juanita Villa Lobos, and they also had nine children, the youngest of whom is my mother, Jennifer Brand.

What is your strongest memory of the place where you grew up?

Young Mia
Young Mia and her father, Brabon Palencia, dancing during Christmas

I grew up in a house called Rumah Putih. It was a modest home with generous grounds; plenty of room for children to amuse themselves outdoors. My strongest memories are of our very elaborate Christmas parties! My parents spent weeks in advance preparing for Christmas. They would hand-make beautiful large star-shaped lights that hung outside on the porch.

What are the stories you hold onto the most from your family?

I spent a lot of time with my maternal grandfather when I was growing up. He had a farm and orchards before he came to live with us. I distinctively remember him having wounds on his legs that he bathed and dressed every day.

Later on I found out that my grandfather had been a Japanese prisoner of war. He was captured and tortured for many weeks, leaving my grandmother to fend for herself and her many children. Luckily, the Japanese Occupation was drawing to an end, and my grandfather was able to escape. But because he was diabetic, his wounds never healed.

He was an incredible man, and played a huge part in my eventual gravitation towards singing.

As children
Mia and her sister, Vanessa, posing for a supermarket advertisment


How do you connect with these stories as a Malaysian?

Having grandparents who struggled to survive through the war has given me a greater sense of the age (or rather, youth) of our country. I feel that the young people of my generation take our independence and freedom for granted, and why not? They were born into a free and self-governed country. I think the weight of the fact that just two generations ago we were fighting to be our own people is often dismissed.

Malaysia is a young country. We’re still working out our kinks, but we worked really hard to be where we are today.

What aspects of your identity do you struggle with the most as a Malaysian?

The fact that I am Sabahan means that I didn’t grow up in a Malay/Chinese/Indian [Malaysian] setting. We were oblivious to these things as children, and largely unaware of the history and growth of West Malaysia.

Growing up in an atmosphere where people in Sabah were very much just happy to be Sabahan, we had our own struggles with governance, and West Malaysia was, to a Sabahan child, a faraway place that we only visited once in a while.

When I first moved to KL, it was as if I had moved to an altogether different country! I had a lot to learn about the loves and hates of West Malaysian society, and to somehow find my place in the midst of it.

While I have come to love (and sometimes hate) KL, I think I will always be a visitor to a certain degree. It is hard working out what it means to be a Malaysian in Malaysia, when in reality we are all unique and as different as [the] sun and [the] moon. East and West Malaysia are the same country, but they are not the same place.

Describe the kind of Malaysia you would like for yourself and for future generations.

Family reunion
Family reunion Largest family reunion to date from Mia's mother, Jennifer Brand's side — circa 2005

I once had some Australian friends who came to stay with me for awhile. They kept calling people here Malays, much in the way that they would call their fellow people Australian. It took a lot of explaining before they realised that Malays and Malaysians were not the same thing. I had never really thought about it until their visit!

I’m sure this is still pretty far off, but I would like to see a Malaysia where everyone is just Malaysian. favicon

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Filed Under: Found in Malaysia Tagged With: 16 September, artiste, brabon, brand, christmas, contract, family, Finding my way, henry, identity, jennifer brand, juanita villa lobos, kota kinabalu, lydia, mia palencia, palencia, plight, rumah putih, Sabah, Sarawak, singapore, thomas, vanessa

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Arion Yeow says

    September 17, 2009 at 12:39 pm

    Nothing is going to change if you […] keep voting the same [people] into power. When some people go into your jungle village and offer RM50 to RM100 for you to vote their way, they are thinking of how they are going to rob you of 1,000 times the amount over the next five years until the next elections.

  2. pkunkish says

    September 17, 2009 at 1:52 pm

    Great interview, and I love Mia’s music. Thanks, TNG!

  3. M.K. says

    September 17, 2009 at 5:30 pm

    Wow! A very enlightening article about Mia and her roots in Sabah. To Mia, I have this to say: Keep up your good music! We are proud of you.

  4. Mervyn says

    September 17, 2009 at 8:52 pm

    Mia’s music is amazing. I [feel] sorry for myself for coming to know about her only so recently … Whatever she mentioned about being Malaysian, I could not agree more. The Borneo side of Malaysia has alot of untold stories and greatness that are being hidden or not [made] aware to people from the peninsula. Hopefully one day we all will be one, as we are meant to be.

  5. benny says

    September 18, 2009 at 11:50 am

    I love her music, and I really know how she [feels]. I am a Sarawakian, now in the northern region for my studies, and being a (lain-lain) is really hard.

  6. D Lim says

    September 18, 2009 at 11:50 am

    Yes, indeed I have many East Malaysian friends. Interestingly, I only just found that they know nothing about 13 May so they really don’t understand the undercurrents occuring in [West] Malaysia. I think East Malaysia is more multi-cultural and well integrated than West Malaysia. There are so many inter-marriages in East Malaysia. My brother married a local girl from Sarawak and lives in Kuala Lumpur.

  7. Main says

    September 18, 2009 at 10:56 pm

    This is best described as “The best of a few worlds”, the product that has talent and can see something beyond the ordinary. Keep the spirit.

  8. Sumun Osram says

    September 20, 2009 at 3:36 pm

    Being a Sabahan myself, I feel anguished at the way the political manipulations are targetted at Sabahans and Sarawakians. Partly, it is also due to our own ignorance; and mainly our own politicians who are more concerned [about] their own political benefits rather than the people.

    The natives of Sabah who are not Malays nor Muslims abdicate themselves to join Umno which is a Malay racial party. I can’t understand how they can stand during the Umno General Assembly when other races and religions are condemned by Umno [members]. The Umno guys only speak for the interest of Malays and Muslims without being concerned about the feelings of the natives who are non-Malays and non-Muslims. And yet we can sit and listen to their racist and fanatical outbursts and not do anything about it.

    The sign is clear that Umno is concerned and only fights for Malay [Malaysian] rights. They are not bothered about the other races in particular the natives of Sabah and Sarawak. So, why should our natives continue to be in Umno and still support them in the elections.

    Why can’t we just leave the racist Umno and support the party which protects the interests of the natives of Sabah and Sarawak and other races. Our own politicians are to be blamed and we are equally guilty for condoning them and voting them in year in year out.

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