The first day of memories, including a baby orang utan!

Our first full day in Asia was spent visiting Singapore Zoo. I had a particular, personal reason for going there, as you will see.

First thing, I had a very nostalgic experience. We walked out of the lobby of the hotel into the hot, tropical morning air. Leaving the very controlled air conditioned comfort and luxury for the full-on assault of climate and nature that awaits us 24 hours a day in that part of the world. That particular experience, leaving a hotel’s front entrance, took me right back to my first days in KL as a 13 year-old. We lived in what was then the Regent Hotel, and having arrived on about the Friday, started school the following Monday. Well, you know what it’s like when you start a new school; the sensations and impressions stick in your mind. This move, for me, was more drastic than most. I was leaving a very traditional convent in Letchworth for an expat school, open to the air and cooled inefficiently by ceiling fans, in Kuala Lumpur. And that memory of walking out of the hotel each morning to be driven to school brought it all back: how different it was, how nervous I was. Luckily, that school was the one I liked best of all the schools I ever attended. Those three years of schooling turned out to be relatively straightforward and enjoyable.

Anyway, back to the zoo. I know that there are generally mixed feelings about zoos and keeping animals in cages. I share the concerns and discomfort of many, but I also see the arguments in favour regarding education and conservation. I think that there is a fair balance between the two and also that there is a particularly important role for this sort of awareness raising in Asia. And Singapore Zoo is probably the best I have visited, well organised, low key and, of course, exceptionally clean.

We went in order to look up Charlie. Charlie is an orang utan who must be getting on for 40 now, whom I knew as a baby. My mother was friends with someone who volunteered at the zoo in Kuala Lumpur, and Charlie was a baby who needed caring for, probably because he had been orphaned. For some time, this lovely lady looked after him and even kept him in her house sometimes. We all got to know Charlie, to hold him, to know the feeling of him gripping our fingers in his leathery hands. Orang utans did not, in the 70s, attract the kind of attention they do now. We just knew he was an awful lot nicer than the vicious looking monkeys who frequented our gardens and stole the bananas off the trees if the gardener did not save them in time!

So our first stop was at the orang utan enclosure. In Singapore Zoo they actually have some free roaming orang utans, who can mix with the public, but Charlie lives in a contained enclosure. I asked one of the keepers about Charlie, explaining that I had known him when he was tiny. She was really surprised and pointed him out.

The Teenager and I spent some time in front of the glass and, as you can see, Charlie came out of his hiding place and sat quite close to us. You know how it is when you meet someone who is now an adult and you last knew as a child? You keep reminding yourself that it’s the same person but it’s quite difficult to get your head around it. That is just what it was like for me with Charlie. He’s a real grown up now, with long hair hanging from his limbs and a lumbering gait. He does what he wants, within the limitations of his habitat. My mind kept dragging up this image of a tiny, wiry, ginger baby and comparing it with this slow hairy giant.

Charlie sees many people every day. Most of them just think of him as another animal in the zoo. Of course he didn’t know he had special visitors that day, and that one of them had once played with him and cuddled him, but I knew. Somehow I felt I had paid him some sort of respect. I felt slightly anxious, excited, strangely emotional. These were feelings that would frequently arise during the next two weeks as I evoked more and more memories.

So this first day, with my recollection of starting school and my visit to Charlie, was a significant beginning. I had started to revisit my youth, to tie up loose ends and to ask myself that big question: now that I am finally retracing my steps, how will this change me?