THE name Sungai Buloh used to send shivers down people’s spines in the 1950’s.
HEALTHCARE: A small clinic in the community.
“In those days, no one would want to go there,” recalled an elderly patron of the Sungai Buloh Nursery.
Sungai Buloh was once known as a leprosy settlement with more than 2,000 in-house patients who lived in small cottages.
But today, the place has been developed into a beautiful horticultural nursery centre where people can pick up potted plants or buy cuttings for floral arrangements.
For some, it can be a really good family outing in contrast to places where greens are not commonly available to ordinary citizens of lesser means.
As opposed to the concrete jungles of Kuala Lumpur and most parts of Selangor, Sungai Buloh has become a special place for meditation and reflection.
The Nursery is located just 15 minutes outside Petaling Jaya and acts as a garden village where one can find rows and rows of orchids and potted plants for sale.
It is also home to the owners who have been living there for more than 30 years.
The owners consist of a racially united group of Malaysians who work each day to ensure the garden village develops into its full potential of beauty.
The Sungai Buloh nurseries form an L-shape area leading from the main road to the Sungai Buloh Leprosy Centre.
There used to be hundreds of these nurseries or outlets. But today, about 50 are left because many have been moved to the Subang Centre due to development in this area.
Many are expecting to be moved out as their contemporaries have been.
“When the time comes, we will move,” one of owners said.
This is a reflection of the effects of politically influenced relocations of the nurseries that have occurred over the past three years.
The Sungai Buloh Garden Centre or Village has a remarkable history and many of generations Y and X have no clue of its existence.
Leprosy settlement
In 1930, the Sungai Buloh Leprosy Settlement was set up and said to be the largest and most modern leprosairum in the British Commonwealth.
This remarkable settlement was designed by the British doctor Enrest Travers and Sir George Maxwell, the then Chief Secretary of FMS, using what is known as a very humane policy.
The British had seen the beautiful and lush valley at the confluence of Sungai Buloh and Sungai Cemubung which could provide cool temperatures for heat-sensitive leprosy patients.
The settlement was a self-sufficient estate which had its own reservoir, prison, places of worship, poultry farm, mortuary and cemetery catering to the needs of the 2,000 plus patients.
They were of Javanese, Indian, Eurasian, indigenous and Chinese descents, living together harmoniously despite the morbid disease that they were suffering from.
The settlement had many places of worship – an Anglican church, a Catholic chapel, a Gospel Hall, a Hindu temple, a mosque and a Buddhist temple.
A sign that this sanctuary was no place for racial or religious segregation.
For many patients, the disease is like hell on earth but the unity of the sanctuary can be said to have made up for it – along with the provision of an opportunity for the patients to build their houses in heaven.
GREENERY: A foreign worker tending a flower and chili garden outside one of the quarters.
Peaceful co-existence
What was once a 2,000-strong community of lepers is now a community made of the remainder of patients and foreign support workers, living peacefully and with dignity in the 200 cottages within the nursery grounds.
The fully-recovered patients have accepted the presence of the foreign workers fairly well.
“As long as the government is taking care of the welfare of the ex-lepers, I’m fine. I’m old already and have been here so long I cannot remember any other place I have lived in. This is my home,” a fully recovered patient said.
Though this man is cured, the tone of his voice indicates he does not feel part of the natural world.
Loneliness is the answer to the mystery why this man is still willing to stay in the nursery with those suffering from the disease. Why stay among those once considered the living dead instead of existing freely with the world?
To quote Mother Teresa: The biggest disease today is not leprosy or tuberculosis but rather the feeling of being unwanted.
Perhaps to the man, this is heaven on earth – a sanctuary from those who cast him aside. His decision to continue living within the nursery must be an act of thanks and commitment to a community that has accepted him for what he is.
Should anything disrupt the peaceful environment at the nursery, he would probably fight for the rights of the others who consider the place home.
Though there is no monument or structure to remind us of the plight of the lepers who once lived there, it’s for us to remember that despite the sores and the blindness, unity and strength make the world a more beautiful place. Just like in the Sungai Buloh Horticultural Hub.