Bai's story

The Early Years

Bai spent her first years in Malaya, the child of an English Royal Marine N.C.O. fighting the "communists" there. Her Mother left her in the care of an "Amah", Miriam, the youngest wife of a leader of a village near Batu Ferringhi, where the troops were stationed.

Each day at daybreak Miriam would collect Bai and lead her through the jungle to the village by the sea. Bai loved these walks, the colourful birds, the amazing plants, the little grottos set up by the villagers to their spirits, the sandy coconut-strewn beach deserted other than by herself and the occasional local urchin.

This love of nature and of jungle-like gardens is with her to this day.
 
To understand this tale, you have to know Bai's background, what made her who she is: and how she came to have a Faerie garden in the first place.

Bai considered Miriam her real Mother and losing Miriam was the first of several tragedies to assail her life. Bai was taken from the ship at Malta and straight to hospital, at death's door. Was it grief at losing Miriam, or the sudden diet of stodgy English food? Later in life Bai was diagnosed with coeliac disease, an allergy to gluten in wheat. In the Malayan village her meals were of fruits and vegetables, the carbohydrate being rice. She probably had the healthiest years of her life in that native village.
Contact Bai at Baimcf@aol.com

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At the age of six Bai was wrested from this idyllic life and found herself on a transport ship back to Europe, staying first at Malta, then on to England. The rumour was that an officer had made advances to her Mother, that her Father found out, and that both men were shipped back to Europe to prevent murder being done. Bai's Father could kill silently and without effort.

Was the rumour true? Her Mother denied it, but in her youth Bai's mother had a Junoesque figure, certainly attractive to men, and her husband was away in the jungle for protracted periods. His experiences in WWII had left him with what would now be called post-traumatic stress disorder: he was given to outbursts of anger and violence. His superiors knew him, and understood the danger that the officer was in, whether he was innocent or guilty!

Bai likes curried food. She takes the individual spices and combines them to her own particular taste. She enjoys Indian pre-mixed curries but they are not quite the same as her own mixture. She visited Chicago with her husband some years ago. They discovered a Malayan restaurant. As she walked in she was greeted by the fragrant aroma of her own spice mix. In making her own mixture she had remembered the smell of the food she had enjoyed in Malaya up to the age of six, forty years before!

Bai's garden in Canada