The scary neighbour true storie of my earley days

THE SCARY NEIGHBOUR

In Indonesia, in Surabaya we had, as my mother called her, a very scary neighbour. She had some kind of bats in cages on her porch and we were not allowed to speak to her. Nothing is so exciting for a child as a creepy neighbour.
Sometimes we peered through the fence at her and then my brother and I made each other even more afraid. She fascinated us, she had a very harsh hoarse voice and very loud. She was tall and in her long skirts and long black, grey wild hair, she really looked terrible scary. Her voice made us shiver. One day we had enough courage and while everybody took their afternoon nap, we crept to the fence and with some wood and stones we could hang over the fence, to have a good view at her porch. There were large cages with lots of hanging bats. Suddenly she stood beside us, I almost died, to our surprise she asked in a gruff voice, if we wanted to come into her garden, we did, even though we rather would not.
Shivering we stood before her porch while she began a long story about bats. But the only thing we were thinking about was how to get out of her garden and as quick as possible we took a run to the gate and to our house, still shivering. We never came close to the fence anymore.

Two years later, we were interned in concentration camp Solo, where it was far too hot for my mother, who was asthma patient. She was more in than out of the camp hospital. Through devious plans the nuns managed to get us and my grandmother on transport with them to camp Moentilan in the mountains. In that camp there were a lot of Navy women who shared everything with each other not with us. We went by train in crowded freight wagons without food and light, taking us three days full of doom and gloom and the last part we had to walk for hours in the mountains. That was killing, especially for my grandmother who was in her fifties. The thought of giving up was often on our minds, but the consequences of doing that were even worse, so on we went.
Finally, there was the camp, groups of women stood there waiting for us, helping to give us some water and some food. We were surprised when we heard someone calling our names, Dinkie, Jonkie and Gwen come over hear, loud and clear and who hugged us as if we were her children, it was the scary neighbour we had. She took us very tired people to her own great spot at the camp, a sort of private cabana with all sort of things. She welcomed us and shared everything she had with us, also taking care that we had a bath and could sleep for a long time without being disturbed and she fought like a lioness to get us a spot in one of the barracks. She also managed that my mother got a job in the kitchen. The scary neighbour turned out to be a lovely fairy for us and a wonderfull person who did everything that nobody ever did for us,
Dinkie