KAMPONG AYER, Brunei, Oct 16 (Asia Water Wire) – On the bank across the river, just two minutes by spear-shaped speedboat, is a three-storey upmarket shopping complex. Further afield are apartment blocks and bungalows with lush green gardens and all-modern amenities, but most residents of Brunei’s water village are content living just where they are.

   They are not willing to move out of the water village, or Kampong Ayer, and live on the land -- even when free housing is available from the generous government of a sultanate flushed with petrodollars.

   “For four hundred years, from generation to generation, we have lived here. This is our heritage, we own the houses and we will not let this community die,” said Mokti bin Salleh, headman of Kampong Ramoi, one of the village units that make up the Kampong Ayer community.

   More than 25,000 people live on houses built over water on stilts in this community.

   The history of Kampong Ayer goes back to at least the 16th century -- written documents by an Italian traveller have been found describing a village living on water. For many centuries, this community is believed to have been the centre of a thriving trade in goods in the region.

   Built on the part of the Brunei River that expands into a virtual lake at this point, Kampong Ayer is the world’s largest water village whose residents live on stilts. More precisely, it is a city – with 28 separate ‘kampong’ (village units) complete with schools, medical clinics, mosques, shops, petrol stations and markets. There are even waterborne police and fire services, as well as garbage collectors.

   Yet the ageing headman believes that the younger generation will not desert Kampong Ayer. In fact, he is keen to build a museum here to educate them about its rich history, as well as encourage the government to build more modern housing in the water community.

   “Before the discovery of oil in 1929, Bruneians were involved in trading, fishing and other marine activities and settlements and were confined to ‘water villages’, which were compatible with these activities,” Zarina Abu Adenan, head of the valuation section of the Lands Department, observed in a recent paper.

   “Back then, Bruneians did not own land. They owned rivers, where certain classes of people have rights to collect revenues from land near these rivers or from inhabitants along the rivers,” she added. “Some of the rivers can be passed down to heirs and some people living near the rivers became slaves, as they were considered part and parcel of the land.”

   Today, people who live in the houses built on stilts and connected by snaking timber walkways do not own the river, but they do own the houses they live in.

   “How can we own water which is flowing underneath?” a resident who gave her name as Liza said when the question of ownership was put to her. Another resident, 22-year-old office worker Fatima, added: “Even though we can become landowners (if we shift), we prefer to live here among our friends and relatives.”

   Many Kampong Ayer residents own cars. But what is parked underneath their houses are boats that they use to cross the river to reach these cars, parked in spaces allocated to them along the riverbank. They then drive to work and run errands in the city.

   Population growth has also meant that Kampong Ayer has had to catch up with the times. It used to be that when children grow up and live on their own or marry, they could just build another house on stilts next to their parents’ -- they did not have to get anyone’s permission to do this. But today, there are laws that govern the building of new houses on water.

   “Now we have to get the permission of the government and for that we have to get five neighbours to support our building application,” he said. “They have to sign a form obtained from the district office”.

   Since the 1960s, the government has been providing infrastructure and services to the water villages such as piped water, sanitation and sewerage facilities.

   For these, residents pay 15 Brunei dollars (9.50 U.S. dollars) a month. The government also provides daily garbage collection among residents, who have to drop off their trash at a certain point in the village. Still, many residents throw garbage out their windows and into the river, which at high tide deposits them back on the riverbanks.

   In the olden days when most rubbish was organic, this did not create such a health or environmental risk. But now, the authorities are now cracking down on the practice while ensuring that the subcontractors do their job of cleaning the river properly.

   In recent years, there have also been a number of major fires - one government official said there have been at least eight in the past 10 years – that have destroyed many wooden houses.

   “Since many people in Brunei still prefer to live on water, the government has decided to build them concrete kampongs,” he said in an interview.

   Three such communities have been built since 1994, funded under a programme of the Sultan Haji Hassanal Bolkiah Foundation, which is named after the country’s reigning sultan. These villages -- namely Kampong Bolkiah 'A', Kampong Bolkiah 'B' and Kampong Sungai Bunga -- are paved with concrete pathways. The houses are built on concrete stilts, have brick walls and vacuum sewerage systems.

   As Brunei embarks on developing a tourist industry to bring in revenues in once its oil resources begin to deplete -- estimates say this is expected to happen from 2020 onwards  -- Kampong Ayer is seen as a potential tourist attraction in the region.

   Thus, Brunei’s government is planning to introduce in 2007 a major redevelopment scheme to “beautify” the community, which according to the government officials will include building concrete pathways to replace the rickety wooden ones and requiring the setting up of “fire breakers” in the building planning policy to prevent fires.

   Meanwhile, for ageing community leaders like Salleh, the challenge is to keep their grandchildren living in – and wanting to continue to live -- in Kampong Ayer. “Most young people want to live on land. They no longer make a living fishing, and work in government offices,” he pointed out. “ For them. taking a boat on a rainy day to work is a problem. If they live on land, they can go to work by car.” (END/AWW/IPSAP/KS/JS /161006)