Ordinary people who needed
a record made.

My mother passed in early May. The house had to be cleared for the landlord within a month and we were not ready. Raihanah came within the week. She was calm in a way I was not expecting — she followed us from room to room, helped us number everything, and made an inventory we actually used later when the siblings needed to agree on what went where. I did not know something like this existed.

We enrolled in the oral history course as a family — myself, two sisters, and an aunt. My grandmother is 82 and her memory of the family's time in Kedah before moving south is something none of us had thought to record properly. The course taught us how to ask questions in a way she was comfortable answering. The consent form piece was something I had not thought about at all. We now have recordings in Jawi-influenced Malay that I think we will keep for a long time.

The documentation session was done online because we are in Taiping, not Penang. My brother and I photographed each room while Raihanah guided us on what to capture and how to label it. It took about two and a half hours in total. The inventory sheet arrived within the week. My only note is that it would be helpful to have a physical condition swatch to compare fragile photographs against — we were not always sure how to describe what we were seeing.

I came to the oral history course after my father-in-law mentioned that he had stories about the kampung where he grew up that no one in the family had written down. By week three I had my first proper interview recorded. By week six I had a provenance note I actually felt confident about. Tan Khee Seng was patient with questions that must have seemed basic to him. The group dynamic helped too — hearing how other families approached the same problem.

We are in the middle of selling the family terrace house in George Town — it has been in the family since the 1950s. Before we signed anything, we wanted a proper record of what was in the house. The session was thorough and completely non-judgmental. Nothing was moved. Questions about what to keep or sell were explicitly not part of what was offered, which was actually a relief. We were referred to an estate administrator for that.

My concern going in was that the oral history course would be too formal — too academic for what we needed. It was practical. We used ordinary phones to record. The file-naming system was simple enough that my aunt, who is not confident with technology, could follow it. The closing archive review was the most useful session — we had produced something real and someone was checking whether it was well-made.