By Hadi Masdar

By the end of 1969, my life made a turn for the best. After his retirement following his accomplishment of 27 years of service with the Department of Geology & Mining, my husband was offered a job to join INCO, a nickel mining company in South Sulawesi.

I had not the faintest idea what laid in store for me, but I didn’t hesitate to follow my husband wherever he should take me. So, it was quite a (not so pleasant) shock when we landed in Malili, a place in the middle of nowhere with muddy paths and rains which never seemed to stop. It was very hard and nerve wrecking to cope with the situation.

My husband’s patience and calm but practical reasoning helped me to overcome all my worries and home sickness in this period. After a proper time of adjusting my life to the situation, my family managed to lead a normal routine which we made as pleasant and homely as we could.
 At this stage, the constant encouragement of Soffie and Kang Ben became a valuable service of solutions I could depend on.

It was at this time, that I really get to know one aspect of Kang Ben. He sincerely treated us as closely as if we were one big family.
In a place as remote as Malili, it was imperative to create a warm and comfortable home for your husband when he returned home after work. That is the duty of the wife and this was the reason why we decided that all the wives should put their heads together and organized ourselves into a woman’s club.

Soffie and also Kang Ben agreed that we should do our outmost to make our stay in Malili to resemble our place back home as closely as possible with the means that were available.
Kang Ben’s role in his capacity of manager played a big role to facilitate our plans. All our material needs but more often it was the technical part or advise that we needed and Kang Ben’s calm and straight forward opinions always found a solution for any obstacles or problems that we might encountered.

Even domestic problems which needed to be straightened, found a way out which he offered, was gratefully appreciated by all parties. Even the people he recruited from outside Sulawesi unanimously agreed that thanks to his supportive attitude, they enjoyed working for INCO.

In his capacity of “Big Boss”, he became an idol of his subordinates, known for his calm and fair judgements. He treated his employees equally and made no difference who they were or where they came from. All this contributed to our stay in Malili which became a part of our lives never to be forgotten and created an everlasting friendship between all INCO members, even to this day.

Although you are not in this world anymore, your memory will always be in our hearts.

Thank You, Kang Ben, may you rest peacefully in eternity next to Allah SWT.

Amien…