The boy in the second row asked Farhan a question after class that he still hasn’t answered.
Not about Maths.
About why the Malay kids need their own programme when nobody else seems to.
Farhan teaches at one of Mendaki’s tuition centres every Saturday morning. The one at the community centre in Bedok, where the air conditioning rattles louder than his voice and the whiteboard markers always run dry by 11am.
22 Secondary Two students. Mostly from three-room flats within walking distance. All here because someone filled out the form and paid nothing.
Since 2026, the registration fee is zero. Before that, it was ten dollars a year. Before that, it was whatever the community could scrape together.
Farhan knows the history because the history is also his.
In 1980, the Census of Population landed on the Malay community like a brick through a window. The numbers confirmed what people had felt but nobody had printed in black and white.
Malay students were falling behind at every stage.
Fewer making it past PSLE, even fewer finishing secondary school. University was a long shot for most. And the gap between the Malay community and everyone else was only getting wider.
Two years later, Mendaki was born.
Majlis Pendidikan Anak-Anak Islam.
The Council on Education for Muslim Children. The name itself means “to climb” in Malay, and that was the promise. Climb.
The model Singapore built around it was unlike anything else in the world. Four ethnic communities. Four self-help groups.
CDAC for the Chinese.
SINDA for the Indians.
The Eurasian Association for the Eurasians.
And Mendaki for the Malays and Muslims.
Each one funded by its own people, through monthly deductions from wages, collected via CPF before anyone sees the money.
Every working Muslim in Singapore has a line on their payslip that reads MBMF. Mosque Building and Mendaki Fund. A few dollars a month.
Most people skip past it the way you skip past terms and conditions. Farhan used to be one of them.
He grew up in a three-room flat in Tampines. His father drove a taxi. His mother worked part-time at a bakery in Tampines Mall, the kind of job where you stand for eight hours and come home smelling like bread.
They weren’t poor.
But private tuition ran three, four hundred a month, and in Singapore, no tuition means you’re already running behind.
He was 12 when his mother enrolled him in Mendaki’s weekend programme. Saturday mornings, 9am, community centre near Tampines MRT. Maths and English.
The tutor was a polytechnic graduate named Shahid who wore the same two polo shirts in rotation and explained fractions by drawing packets of nasi lemak on the whiteboard.
Farhan didn’t think of it as anything.
It was just Saturday.
You went, you did the worksheets, you ate the biscuits they put out during the break, you went home.
Sometimes Shahid stayed late and asked how things were going at school. Farhan would shrug. Shahid would nod like the shrug told him everything he needed to know.
He got a Mendaki bursary for polytechnic.
Then a study loan for university. Graduated with an accounting degree and a debt he cleared in four years.
His mother cried at the convocation. His father sat very still and held the programme booklet with both hands, the way you hold something you’ve been waiting a long time to touch.
𝗧𝗵𝗿𝗲𝗲 𝘆𝗲𝗮𝗿𝘀 𝗮𝗳𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗴𝗿𝗮𝗱𝘂𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴, 𝗙𝗮𝗿𝗵𝗮𝗻 𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗿𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝘁𝘂𝘁𝗼𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗮𝘁 𝗠𝗲𝗻𝗱𝗮𝗸𝗶 𝗼𝗻 𝗦𝗮𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗱𝗮𝘆𝘀.
Nobody asked him to.
Something behind his ribs just wouldn’t let him walk past.
He tells people it’s about giving back. That’s true, but it’s also not the whole of it. The full truth is heavier.
He teaches because the model that lifted him only works if people like him come back. That’s the deal. That’s always been the deal. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗺𝘂𝗻𝗶𝘁𝘆 𝗹𝗶𝗳𝘁𝘀 𝗶𝘁𝘀 𝗼𝘄𝗻, 𝗼𝗿 𝗻𝗼𝗯𝗼𝗱𝘆 𝗱𝗼𝗲𝘀.
He thinks about this on the drive home from Bedok every Saturday afternoon. The PIE stretching out in front of him, windows cracked, the thought sitting where it always sits.
CDAC serves the Chinese community, which makes up almost three quarters of Singapore.
SINDA serves the Indians.
The Eurasian Association serves a community so small most Singaporeans have never met one. Mendaki serves the Malays and Muslims, roughly 15 per cent of the population, funded by that same 15 per cent.
There is something fierce in it. And something exhausting. The pride and the weight live in the same place, just below the sternum, and he has never worked out how to separate them.
The boy’s name is Irfan.
Sharp kid, always finishes his worksheets first, always has something to say after.
The other students had already filed out that Saturday. Irfan was packing his bag with the slow deliberateness of someone working up to something.
𝘊𝘪𝘬𝘨𝘶, 𝘩𝘰𝘸 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘦 𝘸𝘦 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘨𝘳𝘢𝘮𝘮𝘦 𝘣𝘶𝘵 𝘮𝘺 𝘊𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘦𝘴𝘦 𝘧𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘯𝘥 𝘥𝘰𝘦𝘴𝘯’𝘵 𝘯𝘦𝘦𝘥 𝘰𝘯𝘦?
Farhan opened his mouth.
Closed it.
Opened it again.
𝘛𝘩𝘦𝘺 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘵𝘰𝘰. 𝘊𝘋𝘈𝘊. 𝘈𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘐𝘯𝘥𝘪𝘢𝘯𝘴 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘚𝘐𝘕𝘋𝘈.
𝘉𝘶𝘵 𝘯𝘰𝘣𝘰𝘥𝘺 𝘵𝘢𝘭𝘬𝘴 𝘢𝘣𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘪𝘳𝘴. 𝘖𝘯𝘭𝘺 𝘰𝘶𝘳𝘴.
Farhan put the marker down on the whiteboard tray. He could feel the air conditioning on the back of his neck. The fluorescent tube above him buzzing the way it always does when the room falls quiet.
He could have talked about the 1980 Census, or the historical attainment gap, or how the numbers have actually improved.
How Malay students entering post-secondary education more than doubled between 1990 and 2005.
All of that was true.
None of it would have been enough for a fourteen-year-old who just wanted to know why his Saturday looked different from his friend’s.
What he said was: 𝘉𝘦𝘤𝘢𝘶𝘴𝘦 𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘮𝘶𝘯𝘪𝘵𝘺 𝘥𝘦𝘤𝘪𝘥𝘦𝘥 𝘢 𝘭𝘰𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘪𝘮𝘦 𝘢𝘨𝘰 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘸𝘦 𝘸𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥𝘯’𝘵 𝘸𝘢𝘪𝘵 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘴𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘣𝘰𝘥𝘺 𝘦𝘭𝘴𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘦 𝘧𝘪𝘹 𝘪𝘵. 𝘈𝘯𝘥 𝘱𝘦𝘰𝘱𝘭𝘦 𝘭𝘪𝘬𝘦 𝘮𝘦 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘰𝘯 𝘚𝘢𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘥𝘢𝘺𝘴 𝘣𝘦𝘤𝘢𝘶𝘴𝘦 𝘱𝘦𝘰𝘱𝘭𝘦 𝘭𝘪𝘬𝘦 𝘚𝘩𝘢𝘩𝘪𝘥 𝘸𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘮𝘦.
Irfan looked at him.
𝘞𝘩𝘰’𝘴 𝘚𝘩𝘢𝘩𝘪𝘥?
𝘔𝘺 𝘵𝘶𝘵𝘰𝘳. 𝘚𝘢𝘮𝘦 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘨𝘳𝘢𝘮𝘮𝘦. 𝘚𝘢𝘮𝘦 𝘳𝘰𝘰𝘮, 𝘢𝘤𝘵𝘶𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺. 𝘍𝘪𝘧𝘵𝘦𝘦𝘯 𝘺𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘴 𝘢𝘨𝘰.
Something shifted behind the boy’s eyes. Something that comes before understanding. The look you get when a thing you thought was just a room suddenly becomes a story, and the story has you in it.
𝗙𝗮𝗿𝗵𝗮𝗻 𝗽𝗶𝗰𝗸𝗲𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗺𝗮𝗿𝗸𝗲𝗿 𝗯𝗮𝗰𝗸 𝘂𝗽.
Nobody writes it in the bursary letter.
Nobody prints it on the loan agreement.
But somewhere between the Saturday worksheets and the convocation stage, every Mendaki kid learns the unwritten clause.
𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝘀𝘆𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗺 𝗱𝗼𝗲𝘀𝗻’𝘁 𝗷𝘂𝘀𝘁 𝗽𝗮𝘆 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝘁𝗼 𝗰𝗹𝗶𝗺𝗯. 𝗜𝘁 𝗽𝗮𝘆𝘀 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝘁𝗼 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗲 𝗯𝗮𝗰𝗸 𝗱𝗼𝘄𝗻 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗰𝗮𝗿𝗿𝘆 𝘀𝗼𝗺𝗲𝗼𝗻𝗲 𝗲𝗹𝘀𝗲 𝘂𝗽.
He doesn’t know if it was a good answer.
Maybe Irfan told his parents. Maybe he forgot by the time he reached the bus stop.
What Farhan knows is that it’s Saturday again.
The markers are dry.
The air conditioning is rattling.
And twenty-two kids are sitting in a room that exists because in 1980, a community looked at a set of numbers and decided to climb.
𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗱 𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘥𝘢𝘬𝘪 𝗺𝗲𝗮𝗻𝘀 “𝘁𝗼 𝗰𝗹𝗶𝗺𝗯.” 𝗕𝘂𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗮𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝗰𝗹𝗶𝗺𝗯𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗶𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗰𝗮𝗻’𝘁 𝗱𝗼 𝗶𝘁 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗹𝗲𝘁 𝗴𝗼 𝗮𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘀𝗮𝗺𝗲 𝘁𝗶𝗺𝗲.
Somewhere in Singapore right now, a kid is sitting in a Saturday class thinking it’s just Maths.
It’s never just Maths.
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