In May 2010, I left Singapore on a truth-seeking journey.
I had the job — I was a TV producer at MediaCorp and it was something I had always wanted. Some days I would work 14 hours and despite living in the same house as my parents, I'd go a month without seeing them. I also had what I'd call 'the ultimate boyfriend'. He loved me a lot and gave me all he could.
I had everything. But I still felt this emptiness in my heart. All the spare time I had would be spent day dreaming of adventures, like climbing mountains... even getting lost in the middle of nowhere. Dramatic as it sounds, I felt like I was slowly dying.
I started taking baby steps — I made friends with travellers and adventurers, and would change the way I did things, like crossing the road and walking on its right rather than its left, which I'd become used to. I would take random bus rides and see where they brought me. Eventually, I got the strength to make bigger decisions.
I quit my amazing job.
From there, and after allowing myself to listen to my inner voice to grab my own happiness, the rest got easier.
I've been travelling for three years now. All this while I have not stayed in one place for more than five months. "I'm a nomad — my backpack is my house and my heart is my home."
At some point the open roads led me to South America. I was invited to be a part of a team producing a documentary and we filmed street performers in nine countries. It was around the same time that I fell in love with teaching.
I volunteered with the United Nations and the Ministry of Education of Chilie as an English teacher serving public schools. My students turned out to be my teachers, they taught me perseverance. There was one school I taught in that was extremely exposed to violence. Seeing my head teacher enter the classroom with blood on her clothes from preventing a fight made me realise how lucky I was to have grown up in a country so peaceful.
But my greatest experience there was in the Peruvian Amazon.
Sometime after my first encounter with the indigenous people, I met Lieve. She was the mother of my friend Sacha, a victim of chronic fatigue syndrome and a firm advocate of indigenous ritual healing. Lieve and I were introduced, and I discovered that she too suffered from chronic fatigue syndrome. In fact, she had been suffering from this and acute muscle pains for the last 26 years.
It took awhile for me to get the story out of her, but eventually I found out her condition was caused by an act of sexual violation she experienced at the age of 19. That was also how Sacha developed his sickness. But his was cured, I knew, by the indigenous ritual healing he so believed in. And he wanted the same for his mother.
Sacha had introduced us because he wanted me to document his mother's experience in the Amazon jungle, something that had taken her three years to agree to.
And why? Because after years of travelling and experiencing the beautiful people of South America, I had finally been able to come to terms with the fact that I too, had had a painful sexual encounter. Since it happened to me at the age of five, I had been unable to control and communicate with the great ball of fury and madness that had gathered in me. And I too, had experienced the powerful healing of the indigenous people.
It was fascinating, even frightening, but it purged me of a lot of negative feelings, a sickness, it had seemed to me.
This year, I returned to Singapore and told my friends and countrymen my secret, as part of my journey of purging the past and of self-discovery. I didn’t describe the mystical process that I’ve had the privilege of experiencing — the same process that Lieve will submit herself to — because I want to tell the story proper.
I want, once and for all, to not hide behind my pain and to build off it, a powerful, inspiring message, for my sake, and for Lieve and Sacha’s sake.
I'm back in Peru now working on the documentary that I've named La Loca Collectiva: Journey to the Amazon.
Editor’s Note: We learnt about Malika Umilta (better known by another name amongst her Singaporean friends) when she organised a fundraiser for her documentary in February, 2014. You can donate to her documentary project via Indiegogo and get updates on the production via their Facebook page.
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