Ask ten Bruneians what makes someone Bruneian and you may get ten different answers. Some will point to language. Some to food, faith or loyalty to the country. Someone will almost certainly mention ambuyat, whether or not they actually eat it very often.
I have thought about this more as I have grown older. The easy answer is that being Bruneian is a collection of familiar things: the way we speak, the food on our tables, the celebrations we share and the customs we inherit. But identity is never quite that tidy.
I grew up in Seria in a household where Chinese and Malay dishes appeared side by side without anyone finding that unusual. We did not stop to ask which culture owned what. It was simply the food we ate and the life we knew. That mixture felt ordinary then. Only later did I understand how much it had shaped the way I saw Brunei.
The Brunei between the labels
Official descriptions of Brunei tend to arrive in neat packages. Melayu Islam Beraja. A Malay Islamic Monarchy. A peaceful country on the island of Borneo. A nation blessed with oil and gas.
All of that is true, but none of it fully explains what it feels like to belong here.
The Brunei I recognise lives between the labels. It is in the casual switching between English and Brunei Malay, sometimes within the same sentence. It is in the way families with different backgrounds share food, friendships and celebrations. It is in the familiar faces at the kedai kopi, the mosque, the tamu and the office.
We are a small society, which means connections overlap. The person across the table may be a former schoolmate, a relative of a colleague or someone who knows your parents. This closeness gives Brunei much of its warmth. It also means news can travel faster than a government circular, but that is another national talent.
Tradition is not a museum piece
People often speak about tradition and modernity as though Brunei must choose one and surrender the other. I do not see it that way.
Tradition is not something we preserve by freezing it. It survives because people continue to find meaning in it. Faith, respect for family, community responsibility and loyalty to the country remain important, but every generation has to work out how those values apply to the world it inherits.
The world my children entered is different from the one I grew up in. They have access to more information, more cultures and more ways of imagining their future. That does not automatically make them less Bruneian. Identity should be strong enough to meet the world without becoming frightened of it.
Modernity also deserves a little scepticism. Newer is not always better. Technology can make us more connected while leaving us less present. Economic progress can widen choices while weakening the habits of community that once held people together. The answer is not to reject change, but to ask what kind of change serves us.
What work taught me about Brunei
Over the years I have worked in government, consulting, telecommunications and now printing. Each world showed me a different part of the country.
I have seen Bruneians respond remarkably well when the purpose is clear and the responsibility is real. I have also seen how our instinct to preserve harmony can make difficult conversations harder than they need to be. We are often polite when we should be candid. Sometimes the point becomes so softened that it disappears altogether.
That, too, is part of our character. Our strengths and weaknesses often grow from the same root. Respect can become excessive deference. Patience can become complacency. Contentment can become a reason not to change. Community can sometimes make individuality feel uncomfortable.
Loving Brunei does not mean pretending these tensions do not exist. It means caring enough to speak honestly about them.
A country small enough to feel personal
What I value most about Brunei is its human scale. The country is small enough for institutions, events and even national projects to feel personal. Our stories cross. Our families cross. The distance between public life and private life is never very large.
That can be restrictive, but it can also be a gift. It reminds us that decisions eventually land on people we know. Policies are not abstractions when the person affected may be sitting beside us at Friday prayers or queuing behind us for nasi katok.
Being Bruneian, for me, is not about matching one perfect definition. It is about carrying several inheritances at once. Malay and Chinese food on the same childhood table. Faith alongside curiosity. Respect for tradition alongside the willingness to question how things are done. Pride in the country without losing the ability to see where it must improve.
Our identity has never been as fragile as we sometimes imagine. It has already absorbed generations of movement, trade, family connections and change. It will keep changing because we will keep changing.
The question is not whether Brunei can remain exactly as it was. It cannot, and probably never did. The better question is what we choose to carry forward.
For me, the answer is simple: faith, family, community, humility and the confidence to meet the future without forgetting where home is.
Brunei, As I Know It
Continue reading this series:
You must be logged in to post a comment.