The Jungle Boy: A Singapore Son

About Dino, a Singaporean child born on Gambas Avenue, surrounded by bushes, passed from caretaker to caretaker, until he eventually found himself sleeping under a highway with his mother. Survival became instinct. His parents later managed to buy a HDB flat in Queenstown. But behind closed doors, the domestic abuse from his father grew worse. When he was five years old, the government intervened.

He was placed in The Salvation Army Children's Home. At the age of thirteen, he experienced the loss of his father through violence. He grew up carrying grief too heavy for a child. And later in life, he tried to reconcile with a mother shaped by pain of her own.

Raised without a traditional family, he stepped into the world alone.
He became a flight steward.
He carried unseen trauma.
He nearly lost his life to major depression.

But this isn't a story about defeat.
It's about meaning. Through pain, Dino gained a rare kind of wisdom.
How to survive.
How to be resourceful.

Today, he is pursuing social work.
So that youths and young adults don't have to struggle the way he did.
So that pain can become purpose.

The journey is still unfolding.
Thank you for walking it with me.