Balik Kampung

When I was there... something that really moved me in many ways. As a Western Malaysian, I have been to many countries out of Malaysia, to stretch as far as Italy, but I have never been to Sabah. And Sabah is a real darling (even to a person who is allergic to the word "exercise")...

I witnessed kids who go to school with no school uniform because they simply cannot afford it, walk for about 6 hours to get to school from Banjaran Crocker, live without a single highway/ road for a few km in sight, it was overwhelming! Thanks to that, you get kids who gawk at you because you are one of the few hundreds of people that they see every year who do not belong in their village. (Think about it,how many people do you see out of your neighbourhood per year?)

This is my third phase, the community phase! And I probably did quite well getting close to the local Sabahans. We taught English, built boats together, had our baths in the yellow/ brown river of Kinabatangan... and our duty was to clean the lake! Do you even know what it means?

1. A lot of teamwork. You get into mud, you get out of mud.

2. (Usually) The men get into the bog in the water and use a parang (long sword) to chop the "weeds" into some nice pieces.

3. The girls will usually stay on land and help coordinate ropes and the net. Ahoy!

We were pretty pleased with the end result, unfortunately I do not have pictures. Imagine a field of weed as BEFORE and a lake as an AFTER.

Leech notes!
There are buffalo lice in the water (they swim around, YES YES YES!) and like the name suggests, they are super suckers! The yucky part is that they tend to target warm areas of the body... so you know.... its either in your socks or underwear!



The good part is that I've read recently that this buffalo leech is used for medicinal properties, transferring blood and what not during plastic surgeries in hard to get areas such as the ears. There is a market for lice and you can actually breed and sell them like chicken!