Flooding and Schools

A bridge washed away

So what does a Project Manager actually do is the question that I have been trying to find out this week. One thing that I've discovered is, that it is mostly up to me and apart from responding to many more emails, attending  meetings, doing recruitment interviews....., I can plan my day as I want. My first aim is to try and get to know the areas and schools where the mentors are working and with that thought I went off to Tuaran district on Thursday. On Tuesday and Wednesday there was very heavy rainfall and flooding in the area but it was quite a shock for the mentor to find out that one of his schools had been hit by a landslide and two of the classrooms had been washed away. Apparently one of the parents had seen it coming and all the children were evacuated just 10 minutes before it hit. We went to see the school, which is now closed until they can clear it up, and walked through the oozing mud. The flooding had been the worst for over 10 years and I believe the unfortunate Philippines are still having the heavy rain and suffering the consequences.

A landslide by a road

The school hit by a landslide

 On Friday I went off to visit a couple of schools near Kota Kinabalu and much to my surprise in the middle of this city we drove off behind a shopping mall and drove over a very muddy gravel road for a few kilometres and suddenly came over a hill where a huge water village spread out over this hidden inlet. I had no idea that this village even existed and the children of the village go to school on an island opposite. The mentor caught the teachers' school boat to the island for the first time this week and was amazed about the lack of safety on the children's school boat when it arrived. Are there no life jackets for the children he asked. Of course they were all given life jackets but they all disappeared within a few weeks, was the reply! Hopefully I will visit the island school to see for myself but we continued on to visit another little school built fifty metres from a beach.

The water village

 It was so enjoyable to be back at school again and see all the lovely happy faces of the children. The buildings were a mixture of old wooden ones and a few new ones. All of the schools in Sabah have new computer labs built by the government a few years ago and it seems like with very few exceptions, hardly any of them are used due to no electricity, the electricity fusing everything, computers not working, computers missing and so on. This little school had tried once but the whole village had a black out and feared ever to try again! And so even in the big city of Kota Kinabalu, there are small neglected schools that suffer the same problems that other more isolated areas do too.

Happy Faces

Water tanks in city schools

  Tomorrow I fly off again to Kuching where I will be facing 12 new mentors on their induction. I am only leading one session but it does seem a bit surreal when I remember being a new mentor too... hopefully they won't read my blog!