Cowboys and Bajaus in Kota Belud

   

The Amazing Mt. Kinabalu

 Last week was a relatively calm one compared to some and I was able to visit some schools which is always a pleasure. Friday afternoon arrived and I headed my car up the mountain to head towards "home" ( Ranau) on a mission. I actually had been asked to help out with looking after Ella, a 4 year old, whilst her parents and big sister Bea were running in a race around Sabah Tea Gardens. Of course I managed to call in and see a few people and had my evening meal at Slagon Homestay and caught up with Lungkiam and a few others before heading off to Poring Hot Springs where I was staying with the family ready to be on duty when I was needed. The runners left at the ungodly hour of 5 am to be ready for a 6 am departure and Ella and I followed later to be around the finish. Bea who was the youngest competitor at 10 years old, flew round the 10km course with her mother and even got a special prize of  50 ringgits. I visited all my old haunts like the Saturday bundles and the vegetable market  before heading back down the mountain again. I really do miss Ranau - the people; the scenery and the volume of jungle noise that surrounds the atmosphere at night - it is very loud!

   Anyway  I went back via Kota Belud where I was dropping a mentor off and it was the famous KB festival weekend where lots of things go on such as horse and buffalo races, sports and games and is the highlight of the year for the bajaus of Kota Belud. The Padang (field) is surrounded by stalls selling food and other bits and pieces. We met up with the colleagues in KB and went to watch the races in the stadium and before we knew it we were asked up to the VIP stand based purely on the colour of our skin! I supposed I am used to it now but it still seems rather strange selecting people like that and not having a clue who we were.

 

 We joined in the fun and cheered and clapped for all the races that we watched. We entered the lucky draw and even had to draw some names and guess what?  My name was chosen and I won a bright pink plastic drink dispenser something that I'd never thought of owning before but now I have one I think it could prove to be useful. So that was the exciting afternoon in KB and then I left and headed home to get on with the sewing. Sarong and Ko have their first big order - 20 aprons for a restaurant!

The Start of a Storybook Project

Yesterday's sunset at Simpang Mengayau

  At last a moment to sit down and write my blog. I have been very busy over the past two weeks- not only for work but also visiting Miri, Sarawak, last weekend to celebrate a friend's 40th birthday. The very wet weather, influenced by a typhoon,  continued until last weekend and caused widespread flooding and landslides mostly in Sabah. On Monday the sun finally reappeared again and the mud and debris was left to dry. Since Monday though I have been "locked" up in air-conditioned hotel land discussing the next phase of the project with a group of new mentors. It was an interesting group as they seemed to have a strong French/Irish influence and a few bilingual children accompanying them who always fascinate me. Friday was spent visiting a school and " opening " a new Self-Access Learning room which was lovely as the year 2 and 3s put on a concert for the occasion  and the stage had been cleverly made out of a door covered in plastic trimmed with satin. I was treated to children singing a John Legend and Michael Jackson song and of course the Frozen song "Let it Go"which seems to be sung all over Sabah at the moment - maybe it is a world phenomenon? After that I was straight back on the road to drive up to the Tip of Borneo so that I was in time for the first storybook workshop in the tiny village of Tiga Papan situated just before  Simpang Mengayau.

At last some parents

  The storybook project is an idea to get parents to recount local stories in their local dialect and then somehow work together to create a book that the children and community can keep. It was the first time the school had done something like this and we didn't know if the parents would turn up. The start at 9 a.m. came and no parents were in sight.... finally at about 9.30 they appeared and a car was sent out to pick up any latecomers and by the time we started about 40 people were there. They were all given some lovely children's books to look at and share and then we asked them to get into groups and think of a local story to retell to the group.

An interesting hat for a tropical climate

An illustration from Jainal Anambing's book

 

We were very lucky that a well-known local artist called Jainal Anambing was able to attend and join in and hopefully he will be involved in the illustration part when that stage arrives. It continued for a couple of hours of everyone recounting their stories and a teacher per group recording them in a book - some were told in rungus and others in malay and when we get some teachers to translate them we will know the content. At the end we had a few titles such as How Tiga Papan got its name, The ghost story of the old mango tree, How the rice was first planted, The Warrior of Simpang Mengayau and a Second World War tale.... so hopefully after a couple more workshops we will have several stories that we can make into a book.

The beautiful SK Tiga Papan

So that is what I have been up to - a very varied, busy two weeks but I must say going to a school and having contact with children is still what I like best!!

Wet, Wet, Wet

Rhinoceros Hornbill taken by Patrick Wright

Apologies for being rather late this week. It has been a very damp weekend and is continuing to pour as I write. I believe from what I can gather from the satellite images that Sabah is on the edges of a cyclone going through the south of the Philippines. Borneo is known as the "Land Below the Wind" as it usually manages to avoid the worst of the typhoon and cyclones that the Philippines and Japan and Korea seem to get.... but not this time! I do feel so sorry for the tourists though who have only maybe a week to "do " Sabah and I met a lovely Catalonian couple who had spent 4 wet days at a beach resort and now will be spending 2 days in KK and then back to Spain without a glimpse of the sun!

Pygmy Elephant by Patrick

 It was of course the start of the very important Muslim festival on Sunday of Eid al-Adha which is to commemorate the prophet Abraham's (or Ibrahim) sacrifice of his son to God, which of course thankfully was avoided by a sheep being replaced. This is a festival when cows, sheep, goats are slaughtered for a huge feast which is always shared with  people who are in need such as the sick, old and poor. However because of the torrential rain I saw very little evidence of people in their gorgeous bright bajus and "pyjamas" as I suspect everyone was inside trying to keep dry.

Gibbon by Patrick

  Last week we had a visit from a consultant from the National Foundation of Education Research who is going to be the external monitor of our project and I was in charge of taking her to visit one of the project schools and then she ran a workshop on hierarchical card sorting which is a technique used in evaluating and monitoring projects such as ours, which I'd never heard of - another new thing to learn! Which brings me onto 2 courses that I'm doing online with Coursera, which I've only recently discovered, which don't cost anything unless you want a certificate, and I've embarked on Coaching Teachers and Supporting Children with difficulties in Reading and Writing. They both seem very good and I've mostly been watching short videos which isn't too difficult!

Marble cat (photo from internet)

  My last ramble of the week is that I had a wildlife moment on Saturday which is rare here as apart from an odd sighting of a snake or monitor lizard, it is not an everyday occurrence. I was driving down a road and two kittens tried to run across in front of me. One made it and thankfully wasn't touched by the car and the other turned back into the undergrowth. The difference between domestic and wild cats is obviously very slight but the markings on these kittens were amazing and I would like to hazard an amateur guess that they were marble cats, which I have seen in the dark before but that is the first time close up in daylight.... very exciting!

Oriental Hornbill by Patrick