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!!