The End of Year has arrived!!

A view from Gaya Island

   It has been a busy two weeks with the arrival of Tanya and Anthony and the the End of Year meeting but it finally seems to have calmed down and I'm spending today catching up on washing, blogging and even packing as it will only be in a few days that I leave for KL. Anyway it has been lovely having Tanya and Anthony here. Even though for such a short time they seemed to have done lots of things such as -  7 dives; visit the sights of Tuaran and KK; witness a turtle laying her eggs and help launch a hundred newly hatched turtles; visit the orang-utan and sun bear sanctuaries and then on their last day we had a very wet hike up at Poring Hot Springs to Lanayan waterfall that was plagued with leeches! They left yesterday morning to KL where they will be staying with Anthony's grandmother.

Tanya and Anthony on their first day diving

   The End of Year meeting from last Monday to Wednesday at the Palace hotel was a gathering of 60 mentors - most of them who had never met before because everyone is in such rural locations and many of them have arrived at different times during the year. It was an occasion to network and share different experiences and get to know each other and I think it was very successful. We had a variety of presentations and Tuesday afternoon was an "Apprentice" like challenge where people were put in teams and then had to pitch their Level 1 resource in front of the Directors of the project and the expert judge of a 7 year old. It was great to see how good people were at playing the salesmen role of "selling" their product! Wednesday afternoon was the time to say farewell and had a definite end of school year atmosphere. Everyone is off on their travels for 5 weeks all over the world. The mentors in my zone were going to most of the continents - Europe, Africa, Australia, Asia, South America and North America and will return at the beginning of January to start the last 9 months of the project.

Coconut time

  As for my arm, well it has been great having Tanya here to give me advice on physio for the future. I went to see the orthopedic specialist last week and he has taken the cast off which seems rather soon but he is going away and won't be back until I have left so he seems to think if I keep it immobile it will heal ok. It is 30 % healed at the moment and of course I forget about trying not to use it and probably am doing too much - for example,  hikes up  mountain tracks! Anyway the plus side of not having a cast is that I can shower and put on clothes that don't need to be cut at the shoulder. Time will tell and I must try and be patient. My next blog will be about the engagement party and the gathering of the Wrights and the Mahs.

Crabs, prawns and fish at the local restaurant

Coping Single-handedly!!

Well it is over a week now since the fall and I have been very blessed with lots of offers of help and kindness and fortunately last week I was staying at a hotel and had lots of people around to pour me coffee, open water bottles and carry things which are little challenges to overcome. I have more or less worked out what I can wear now and have a selection of elastic waisted skirts and trousers, t-shirts and scarves to cover the gaps! Apart from depending on lifts and feeling rather dependent I seem to have managed the first week without any problems.

Mengkabong  water village

 

  There were 20 of us attending the  Media Training last week which was run by a lady who has her own PR (sort of have more of an idea what that means now!) company and was formally a journalist and editor of a Malaysian newspaper. It was interesting for a number of reasons . Firstly she was very outspoken about the political system in Malaysia which is quite rare. She belongs to a group of people who promote objectivity and impartiality of the media in Malaysia but of course since most of the media is owned by the ruling government party that is very difficult to do. Secondly she was very honest and blunt about our attempts of trying to do press releases with photos and most of us felt very inadequate and realised how thick skinned and good you have to be in order to succeed in journalism! Many of us were glad that Education was our chosen profession!

Pom poms are traditional on the hats in Kota Belud

 On Tuesday evening we all went out for a meal together and some of us decided to return to the hotel about 10 ish. We walked across the car park towards the taxi rank and suddenly Anna disappeared down a storm drain. She just didn't see it and was stone cold sober too! My colleagues carried her to the taxi and then at the hotel we applied ice and looked at her swollen foot until someone decided that the hospital should be the next port of call. Where is the hospital in KK? Well of course I knew now! So off we went in a mentor's car with me giving directions. To cut a long story short Anna has a hair-line fracture and has torn ligaments and is now in a plaster and hobbling around on crutches. The North Sabah zone are definitely going to be looking rather odd next week at the End of Year Meeting!

The partnership of egrets and water-buffaloes 

 Tanya and Anthony arrive on Friday which is very exciting and they will be over a week in Sabah and then another week in peninsula Malaysia with Anthony's family. Amazingly both Andrew and I will be present for their engagement dinner in KL with Anthony's parents, grandparents and family. Andrew is in East Timor at the moment and will fly into KL en route to Europe and then I will fly over from Sabah to be there too. I'm sure we weren't expected to be there but how lovely it will be!

The Broken Arm Weekend!

A illustration by Jainal Amambing

Jainal is going to illustrate one of the stories

   This is going to be short and sweet this week as this is my first attempt at using a computer since I broke my arm on Friday. Early Friday morning I thought I would finish painting above the window in preparation for Tanya and Anthony's visit. The chair gave way and next thing I knew I was crashing down to the tiled floor and landed on my right upper arm. It took me quite a while to get up but managed to get round to my neighbours who very kindly drove me to the local Tuaran hospital where I waited in line and eventually was x-rayed. Yes a clean fracture upper humerus......I would have to go to KK to see an orthopedic specialist however the next appointment he had free was next Thursday! So they strapped me up gave me another injection of a pain killer and said I could go. When I told my boss what had happened she said "you have to go private - that's what the BUPA is for!"
  So to cut a long story short I ended up in a very upmarket hospital in KK - a sharp contrast to Tuaran's - and was prepped to go into surgery at 7 pm to have my arm reset by an orthopedic specialist. "Where did you do your training?" I asked as he had a very British accent "UK, Belfast"he replied and then we started...! Not only had he known my father when he was a medical student at Queens but we had gone to the same school and had friends in common. He had been a boarder and had been great friends with the Elliot's who were also great friends of mine. He of course is Malaysian but had spent many years in Northern Ireland and had a great Ulster accent!The nurses stood by while we chatted away and I was supposedly breathing in gas and air and by the time it was finished I felt I had made another new friend!Every cloud has a silver lining.

 I will be in plaster for 6 weeks and I'm just trying to work out what I can do and can't. I can type slowly if I put the computer on a cushion but I won't be able to drive and do many things with my right arm. However I'm feeling fine and not in any pain since it was reset so it's just a nuisance and it could have been worse!

Sunsets and Halloween

Since last week we have been having the most amazing sunsets in Sabah. On Thursday evening I was up in Pitas and I joined some colleagues for a meal in a little restaurant on stilts over the sea and watched the colours changing for about an hour. The sea was like a lake and had no ripples and the reflection was beyond description with the spectrum of colours turning from gold to pink and then a wonderful purple and blue. Friday evening came, which of course was Halloween, and apart from buying a pumpkin for some soup, that was about all I did in recognition of the festival. Halloween of course being a Celtic pagan festival isn't celebrated here but I expect there were some bars in KK that had people arriving as witches, ghosts or draculas. I did however go to my local beach and enjoy another amazing sunset which was one of those which turned the sea to gold. I often don't have my camera but fortunately did that night but of course every second it keeps changing and you end up with lots that look the same.

  The spectacular sunset reminded me of the sunset six years ago on the day of Halloween when my mother was buried.  After the Memorial Service in Magheragall and the glorious Ulster tea and sandwiches in the village hall, the immediate family drove along the small winding roads of County Down to Castlewellan to the family grave. The view from Drumcree  Cemetery must surely be one of the beautiful views in Ireland, overlooking the Mourne Mountains and Tullymore forest and just before the sunset on 31^st October 2008 , Elizabeth was reunited with her Tom, 73 years to the day of their first meeting. When we walked down the hill from the grave that night of Hallowe'en ,the sky exploded into the most magnificent firework sunset with  Slieve Donard silhouetted on the sky as if in celebration that at last they were together.........Miss you Mummy.