Last blog from Borneo UniBreak volunteers

Our third week in Borneo was all about getting stuck into our project work. By now we were all familiar with what exactly we were meant to be doing and why we were doing it, which meant that we could start to see progress as everything was coming together. This week was also Chinese New Year, which is celebrated for virtually the entire week, so to most of our dismay, the school was closed the whole time, so there was no teaching, but this opened up opportunities for everyone to help out in all the aspects of the kindergarten and the war memorial.

Lunch times consisted of heat induced naps, reading and swapping novels, swimming in the lake, sun tanning by the volleyball court and badminton games while night times were still filled with rice wine, karaoke, card games, and midnight chats in the long house, as everyone was finally slipping into a nice routine here at Tinagol. The end of this week was the last for the people in our group who had signed up to go SCUBA diving in Kota Kinabalu, so Zul wanted to celebrate their last night by taking us all to the local pub in the village, which was well, an experience to say the least for a westerner, but everyone always has a good time together, so it made for some good last memories. Just to add, the boys rendition of “twist and shout” I think needs a special mention, as one of the best things most of us can agree we have seen here.

Our final week in Borneo was all about goodbyes. As some of us had already left Tinagol to spend their final week getting their SCUBA open water dive licenses off Jesselton point, for those eight of us left we could really feel our time coming to a close. However there was something very satisfying about seeing the cannon for the war memorial be completed, and knowing that all the effort and cut fingers were justified. We spent our last day at the most beautiful beach we had ever seen, relaxing on the sand and swimming in the crystal clear water, where our final night, of course, involved rice wine celebrations, although this time, it was the rice wine we had made ourselves two weeks prior, and I think something went very, very wrong in our method.

Sad goodbyes were said to Zul and all the staff at Tinagol as we got on the bus back to KK, saying goodbye to the longhouse, where so many memories were made was extremely hard. Finally after a good last night all together in Kota Kinabalu, we had to say goodbye to each other, which no one was expecting to be as hard as it was, the notion that this time was actually over was settling in and was hard to grasp.

We have made so many amazing new friends and had so many wonderful and life changing experience in such a whirlwind space of time, and every drop of sweat, cut, blood and tears was worth it, this was the kind of thing you remember for the rest of your life.