Week 1 & 2 in Borneo for UniBreak volunteers

Week One Our first week in Borneo has been full of exciting, new and wonderful experiences. We have only been here for 7 days and already we have met so many wonderful people from all over the world, and I’m not just talking about the lovely and hospitable locals but all the other volunteers from all over Australia the UK and Holland. We have done everything from scoping out the streets and city life around Kota Kinabalu to roughing it in hammocks in the untamed jungles of Malaysia. We have travelled down the Kinabatangan River spotting wild monkeys, birds, lizards and countless types of creepy crawlies. In groups we have spent the majority of our time so far in Borneo living with local home stay families in the Batu Puteh community, who showed us all nothing but kindness, teaching us all their way of life; however I think we have all come to appreciate Western plumbing systems we have back at home.

We took day trips to a Chinese Buddhist temple, Sandakan Memorial Park and Sepilok Orang-utan Rehabilitation Centre; I’d imagine that none of us will forget the things we saw in these places for a very long time. As far as our volunteer work has been going we spent a day working in a nursery, planting seeds and maintaining young trees which were going to be planted in the jungle just over the river. We all may have had a little but too much fun using machetes to cut through tall weeds in order to clear space for the trees we were about to plant during the jungle camp. But all in all so far we have been spending time with our local guides who definitely live up to the meaning of working on “Borneo time” and soaking up all this program has had to offer so far, and now we are all very excited about what our next camp, Camp Tinagol in Kudat, has in store for us.

Week Two Week two of our time in Borneo has been much harder working; however it has been more fun than any of us expected. Being thrust into the longhouse at Camp Tinagol has forced everyone to bond a lot more than the previous camp did, literally spending every waking (and sleeping) moment together. This week we has had many highlights including, getting amongst our project work, moving into the longhouse, beach parties, drinking rice wine and singing karaoke with locals, climbing Mt Kinabalu, and weekend trips to Kota Kinabalu.

We have learned so much about the local Rungus people from our camp leader, Zul and the other staff members, as well as getting to know the other volunteers, and by now I think we can all say that we have all made so many wonderful new friends. Our project work has consisted of us all rotating through different jobs, including, building a kindergarten in the local village, teaching in the primary school, and building a war memorial statue out of bamboo, that is eco-friendly which will be shown in the streets of KK. As for those of us that did the mount climb, we can all agree that it was one of the most challenging things any of us had ever done, mentally and physically, but seeing the sunrise from the peak made it all very worth it. The only sad thing about this camp is that time is flying by much too fast.