COUNTRY: Borneo & Cambodia
PROGRAM: UniBreak
PROJECT: Teaching & Environmental Conservation
WRITTEN BY: Richie Allchurch
Long Sait - Teaching
We arrived in Long Sait in the pouring rain, crossing a rickety swing bridge which was pretty scary but I still managed to take some photos of the river much to everyone’s annoyance behind me. Long Sait did not have as many trees or green areas as Long Kerong and was more built up with more houses in closer proximity to each other. We were introduced to our host families, ours a nice family named Danyu (the father) and Ben (the mother) with a daughter called Surya Hannah. I was uncomfortable with the circumstances at first because our family didn’t speak the best English but all this worked out as Danyu taught us lots of Penan words and phrases with a dictionary at hand as well as his niece, a lovely lady named Norrin who was very interested in learning more English and introducing her children and relatives to it, and who spoke the best English out of anyone in the village. We had plenty of rice, greens, coffee, milo and chocolate wafers and after a while ate some two-minute noodles or mi goreng and some exotic meats like wild boar, deer, iguana and river fish.
They had a couple of interesting pets too; a baby wild boar, a turtle and a dog named ‘boa-boa-boa’.
On our first Monday in the villages we started teaching. It was a three-minute stroll up the path to the primary school which was very beautiful, with views out to the hills, nicely planted with flowers and bushes with a sports field over to our right. Catherine and I were assigned Year 3, who were very curious to see tall, funny looking white people in their classrooms. We didn’t really know where to start since we didn’t know what they had learnt in English and we barely knew the Malay or Penan languages. So we started off each lesson with a game, passing a big ball around and getting the kids to say ‘My name is ________, what is your name?’
We would often also sing ‘heads, shoulders, knees and toes’, to get them used to body parts. Catherine and I originally taught using rote learning and would draw a person on the board, numbers, shapes or animals or act it out and get the children to recite it after us or write it down. We realised that we had to be creative to instil in the children what we were teaching them. Bingo was one of the most effective measures, giving them a piece of paper with shapes, colours or numbers so they could recognise what we said and cross it off.
In the afternoons we held a class with the whole school of 52 pupils, teaching them songs such as the Hockey Pokey and the Wiggle Song as well as games to get them excited and active such as heads down thumbs up and the alphabet game where they would get split into two teams and someone would shout out the letters, with the corresponding kid having to run to the middle and first person from each team to do that would get a point for their team, causing great celebrations when they won. We focussed on extending what the kids had learnt in class in the morning to afternoon activities, getting them to draw pictures of their homes, the villages and the school as well as writing the names of the objects in English so they would learn the names of the coloured pencils they were using. After the afternoon class, I and some of the others in the group helped out teaching the children sports such as soccer and ones that they had never seen before such as cricket, frisbee and skipping. This was great fun for me as I love sport and for the kids to have a run around with toys that they hadn’t used before and quite satisfying watching them laughing and picking up new things.
The group was gelling together well by the first week of teaching. It was all going fairly smoothly apart from the day when everyone was a bit sick which was inevitable from living in close proximity to one another and being introduced to a new environment and the lower hygiene and food preparation standards that came with it – hand sanitiser is a must for these situations. We came to know each really well through night chats and discussions at the nice, open home where Linda, Sumi and Catherine were staying, talking about each other’s lives, experiences and views and sometimes through some good old-fashioned games. We were happy out there in each other’s company, bathing peacefully together, getting used to the local culture and walking to school to teach with everyone to delightful children.
First jungle trek!
At the end of the week, it was time for our first trek! We were a bit slow to get going but we were off by mid-morning walking down to the river where we were ferried across for 30 seconds with a hot Penan man apparently controlling one of the boats. We climbed steadily for a while taking it slow on the steep, slippery, muddy slopes from the large amount of rain we had had the past few days. Some of the girls found it hard going but we stopped and had regular breaks, enjoying the views out to the hills beyond and the peace and quiet away from the rooster crows and dog barks of the village. Before long we were in primary jungle, where it was noticeably cooler thanks to a taller and denser canopy. We passed a rice paddy in the middle of the jungle that been cleared for a family in Long Sait on this slope. This they would harvest for a few seasons before letting it grow back into jungle, a sustainable form of agriculture. We trekked further on, admiring the tall trees above us and taking photos of ourselves all sweaty and smelly but pretty happy.
We made base camp around midday in this little clearing that was named ‘flower garden’ due to the large amount of pitcher plants surrounding the camp on the ground or suspended off trees with a mottled red and yellow/green colour. We made camp with the Penan helping to string up our hammocks between appropriately sized trees. I had to be especially careful with the hammock I was using as it was Hollie’s :S We went down to the little, tea tree coloured river to have a true bathe in the cool, dark water which was a little scary but refreshing and comfortable thanks to the soft, bottom. It was pretty cool laying there in the water, looking up at the jungle canopy, taking in the beauty of the place. We held court after dark where we reported back to the judge, in this case Gus, occurrences of the day such as best stack – Grace and/or Catherine and best trekker – Caitlin. We went to bed soon after, pretty tired but relaxed. I lay there in bed, listening to the random and somewhat hysterical conversations of Grace and Catherine which were pretty funny and tried to rest and fall asleep, absorbing the surrounds and letting the forest become a part of me.
I emerged from the hammock after an interesting night’s sleep that was stop start with very vivid dreams due to being out in the jungle. I took some sneaky photos of everyone over breakfast, highlighting their emotions at that point. Some were tired but happy like Gus, Caitlin and Grace, some contemplative and forlorn like Cat and Kaitlyn, and Sumi just plain shocked. We headed off late morning into the jungle, trekking through lovely old-growth jungle that was dense and beautiful. We started trekking downwards on a slope with great views of the trees reaching high above on our left and right. Unfortunately we then had to walk up a slippery hill with some of us needing a helping hand over logs and around trees. Once we got to the top, we had one final long and sometimes steep descent down to the river which was tricky and overwhelming for some. We slowly got there although the Penan made a mockery of us, leaping down going 10 times quicker than us with twice the load on their backs but they were used to it, these men of the jungle. We finally made it back to flat ground but had to wade through the river before we were back in Long Sait.
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