Normally you might find me lamenting the encroachment of technology into the rainforest, but not this time. The people in the villages in this region feel so isolated and forgotten - they're close enough to town that they see the televisions and the newspapers and the fridges, and they want them. And whether that's a good or a bad thing, there are other things they want, which the new road being built and the electricity will bring to them. A link with education, for example - there will be better contact between teachers and the administration, which will hopefully lead to better teachers, once they are being regularly observed. Resources like the internet and English movies and songs can be used in the classroom, improving children's access to the language. It will bring them closer to different people, people who aren't like them, who are darker or lighter or wear funny clothes, or, yes, I admit it, buy food for starving animals (I'm such a weirdo.) And that will change the children, hopefully for the better, perhaps to be more tolerant and aware of other cultures.
Plus it means I get a fridge, and that is awesome.
It's not a done deal though. The poles are being put up at a rapid rate - I drive in on Sunday afternoon, the poles are up 42km from Ranau. By the time I drive back to town on Friday afternoon, they've already stretched to the 65km mark - which is just 3 km shy of my house. Wires are strung between a few of the poles, where the rainforest has been cut back; in other places they're waiting for the men with machetes still. But this pace is due to one thing: elections are coming. Elections are coming, and the men who want to win again are the same men who have been promising this region electricity for years. The poles are going up because they need the votes that cluster along the dusty roadside in this poor backwater. So we get a sudden show of support and awareness, and the poles go up, and at least the first few kilometres will certainly be connected to the power grid in time for elections.
Those places that aren't connected by then, though, will lose out. Because if the party wins, they will stop the construction so that they can use the electricity issue as an election promise next time. And if they lose the election (which would be a miracle) they'll stop the construction as a punishment. Lose-lose situation for us really. So everyone is rooting for the construction men - I see them everyday outside a different house, being served lunch by a grateful populace. Local teenagers go out with machetes ahead of the crew removing branches and cutting back undergrowth to make it easier for the poles to be put up quickly.
Malaysia is incredibly corrupt. Transparency International rates it 56th in the world this year. Money comes, it goes, it reappears in the back pocket of a prime minister, nobody does a thing. So when I expressed surprise in my first week here at the fact that electricity had been promised to my region every election for the last twelve years and every promise had been subsequently broken, people just shrugged their shoulders and said "That's Malaysia." Which doesn't stand up under scrutiny, as Singapore, which was part of the same country until recently and has the same people living in it, is the least corrupt place in the world.
At least I'm not in Indonesia, though, the most corrupt place in the world, where a colleague of mine (who is married to an Indonesian woman, and has 2 children) is stopped at immigration every single time he enters the country on his spousal visa, led into a backroom, and asked to pay an "immigration fee".
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