Into the wilds... 2...

I left Ranau early on Monday morning, though not as early as I'd planned. My alarm went off at 4:30, I woke up, thought of the drive out to the village, and promptly turned over to sleep again. I still left when the sun was barely above the horizon, though, and I watched it bloom as I followed the tar road north-east. It took me two hours to drive the 60km to Malinsau School, the nearest of my five assigned schools, where I'll be staying while my house is renovated. I drove through tiny villages, some no more than a gathering of two wooden houses with a water tank between them. Farm chickens ran frantically alongside the car until I pulled a little ahead of them; they realised I wasn't a threat and slowed to a nonchalant stroll. Very small piglets scurried after their mothers waggling their tails with excitement, and children walked in groups on their way to school, the girls dressed in headscarves, long blouses, and skirts.

Malinsau Village is 60km from Ranau and about 30 years away. The electricity lines stop far short. There aren't and never will be any plans for phone lines because mobiles phones reached the area first - but the tower closest to the school was put up just 3 months ago, and the generator that powers it broke last week. The teachers estimate they'll have no signal for at least three weeks until it's repaired. There's no treated water, no rubbish collection, no internet. The road is mostly mud and stone, and some sections are unusable during the rains. Many villagers have never even seen Ranau, because the cost of the "taxis" that ply part of the route is more than they can afford. And Malinsau is civilised compared to the last village in my section...

But the road's edges blend into primary lowland forest in many places, and the rivers are crossed by perilous hanging footbridges and wooden road bridges, and the leaves are alive with birds. I saw monitor lizards and an iridescent kingfisher, and in many places, I was the only car on the road.

My temporary home has a verandah overlooking a clearing in the forest, a flat valley floor where low, stilted, wooden buildings make up Malinsau Primary School, and children roam in gangs, crying "What's the time, Mr. Wolf?" in Bahasa Malay.

The children are fascinated by me, and when I sit on the verandah on my first afternoon reading my Kindle, they don't take long to form a big audience. They push and shove each other and get close enough to me for me to feel their touch on my back, but the minute I turn to look, they shriek and scatter. Some are a little braver. I'm almost about to burst out laughing when a girl - who I think knows I'm about to laugh - finally takes the plunge with "Teacher, what's your name?" She's a beautiful little Dusun girl who looks around 8 but predictably turns out to be 13. One to malnutrition again - none of the town children are as tiny as the kids out here. Through the 13-year-old, the kids ask more and more questions, and even move on to asking me about the Kindle. For a majority of these kids, who've only ever seen a book in the form of a school textbook, the Kindle is alien, and they are fascinated. Another 13-year-old asks if she can borrow it, and although I have to say no, I tell her she can borrow real books from me, and her eyes light up.

All the children seem keen to learn, but the system seems equally determined to beat it out of them. There's a lot of rote learning in English lessons. In one lesson I observed, the teacher wrote out 4 sentences which were completely disconnected from each other and showed no pattern, then she shouted at the children "The!" and the children responded "The!"

"Louder!" she shouted. The children screamed back "THE!"
"Cat!" "CAT!"
"How do you SPELL it?" "KAH! AH! TUH!"
"The cat!" "THE CAT!"

I was getting a headache already. And the worst was that the classrooms were divided by planks of wood that didn't meet, and that did nothing for soundproofing, and the Year 2 class next door were studying Maths, so our "THE CAT IS IN THE BOX!" was competing with their "TEN TIMES TEN IS ONE HUNDRED!" 

The teacher spent forty minutes drilling 4 sentences. By the end, the children had their heads on their tables, and I wished I could do the same. Then they all got out their workbooks to write the sentences out. Not a single one could do it.

Score one for the cycle of poverty and illiteracy.

In another class, the young teacher clearly had a strong relationship with his little students, who laughed at everything he said. His commitment was great, but he was up against the Kurikulum, which is designed by well-meaning academics in Kuala Lumpur and has no meaning for the children out here.

I couldn't resist a picture of one of the 7-year-old students at the board, her town-born teacher towering over her.