Into the wilds

I find myself continually revising my expectations in Malaysia. Last week, when considering the house I wanted to live in, I told my local teachers "two bedrooms, a bathroom, internet and an outside space, please, thank you very much." Then it became "two bedrooms, electricity, and a bathroom." Today it became "Could I please have a toilet? Please?"

We (my colleague Fiona, the language officer, Rapedah, and her boss, and me) left Ranau early this morning in the Boss's 4x4. I know the Boss's name, but his attitude screamed "I'm The Boss!", so Boss he shall remain. We left the little town on good, solid, tarred roads, but they petered out about 15 minutes later and became gravel. Shortly after that, we were driving on an unfinished, immense highway, that seems to be leading to jungle, which is a bit strange. Unfinished, it's a nightmare, because it's simply very slippery gravel, about 100m across. That turned into sand and gravel again, but only very briefly, before it became a mudslide, heading down a steep hill, about one car's width across. Each time we drove through a village, the road became momentarily usable again, but villages carried the deadlier obstacle of animals. Everywhere we went, there were dogs, puppies, pigs and their suckling piglets, cats and kittens, chickens and a few angry roosters. The dogs in particular seemed to be completely unaware of the traffic, lazing in the middle of the road and forcing the Boss to come to a complete standstill while hooting angrily. It's really important not to actually hit any of these animals, as they are vital for the villagers around here, and a dead animal will bring the owner out from under one of the wooden houses, humbly requesting compensation - the most expensive is a dog, which would cost you somewhere in the region of a teacher's monthly wage - about 1000 ringgits, or approximately £207. I was surprised, because quite often dogs are under-appreciated in poorer regions, but here they are still widely used as hunting dogs, which explains the fattened look of village dogs, in contrast to the pretty poor appearance of town dogs.

We were descending from the heights of Ranau into the lowlands. The scenery varied from one stretch of road to the next, but took in farmland, small-scale vegetable gardens, jungle, secondary forest, and deforested wasteland. Sitting in our air-conditioned Landcruiser, we didn't know it at the time but the temperature was rising, and when we got out at my first school - 3 hours after leaving Ranau - it was into a wall of dense heat.

This area is rural. I really mean it. Rural. There's no electricity, no running water, no internet. You can only get a phone signal at certain points, close to the few towers that exist. There are no tarred roads at all. There aren't even any shops - and I'm not talking about having a local Sainsbury's, I mean that the only things you can buy here are, apparently, bottles of vegetable oil and sweets, from roadside stalls (and even they're few and far between). Petrol or diesel comes from big plastic tanks stored at the side of someone's house, and advertised with a hand-painted sign on the roadside, "Petrol, RM3 only-lah". Houses are almost universally wooden and primitively quaint, although I'm not sure I'd live in one (more on that later...) Some of the posher homes have blue Portaloos outside, others have old, wooden outhouses with rusty corrugated iron doors. Still others have nothing at all, presumably relying on the rivers. People - old, young, women, men - hang around on the verandahs, or beneath their stilted houses, children playing catch or swimming or getting dressed for school. Flimsy fishing nets hang from some of the verandahs, hinting of the hidden rivers rushing through the jungle around us. Once or twice we crossed over one of these rivers, on rickety wooden bridges over gushing white water or lazy brown soup.

Because this area is so inaccessible and underdeveloped, so are its schools. My first school provided board and lodging (at the government's expense) for pupils who aren't able to commute every day. Seventy-five students take this option, about half the student body. All seventy-five live in two gender-segregated rooms of approximately 3m². I estimated that there must be two or three to a bed...

The other schools were in various states of repair and disrepair. One had internet, which the Guru Besar (the headteacher) proudly announced before even giving me his name. Another had one of the new computer rooms the government is building all over the country. No computers, electricity or internet, but the room is there, proudly unlocked and opened for special occasions. Each one had children who were fascinated by us, peering out of windows, asking their teachers who we were, very occasionally saying hello to us - although most were too shy. At my last, there was one little girl who was very taken by us, giving a wide smile every time we looked at her. I assumed she was a very small pre-schooler, and couldn't believe it when the teacher told me she was in his Year 1 class, and was seven years old - she looked about four. All the children there were tiny.

The last stop of the day, besides tiny little girls also yielded the prospect of some houses for rent. One was just across from the school, another five minutes away in a village, and the last about 20 minutes drive. Apparently, Sabahan people expect to drive you to outside the house, point it out, and you just say "Yes, please, I'll take it." So my desire to look around and inspect things was met with a confused stare, as if to say, "Choice? You want choice? You greedy foreigner!" I pushed anyway, and got to see inside one of the houses and at least the outdoor, ground floor section of a second (the one in the village.) Here is a picture of the latter's bathroom:

Horror story, right? Or am I just being greedy?

My actual move from Ranau has been postponed, awaiting a visit from my manager...