Repository

A dusty place for old things, uncomfortably outdated in its gallery of cloudy-eyed stuffed animals, and the skulls of creatures hunted to the far edge of the critically endangered list. The Muzium Sabah is just what you might expect in a downtrodden outpost of an ex-colony. Helpful signs such as "Kereci - Chair" and "Dressing Table" tell you precisely what you don't need to know about exhibits. Other signs are only in Malay - "Teapots" above a collection of bronze, yes, teapots - each one different in their intricacy and beauty, their story veiled by the simplicity of the sign.

There are English mistranslations, like the horribly insensitive "All except six Australian soldiers survived the terrible [Death March]" - the exact reverse is true. And there's a small-minded and meanly racist video from the early 20th century showing ladies in hats directing porters in the rainforest, calling the native tribes lazy and stupid, with not an explanatory sign in sight to put the plummy Oxford accent into context.

In one small room, an odd film is showing on repeat, telling the history of Sabah - made some time in the late sixties, I'd say, with gloating accolades (it was all in Malay, of course, so I have to guess at specifics) to progress and development and deforestation and young college students dressed as perfect mimicries of Princess Margaret - all white gloves and coiffed hair in the tropical heat of Borneo.

And yet, and yet... beautiful ceramics from the 11th century wreck of a Chinese trading ship, dredged from the depths and lovingly displayed in a dry aquarium, the barnacles still clinging to a thousand-year-old jug, broken plates stacked on their sides to hide the shattered sides... The ceramics gallery is a vivid picture of the cultural crossroads that Borneo has forever been - Qing ginger jars, Murut burial vases, uncomfortable ceramic pillows, ritual Ming dynasty porcelain, a mysterious Mediterranean amphora, Thai bowls, intricate Japanese kendi from the 1600s, Vietnamese dragons competing with traditional Chinese depictions, a Laotian ewer, and then at the end of the gallery the more familiar designs of the 19th century Dutch factories. There's a Thai water jar used by the Dusun in the 16th century, and when I compare its glazed beauty and gentle symmetry with the garish blue plastic tanks that store my water, well, there really isn't a comparison to be made. How have we rejected this kind of beauty from our lives in favour of such ugly practicality?

In pride of place, of course, is the entire, jawdropping skeleton of a Bryde's Whale, which died just off the Kota Kinabalu coast in 2006, and which is the biggest in existence today.

It caused a small commotion when some anglers found it in the shallows off one of the islands across the K.K. bay (Pulau Gaya); tourists and fishermen spent the night pouring water over it to keep it alive and the following day it was towed out to deeper waters. Relief all round. Until it appeared again a few days later, this time dead. It's a little sad that you aren't allowed to take any photos inside the museum (for absolutely no apparent reason than that they think that's a rule a museum should have...), but no photo I could have taken would have conveyed the amazingness of this being - and the thought of it living and breathing far beneath the boat I took out to the islands last year is one of the wonders of my world.

I probably wouldn't go so far as Sabah Museum staff, though, who suggest that you might "Come and Romance it"...

The rains have come

The rains have come, and everywhere there is water. My route out to the village schools has progressed from bad to worse to scary, a 4WD obstacle course of mudslides and potholes hidden in puddles. The rivers break their banks, the dams overflow their walls, and the road disappears beneath muddy running water. When the waters recede, a slippery, knee-deep quagmire awaits drivers – I am lucky with my big four-wheel-drive; for some of my teachers, the mud would theoretically reach above the floor of their little Malaysian cars. I say theoretically, for when the road is like this, half the teachers simply don’t go to work.

Sometimes the road just disappears entirely, sliding down into the rainforest a hundred metres below. A couple of days later, I drive past again to find that diggers have been at work, cutting into the cliff above – there is little else they can do but write off the collapsed side, which is now a lump of pale clay clogging up the river in the valley.

Sometimes even my rough, tough tractor of a car can’t cope, and I’ve spent a few scary minutes in the past fortnight, the engine wailing, the wheels slipping, wondering if I’m ever going to get up a hill.

All this makes me wonder if it’s bad news or good that the Ministry and the British Council have finally decided that this placement is too difficult, and have found me some new schools to work with. While I’m sad to say goodbye to the beautiful place I live in, and to my sweet little house, I will get to keep one of my schools, which I will visit once a fortnight for a whole day (leaving at 5am, and getting home around 7 in the evening). Theoretically the teachers at the other four schools will come and take part in afternoon sessions there, but I’m not too hopeful, given past experience.

My four new schools are within a 40-minute drive from Ranau, all but one on tarred roads – what luxury! I began visiting them on Tuesday, and so far, it’s been pretty positive. These schools have seen a little of what the project can offer, through their links with my colleague Fiona’s schools in town, and they’re keen to be part of it. Their understanding is still very shallow though, and I have been spending most of the time explaining again and again.

“So, you will teach the children?”

                   
                               “No, I am not a teacher here – I will be helping the teachers, working together to look at their classrooms and teaching practice.”

“Okay, so you will teach them to be better?”

“Well, not really, we’ll work together on things that interest them, like teaching methodology.”

“Okay, so you will train them to be better?”

“No, I’m not a trainer, I will be working WITH the teachers to help them.”

“Uh. Okay. So next week, can you train all the teachers on how to teach?”

At that point I leave it, and hope that the next chat will be more productive…

Shopping in Sabah

Not for me the strip-lit, noisy, impersonal malls of England - when I shop for fruit and vegetables in Malaysia, it's at the marketplace in town, a mass of brightly-dressed women, each crouched beside a mat that holds the produce of their little plot of land in the village - a few bundles of rambutans, a bag of wild rice, perhaps, or some little packets of red chillies, the fewer the chillies the higher the potency.

When I drive out to the villages I have another option: the roadside stalls. Often built of scavenged wood, they are a representation of one of my favourite aspects of living here in Sabah. The owner of each stall will visit it in the early morning, bringing whatever produce she has harvested from her land the day before. She will string up each bunch of bananas or packet of chillies on its own nail, and price it - usually one ringgit (25 pence) per item. And then she will leave it, return home to work. A customer will come along, choose her item, and tuck the ringgits into a rusty tin or sometimes a custom-made wooden box - my favourite cashbox so far is an old baby's bottle, a slit cut into the side, nailed to a wooden post. No one steals, no one leaves without paying. At night, the owner returns to collect her cash and take back any unsold produce. I simply cannot imagine it working anywhere but here.

Fruits of the monsoon

I arrived back in Borneo on New Year's Day. I haven't seen a blue sky since.

December to February is the "rainy season" in Borneo, and although when I first heard this term I laughed it off, it raining every day in Borneo regardless of the season, I now understand. It rains. And rains. Every day. At 5am, at noon, mid-afternoon, and crashing down on my roof in the middle of the night. The rain god does not care what I am doing; if I am running to my car with a pile of books in my arms, if the only nearby shelter is a very flimsy tree, it rains. Sometimes it's just a light scattering of raindrops that goes on for five hours, sometimes it's a shake-in-your-gumboots, Thor-striking-the-Earth thunderstorm that goes on for five hours. In the rainy season in Borneo, it rains. You have been warned.

There are some good side effects though, one of which is the fruit. An American colleague of mine, here on her first foreign job, was holding forth at the breakfast table at a Project meeting last year. "I don't mind the food here," she said, "but what I can't understand is why they don't sell all the fruit all the time. Last week I could buy oranges, this week none of the market stalls are selling them. It's so weird." The rest of us looked at each other, wondering who was going to explain the concept of "seasonable food" to a girl who'd lived her life in a place where, if oranges are out of season, they get flown in from somewhere they are in season. 

I think it's great - it's a kind of marking of the seasons that you just don't get in England. When the rambutans started appearing on trees in mid-November, everyone got excited. It's a little like Xmas - if the decorations are up half the year, the actual event doesn't seem so special any more! 

Rambutans are one of my favourite Bornean fruit. They taste a little like litchis, but with a ragged, woody centre instead of a smooth pip. They have a bright, prickly covering – you can spot them at the market a mile off, ranging from a watercolour-yellow-pink to a deep, sensuous purple.

Then there’s tarap, a peculiarly gross fruit with a hard shell protecting segments of wet, sticky flesh that cling to their stems with inner tentacles, and which make a squelchy sound as you pull them off. You suck the sweet-and-sour flesh off a grey inner pip.

Buah tampoi is a much neater fruit, encased in a thick shell that is squeezed to break it into two clean halves.

Langsat feels a little like it comes from the citrus family with its thin peel and segmented innards, but it has a subtler taste than that of oranges and lemons.

Of course, it being the rainy season, the air is thick with the stench of that most Malaysian of fruit, the durian. The durian is famous for its smell; it’s not unbearable on its own, a sort of slightly sickly-sweet air that makes you wonder vaguely what’s gone off; the durian, however, is not sold bit by bit, but by the truckload. The road to Kota Kinabalu is lined with pop-up stalls, trucks with an umbrella stuck over the heap of yellow fruit, a scale on a table, an old granny or a teenager guarding the family fortune. These sections of the road are problematic for a foreign driver – I simply never expect the person in front of me to suddenly slam on brakes and turn, squealing, off the road, as if just the glimpse of a durian turned on the desire switch in the driver’s brain. People go a little crazy here for durian; luckily, as a foreigner, I’m allowed to say no. The conversation goes a little like this:

  “Emily, have some durian!” (laughter all round)

  “Oh, uh, no, thanks.”

  “Ah, you don’t like it eh? We Malaysians love it!”

  “I know, I’m sure I’ll learn to love it while I’m here, but not just yet.”

  “Inshallah, inshallah, you will learn.”

And then their eyes light up, they make a comment along the lines of “all the more for us then!” and everyone adoringly grabs a slimy piece to suck on.