The Fasting Month

So we're a week into Ramadhan, the fasting month, and my teachers are beginning to lose that starving look in their eyes as they readjust to the new eating schedule. I don't have many Muslim teachers in my cluster, unlike my colleague in town, but Ramadhan affects everyone in Malaysia, regardless of religion. Nationally, school time is shortened, and class periods run for 25 minutes instead of 30. Sports and afternoon activities stop entirely. I actually began this job last year on the very first day of Ramadhan; nobody really explained to me what it would be like. I wrote my report on the last day of fasting, and it contains sentences like, "Malaysian schools have no extra-curricular activities in the afternoon," and, "Four of my schools have no on-site canteen." This year, I'm much better prepared!

In my smaller schools in my new placement, the canteens remain open, despite being run by Muslims - my two favourite ladies at SK Narawang, who tease me every week in Dusun and still pretend to be surprised when I don't understand, fed me with coffee and kampung doughnuts on Friday. Usually I am very careful about eating in public - I carry water with me, but it stays out of sight until I'm able to sneak a sip or two round the back of the buildings - but these two insisted that I eat and told me they don't mind. I have a suspicion that it makes them feel better about themselves, as in, "Look at me, the orang putih can stuff her face in front of me, and I still can stick to my fast."

At SK Lohan, though, the majority of students are Muslim, and approximately half the teachers. The canteen doors were firmly shut.

On Monday, the first working day of Ramadhan, I arrived to find my three Project teachers wilting at their desks, the two Christians desperate to eat, the Muslim tired already - she'd been up since breakfast at 3:30am: it was now 1pm, and her teaching day was only just beginning. (SK Lohan is so big that the 3 upper grades attend school in the morning, and the 3 lower grades in the afternoon.) 

Help was at hand though: mid-afternoon, I was told to bring my purse outside. A minivan had drawn up at the school gate; inside, a lady in a headscarf displayed trays and trays of sweets, noodles, cakes, and rice wrapped in banana leaves. I felt a little illicit, like I was queueing up to buy smuggled alcohol or something! The Christian teachers all bought a little something to snack on secretly, while the Muslim teachers bought for later, so that they'd be able to eat something as soon as the sun set.

Three weeks to go!

Good news

Remember this guy...

...with his impressively sharp machete? He's going to be working hard in the next couple of weeks: his school got picked for the book flood!

The Power of Reading

Each of my five schools has a library. For 3 of the schools, that's about as much as can be said for them. There is a room that's called a library, which contains some books. It's nothing like the sacred place that was the Harare Municipal Library for me growing up. There are books, but because the children have mostly never seen a book before arriving at school, they are stuffed onto shelves in whatever way was most convenient for the student before he raced off to class. There are books, but they are falling apart. There are books, which were written in Kuala Lumpur for kids with the benefit of a private English-medium education, or which were donated by the New Zealand government in 1975, when their schoolkids thought they were outdated. There are dense, yellowing, moralist tales. There are books. And yet there aren't.

There are not books that the children want to read over and over again - there's no Hungry Caterpillar, or Brown Bear, or even the beautifully illustrated fairytales written by local authors that I bought on my trip to Kuala Lumpur. There are no bright pictures that help non-English speakers to understand the text. There's no understanding of what a seven-year-old or ten-year-old child looks for in a storybook.

And this is a shame, because what I see every morning is little ones dumping their bags in the classroom and rushing off to the library for the twenty-minute open reading session. It seems to stop by Year 3, but the older ones peek over my shoulder at whatever book I open up in school, or at my Kindle, and murmur the words to themselves. There is still this fascination with books, even without having the literature-rich background I was lucky enough to be born into. 

What the libraries do have is luminous walls.

Malinsau Primary School Library

In Malinsau, the library is brand new - when I arrived last year, it was locked to students because it was unsafe, but the librarian has done wonders with a spot of purple paint and some polystyrene letters. He's made it as welcoming as he can with the limited funds he has access to, but there's only so far it can stretch; the one bookshelf has been filled with every book he can find, and a few teachers' guides, and it's still not enough for the children.

But all this is about to change. Last week I was frantically busy with three proposals, one for each of the three schools with the least library resources. The British Council is funding just 15 schools in the Project in Sabah through a Power of Reading programme - basically a book flood, in which the school is 'flooded' with up to a thousand high quality storybooks aimed at the first three years of primary school. It's been very successful in raising literacy levels in rural schools all over the world, including South Africa, so there are very high hopes for this neglected corner of Malaysia, particularly my little cluster of schools, where only one in twenty students passed their final Year 6 national English exams last year.

I've had to guide all my mentees, headteachers, librarians, remedial teachers, and District Language Officer through statements of support, in-depth discussions, photography, mind-mapping, planning and even building - whatever it takes to get onto that list of 15 schools. In one school, we started building reading corners in the classrooms; after the initial discussion in which I described the project to the teachers and headmaster, the lovely head went off, called the caretaker with his machete, and disappeared into the bush at the back of the school to harvest some bamboo. They were hard at work building the first structure that very afternoon. 

The caretaker checks on his child-friendly tools.

The Year 3 students try on the frame for size.

Nearly done.

I had a laugh with the GB and caretaker about his machete, kept constantly at his side in a handmade wooden sheath. In Europe he'd be arrested for putting children in danger; in Sabah, kids are taught how to wield machetes safely from toddlerhood, a necessity for a life in which they are likely to need that awareness.

So yes, basically we did what needed to be done. 15 places for Sabah, from 300 schools on my Project - not an easy task. The proposals are in, and now all that we can do is wait to see what the board and the State Education Office say. I'm crossing all my fingers and toes, and so are some very excited little girls and boys. And now I hope you're crossing yours too :)

New home

This is my new home! I've been offered a teacher's house by one of my headmasters, and since it's almost free, I'm going to be leaving my lovely home in town just as soon as I can get an indoor bathroom built...

Yes, that's my current bathroom.

And the kitchen.

But the outside is gorgeous, and I have an enormous mango tree in my garden. The Year 6 students have already started making plans for sleepovers, and I've already started making plans for how to tell my boss that letting your students stay in your house appears to be a part of Malaysian culture. The teachers I work with at the school have already offered to come over for afternoon tea every day, and the teachers living in the next house along have mentioned how pleased they are that I have a car to take them to town in. The school gardeners are building me a compost heap and planting me a bamboo hedge, even though they grumble that bamboo is a forest plant and not a garden shrub - they accept that orang putihs are weird, and that's the end of it.

Also, I have two bedrooms now, so should you want to visit, and I know you will want to see this beautiful cottage in real life, please do make an appointment - I'm free anytime next year to give you a guided tour.

Also, two little kittens will be joining me - my friend rescued them from her neighbour, but as she's allergic, I have offered, under great duress, to take them in. Great duress I tell you. She's bringing a bottle of wine tomorrow evening, to make up for delivering the kittens at the same time.

Don't expect lots of cute photos of little grey cats lurking in the mango tree any time soon... honestly...

A Smiley Day

The other day I drove out to my village school. The morning was the usual - tackling the administrative-type people for tasks still undone, grabbing teachers as they flew by me on their way to classes, sitting in the teachers' room chatting to friends... oh, and aerobics. Yes, aerobics. And not just any aerobics - this was nationwide, nation-building, national aerobics, with a national theme tune and everything.

This was a little frustrating, as basically the entire educational system of Sabah shut down - there were no lessons from 7:20 to 8:20 because the teachers were setting up PA systems and getting dressed in their brand new trainers. There were no lessons from 8:20 to 8:40 because aerobics had been planned. No lessons from 8:40 to 9:40, because that was when the preparations finally finished and the PA system worked, and the aerobics was conducted. Then at 9:40, everyone was too busy packing up. Then we had break, and food. Then after break it turned out half the teachers had gone home to shower, and the other half were tired. And besides, a fair few of the kids had also bunked off after their energetic morning.

This is not unusual - I would estimate that my teachers are probably actually in class for about half of the time allocated to them for each year, what with extra-curricular competitions, sports days, sports training, teacher training, sick days, bridge holidays, and days taken off to escort family members to clinic.

I came off slightly better than my colleague in town - her schools had taken Monday off for the kids to practise the aerobics. Although these kids out in the kampung probably could have done with some practice! They were so sweet, trying to follow their teachers, the video, or just the other kid standing next to them...

Waiting for the aerobics to start - in varying states of dress.

This photo cracks me up every time, the kids are just having such a ball!

Chaos.

Little Rooney from preschool was so bewildered, he just stuck to his
sister for the whole hour and ignored the video entirely.

Two of the lovely teachers - Suryati is 9 months pregnant, but I'm not sure
what Khadijah's excuse for being on the sidelines was!

I think it was worth it just for the enormous smiles on everyone's faces that day! And then, even better, later on I left the school to drive down the road into the village for lunch. I stopped at a roadside cafe, just a wooden shack with some plastic tables in the shade of a rambutan tree, and as I got out about forty pairs of eyes turned to me. I'd stopped there before to get a cold drink, but never at lunchtime, and never when all three cafes dotted around this junction were full of villagers eating. There was this deathly silence, which got a little deeper as I walked up to the owner, and then suddenly lightened when I asked in Malay if I could eat something there with them? I could almost feel the sense of relief, and everyone laughed and pulled out a chair and the few who could speak Malay started asking questions. An older lady asked why I couldn't speak Dusun yet; I told her because I wasn't smart enough for two languages, and that kept them all laughing at me for long enough to allow me to order some mee sup. There were two little boys fighting over their own noodles across the table from me - the older one recognised me from school, where he attends the kindergarten. When I later asked them if I could take a photo, they suddenly remembered they were friends, and the elder pulled the little one close into him for their portrait. We talked in baby English and Malay about their food and toy trucks and pet turtles, until their mum arrived carrying her newborn twins. She was the only person who could speak any English, and suddenly everyone was bombarding her with questions to be answered. The questions mostly consisted of, "How long will you be here?" and, "Can you teach us English?" When I told them that we hoped to start workshops at the school soon for parents, they all wanted to know what date and when they could sign up and how much it would cost (this last caused some confusion when I told them it was free!)

It was all very exciting, because as part of my project we are supposed to be engaging parents, but I'm finding it an uphill battle with my teachers, who insist that the parents aren't interested in being a part of the school. I went straight back to report it to them, and received a non-committal "Hmm, really..." response.

But now that I know, I am determined to get them working on parent workshops soon... like it or not...

Nunuk Ragang

As I've said before, Sabah is one big melting pot of ethnicities, which makes for an interesting cultural calendar. Usually I'm restricted by work from driving off to various festivities, but this weekend it was the turn of the local tribe, and in addition, the festival was being organised and promoted by none other than the lovely Dr Othman, who owns the homestay where I live. The local people are part of the Dusun tribe - or the Kadazandusun, depending on who you speak to. The Kadazan and the Dusun are often lumped together, linguistically and culturally, and the only real difference is that the former live along the rivers, and the latter in the mountains. Most of my schools are entirely Dusun - although a few Malays and Chinese live in the town, once you get a few kilometres outside, it becomes very homogeneous. 

So. The Kadazandusun. They're a lovely people with a rich cultural heritage. Unfortunately, because it was an entirely oral tradition, much of this heritage has been lost, and the few scraps they have left today are being frantically collated and rescued, a lot of it by my Dr Othman, who is not just an ex-MP for the district, but also a leader amongst the Dusun.

What we know: the Nunuk Ragang was a legendary and magnificent ficus tree, the centre of a civilisation that stretched across the northern half of Borneo. It appears in a number of stories across the many sub-ethnic Kadazandusun tribes, and is seen as the last time that they all formed one civilisation together, before branching off to build villages in far-flung corners of the rainforest. It was the foundation of their traditional beliefs, which were illustrated by the position of the tree at the meeting of three rivers - the point where the Kogibangan (Left) and Kawananan (Right) Rivers blended to form the Liwogu (Deep Calm) River. The belief system was based on a symbiosis between various opposites - life and death, light and darkness, seen and unseen, and of course, good and evil spirits. It also saw the importance of living in harmony with the environment, the two sides, human and environmental, both living, coming together to form a calmness of the soul. And they lived in and around a big tree. Stop me if you've heard this one before... perhaps James Cameron once paid a visit to this humble corner of the world? If so, there's one thing he forgot to include in his environmental lecture, the third of the sixteen Respectful Observances for the Dusun people: pantang kaparaian, or "respect for rice." Okay, so perhaps uniquely Asian then...

So we arrived at the site, my orang putih colleague and I, shaking hands left and right as usual, various strangers calling out to us, "Welcome to Sabah!" in smiley voices. We quickly located Dr Othman and greeted his group of distinguished colleagues (all of them known by the Malay honorific Datuk, or Sir), but he was so busy that we soon left him to it. The first part of the ceremony began soon afterward: the high priest and priestess arrived. Dressed in gorgeous traditional fabrics and headcoverings, and draped in silver jewellery, they posed for a few pictures with politicians and organisers, the centre of attention in this religious ceremony.

We left them to their paparazzi for a bit. Further on down the parade route that the priest and priestess would take were school groups and a few adults playing gongs and executing some pretty impressive dance moves.

Children dancing for the priest and priestess

A warrior stood by, laughing; when he saw me take aim with my camera he immediately struck his Serious Pose and waited for me to photograph him. I think about three pangolins probably died for his costume, which makes it my first sighting of the elusive and endangered Sunda pangolin... It was a very impressive costume, though.

One warrior, one pangolin.

I also managed to spot my first bird of paradise, which was nice.

Gong musicians taking a break to gawk at the procession

These musicians weren't the only spectators - hundreds of people had walked over from the surrounding villages and towns, and even different provinces. They watched from the top of the monument, from down on the ground with us, and from in amongst the trees, wherever they could find a space.

Traditional fabrics for some, Western blouses for others

The priest and priestess slowly moved up towards the monument. Every ten metres or so, they had to stop to listen to the gongs, or the drums, or the flutes, or to shake their bracelets. It was a very musical day (and I mean this sincerely - Sabahan people have an ear for a tune). One very talented little boy leapt around before them in leather and pangolin, bellowing and waving a machete and shield.

Inside the monument, which is a concrete mock-up of the legendary tree, the priest and priestess and their young initiates took turns singing to the tribal chief (who also happens to be the Deputy Chief Minister of all of Sabah).

Of course then we had looooooots of photos with everyone of importance - this is Dr Othman (L) with the chief (R) and the local Member of Parliament in the middle.

As we left, it being around 35 degrees, we just about managed to catch a deep blue glimpse of the distant Mount Kinabalu peeking through the clouds that usually develop over Borneo in the afternoon. It was a nice link between the two sacred places of the Kadazandusun culture - the source of life and shelter, and the place of the dead. More on that ghostly mountain coming soon... (shhh...)