Examinations and Celebrations

A couple of days ensued after Selingan and before Pom Pom Island in which I had to work. Yes, work. Well, somebody's got to do it. I packed Aurelia off up the Mountain and she came back down reporting that it was easy. She lives by the Alps though, so read that as you will...

With the beginning of school after the break, Year 6 had more than usual to be sad about: with only two weeks left until the national exams, they are spending every night camping at school, the better to study and learn until as late as humanly possible. Last classes are at 10pm; they start again at 7am. At one school, a teacher tells me she was up until midnight dealing with welfare issues; the kids were up until 2. The headmistress is considering sending them all home again if they don't stop seeing it as a summer camp, but the parents complain that they don't study when they're at home. Teachers are unhappy because it means a lot more work for them, and the kids - one third of whom will fail the exams entirely, on average - are stressed and anxious; their midnight antics are a side product of that. It seems to me to be one of them lose-lose-lose situations, but you know, that's just me. 

The week after the week after the break (because between now and about the second week of October, everything will be counted from then; after that, time will be marked in relation to the end-of-year holidays...) we had a much more fun event at my biggest school (and the most Muslim school): a big party, combining Hari Raya and Hari Merdeka (Independence Day). 

The children were all allowed to attend in their holiday finery, and when I arrived, they were all standing to attention in the straightest lines I have ever seen children make, listening to the teachers exhort them to do their best to make their country proud.

We sang the national song, the state song, the school song, and finally the Hari Merdeka song, and then it was time for the choir competition. I did as I was told and sat in the front row with a flag.

The kids had been put into groups spanning three year groups (1-3 or 4-6) and given a teacher as a choirmaster, then spent two days rehearsing a version of the Merdeka song. Some did better than others... :) But all waved flags and grinned in their finery!

After the choir competition, the headmaster and local VIPs cut the cake...

...which is almost as obligatory as the food at these events.

The kids got their own food in their classrooms - each child had brought one thing to share from home, as well as their own plate, spoon and cup. A few had brought an old plastic container or bowl, and some had brought nothing at all - the teachers produced spares for them.

Through all the speeches and flag-waving and cake-cutting (and the cake was only for the teachers!), I never once saw a child seriously misbehave - they were little stars, singing and smiling, even when they were hot and tired.

The End of Fasting

 In retrospect, I probably could have planned it all a little better, but honestly, when I asked around, everyone said it was very unlikely that Hari Raya, the end of the fasting month, would be celebrated before Monday. So I didn't bother to factor the celebrations into our trip and instead booked a bed in K.K. for Saturday night. And yes, in retrospect this might be seen as tempting fate. So I guess it shouldn't have come as a surprise when the young guy in the stall at the night market mentioned that he was heading home as soon as he could shut up his stall, to prepare for the two days of feasting that would start in the morning. The problem was that we were meant to be driving south east in the morning, a 3-hour journey to a village called Nabawan. Instead, I found myself having to accept two invitations in Ranau, resulting in a 2.5-hour detour home, then a 3-hour drive south to Nabawan.

There's a lovely custom in Malaysia called the "open house." These happen around religious festivals - Christmas, Lunar New Year, and, of course, Hari Raya, the king of them all, the Muslim celebration of the end of Ramadhan. People literally open their houses on a set day, put out loads of food and a stack of chairs, and then simply welcome every single person from their extended family, their village, their kids' school, and every other possible source of vague acquaintances. Sometimes they even get an orang putih or two. Because Hari Raya isn't set until the new moon is sighted, people will invite you to their open house on either the first or second day of feasting, or perhaps a later day during the official week of holiday. This year, the moon was sighted on Saturday, so the invitation I'd received from my friend, which I'd expected to be for Monday, when I couldn't possibly attend, suddenly became Sunday, when I could. So I dutifully responded to Suryati's invitation, and when another arrived from one of my teachers, I said yes to that too. 

And thus it was that on Sunday morning, after a restless night of celebratory fireworks, Aurelia's first journey in Sabah was up into the mountain range to little Ranau. Dropping in at home for a short time, we met Lungkiam and Othman leaving for their niece's open house, so we joined them for that. After an acceptable amount of time and food, we said our goodbyes and drove onwards to Suryati's house to coo over her gorgeous newborn baby girl and laugh with teachers from my village school about finding a Malay husband. More food. More dirty jokes. Ah, a day in the life... Suryati's beautiful children and husband were dressed in brand new Hari Raya clothes in coordinating colours and I had to ask them to pose for a photograph before I left. This unfortunately meant that I had to give baby Nur Qisya back...

Then we travelled out to Lohan Village where one of my headmasters was holding court at his enormous house. More food. Sweets. Coffee.

We joined one of my teachers here who was visiting all her colleagues on one long day, together with two other teachers from the same school, and their families. All Christians, but still made so welcome by their Muslim hosts.

From the headmaster, we went to the deputy head's house, a beautiful blue wooden house on stilts. As we walked up, I saw her husband preparing to greet us, and, realising from the clothing and beard that he was a strict Muslim, had to hurriedly whisper to Aurelia, "Don't offer your hand until he offers his!" He didn't, and she didn't, and it was all fine. He welcomed us into his home with a gracious dip of his head. We ate some more food, a lovely curry this time.

And then, of course, because I'd eaten at the headmaster and the deputy head's homes, I couldn't leave before also visiting the home of the head of the afternoon school, so off we went down the road to one last house.

And it really did have to be one last house, as it was by now an hour and a half after my deadline for leaving Ranau. Well-fed-and-watered, we finally set off on the road south, arriving at the house of a very patient colleague well after dark. Her village - little Nabawan - is the last stop before Tawau, a city on the east coast. Between the two lie nearly 300 kilometres of road, most of it untarred and straight through rainforest.

Puasa

3am:

Awake. Kitten No. 1 just bit my nose, but I think that was about 5 seconds after I actually woke up - something is being heavily and noisily pounded in the kitchen.

3:15am:

Lungkiam phones: breakfast is almost ready if I want to join them in the main house. I rub the sleep from the corners of my eyes, throw on a jumper and stumble out of my flat. "Oh, I do hope I didn't wake you with the kitchen pounding," she says, but I'm pleased she remembered I'm fasting today and has invited me to join them.

3:30am:

Breakfast is on the table, and Dr Othman comes down to join us. He's dressed for breakfast and prayers in a sarong (before we all stole it, this was originally a Malay word meaning 'sheath') and kopiah - a traditional, round, white hat.

They thank Allah for everything, and then we can eat. Lungkiam is a master Dusun cook, but for this morning she has prepared a range of food from Western rye bread, to Malay fried noodles, to Dusun kampung vegetables, to plain-and-simple (and perfectly ripe) papaya from the garden.

There's also plenty of warm water to drink, and coffee - Othman won't be going back to bed, but is off to pray after eating. We sit and eat and talk. They are an interesting couple - Lungkiam converted to Islam in her teens so she could marry Othman; they moved to America to study for their PhDs; on returning to teach in Sabah in the 1970s, they were drawn into politics, with Othman entering parliament, and Lungkiam working with the Women's Division in the same party. Anyone who says that Muslim women are all oppressed needs to meet Lungkiam - a powerful, strong-minded, liberal woman who has more drive than most Western women I know. And Othman - well, he tells me for the second time of his glee at arriving at Heathrow at sundown one day, and giggles as he describes how wonderful the prayer room was - because every major religion was represented in the same room, with not even a fence to separate them. They are a wonderful pair who are truly becoming like family to me.

4:39am
We all gulp down the last of our water in the last minute before dawn officially arrives.

4:40am
Everything packed away, we say good night to each other and I return to my flat, where the kittens have celebrated a suhoor of their own, chewing my pillow to shreds. I stand on the balcony for a few minutes and listen to the extended morning prayer wafting through the pale light from the nearby mosque. Then tiredness kicks in and I head back to bed for a couple of hours.

11am
I'm on my way to Kota Kinabalu. I'm not hungry in the slightest, but I am thirsty. Very thirsty.

1pm
Driving through Kota Kinabalu city centre, I tut at a young American girl crossing the street, dressed in teeny-tiny shorts and waving a bottle of water at her friend. "Honestly, doesn't she know that some of us are trying to fast here?" I think the thirst is getting to me.

3pm
I stop for fuel on my way back to Ranau, and as I pay the cashier, I give in and ask for a small bottle of water as well. It's only 150ml, but it's a huge relief, and totally worth the guilt pangs.

6:15pm
Sitting on my balcony, I read to pass the time, anxiously watching the clouds over Mount Kinabalu turn from white to red to grey. There're other people in the common area of the homestay, mostly sitting and quietly talking. The Christian housekeeper is in the kitchen putting the final touches to the evening meal, but she's turned off her radio, and the air has a surreal calm to it. Everything holds its breath.

6:32pm
A prayer issues from the mosque. Lungkiam and Othman call me to join the other guests in breaking our fast with iftar, the evening meal. This is normally begun with a date, but tonight we have deep-fried Sabah bananas instead, with fruit juice - which is fine with me, as my blood sugar has plunged from its regular 90%+ level :) The fruit juice tastes better than ever before, and everyone breathes out as they nibble cautiously on fritters, before taking the plunge with the enormous meal laid out for us. This breaking of the fast is a very communal time for Sabahans, who take turns to open their homes to other villagers to come and eat together. Any food left over will be taken to the mosque to feed those praying the evening prayers, and those less fortunate - who, again, will all eat together.

7pm:
My fast is broken, and although I didn't quite make it all the way through the day, I'm proud that I managed as much as I did. It gives me a new respect for my teachers who do this every day for a month, and still manage to teach their classes! And I take comfort in the fact that they have all had years of training - children as young as 5 or 6 will fast for half-days, while still drinking water if they feel the need.

Not too sure that I'll be doing it again though. That dried-out-throat feeling is just too off-putting!

Land Below The Wind

Sabah's been variously known as British North Borneo, Land of the Sacred Mountain, and Seludang, but one of its most enduring names is Land Below the Wind. This is because it's just below the typhoon belt that harasses the Philippines, leaving the state free from violent winds at least, if not from monsoon storms.

Which is why last Monday or so everybody started looking a little betrayed, a slightly wounded look in their eyes. 

Typhoon Saola swept into the Philippines, killing 7 and displacing around 20,000 people.

Of course, against that backdrop, our woes are minor. But the shock of having to pin down laundry on the line was not well-received. The winds were pretty severe, even down here, and trees came down all over the place, blocking roads and cutting off the electricity supply. Headscarves and long skirts were lifted along the roadside, leading more than a few young girls to walk hunched over, gripping their hems as they walked to school.

It also caused disruption at SK Lohan, where the canteen has opened again to provide a limited service to non-Muslim teachers. I had a coffee yesterday with one of my mentees, feeling like a Very Bad Person - all the doors and shutters were closed, and curtains placed over the windows to hide us from the fasting teachers and students. The unexpected winds, of course, did not help us to remain entirely secret...

Shebeen, anyone?

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!

Mass Consumption

Ramadan finished today. At 6am the usual morning call to prayer came, but it was much longer than usual, celebrating the fact that finally today most of the nation was still asleep, and not frantically stuffing the last mouthful in before the sun rose, dreading another day without food. By 7:30, when I was having breakfast, the streets were already filling with children dressed in their finery - beautiful, bright, silken shirts and skirts, and little hats and headscarves.

The whole of Ranau seemed to be on the move. At 11am we joined them, driving to a nearby relative of our host. They were camped out on their verandah, an impressive music system blaring traditional songs, a long table bending to the pressure of a thousand different dishes - steamed coconut rice, satay chicken, beef curry, steamed beans and local spinach, stuffed quails' eggs and pumpkin in coconut cream, tiny pineapple tarts, chocolate peanuts and sweet potato cakes. Chairs were arranged around the edge of the verandah and some small bottoms were moved onto a mat to make space for us in the best seats, right by the cake table. We greeted everyone else in the traditional manner, shaking hands and then lifting the right hand to the heart, murmuring "Selamat Hari Raya" to welcome the end of fasting and wish our hosts a happy holiday. As we sat and munched, there was a continual stream of visitors from around the village - many of them were ancient elders, their skin so lined that their faces seemed to be caving in on themselves, tottering in on their own, often in well-washed, well-worn clothing. No matter how ragged, though, they were greeted with courtesy and respect by the couple whose house it was, who lifted the visitor's trembling hand to their foreheads to show the ultimate respect and then guided them to the food. 

Meanwhile, a computer was set up and a couple of karaoke microphones appeared. But when the eldest son took the microphone, it was clear that this was no ordinary cringy karaoke. He sang a traditional Hari Raya song in a deep and soulful voice, and then handed over to his little sister and her cousin - slightly unnerving to watch two slight girls in their modest Muslim clothing singing "her lips, her lips, I could kiss them all day if she'd let me; Her laugh, her laugh, she hates it but I think it's so sexy..." I'm fairly certain they weren't the audience Bruno Mars had in mind, but the pronunciation was almost perfect, and if it's a way into English for them, who am I to judge? The whole family eventually had a go, and many of them outsang the English-speaking singers - if only all karaoke singers were so good...

I read that food purchases rise dramatically during Ramadan, presumably because people are shopping on empty stomachs, and everything looks good, but the biggest and most dramatic rise is just before Hari Raya. I guess it's like Christmas - even down to the fairy lights that decorate houses, and the food hampers sold in supermarkets. Everybody wants to gorge, and impress their guests, and have a good time, and that has an impact on the shopping trolleys...

Coming to grips

So I'm still becalmed at the homestay in town, but, oh miracle, my 4x4 was finally ready on Friday and I'll be leaving this afternoon (Sunday) for the sticks.

Meanwhile, the homestay is a lovely, welcoming place, owned by a fascinating couple. They're very well-known in the area and every time I tell someone I'm staying with Dr Othman, they lower their eyelids and click approvingly. Dr Othman was an MP for a time, and is still a bit of a father figure for many Sabah politicians. Also, being fairly wealthy, they're the informal lending facility for the area. His wife, Lungkiam (also a Phd) was born into a Dusun Christian family but she converted to Islam when she married. The house is enormous and welcoming and populated by a number of different species - dogs here, unusually, are treated like members of the family; the field out back is controlled by several wild horses and foals, all descended from a rescue horse; the lounge area, which is wall-less and built out of wood, stretches over a river filled with koi. There's even a turtle in the kitchen - but I'm on the case and am hoping to persuade them to release it into the river.  A very fat cat moans piteously at sundown, but nobody's ever fooled into thinking he's actually hungry.

But the biggest reason for their most recent fame is a rather sad reason. In the early 1940s, Singapore fell to the Japanese. It happened very quickly - my colleague's father was one of the British army doctors caught up in the invasion. Prisoner-of-war conditions were fairly bad, but they became far worse for some of the men, who were transferred to Borneo in 1942-3. At a camp in Sandakan - around 60 kilometres east of Ranau - they were forced to build a military airfield using nothing but their hands. Then in 1945, they were forcibly marched west to Ranau. Because it was a massive operation - 2700 prisoners were at Sandakan - paths were cut through dense jungle to avoid the Allied planes. The prisoners had been kept in horrendous conditions for 2 or 3 years and they were badly malnourished and diseased; the route of the march is considered very difficult even today, with our modern equipment and technology. The POWs usually had to forage for their food - and sometimes they were helped by local villagers, when the Japanese weren't looking. Of 2700 men, just six survived the marches to Ranau - all Australian - all escapees who were hidden by villagers from the Japanese army, and only three of those survived to testify at war crimes trials the following year. The others - British and Australian - starved to death, died of disease, or were shot just after the Japanese surrender in August 1945. It's a very moving and sad story, and many of the descendants of the marchers come to trek the route every year. And most of them end up sitting on the same chair I'm sitting in as I write this. The exact route of the trek was lost for many years in the jungle, but was recently uncovered by a couple of very determined researchers, who found the site of the Last Camp - on my hosts' land. The site has been confirmed by a number of digs, which turned up cast-off buttons, old tins of fish, belt buckles, Australian army badges, and even an enamel mug. Dr Othman has pledged to keep the land undeveloped, apart from a simple memorial, and regularly leads teams of scientists, historians and researchers to it to investigate further.

On the tables one afternoon, he spreads out some of his finds to document them before they're turned over to the University of Malaysia, the hodge-podge remnants of the lives of the few who survived until Ranau.

But this sad story doesn't colour the homestay, which is a few kilometres from the camp site. Here the river plays backing track to an orchestra of birds, geckos and squirrels, and fruit drips from the trees - mangos and pawpaws, limes, pineapples and rambutan. The noise is incessant - the minute the sun drops below the horizon, the call of the mosque is almost overpowered by the call of the crickets and frogs and geckos.

Ramadan continues, and is now coming to the end of the second week.  On Friday, we were invited to one of Fiona's schools, in a small village near Ranau, for the breaking of the fast. We arrived a little late and dusk was approaching fast when we walked into the school's courtyard. Two long tables had been set up, and one of these was full of men, dressed in traditional sarongs mostly and wearing the songkok, a traditional hat. A few children raced each other round the other table, but there were no women in sight! A little nervous, we joined the head of the table and each promptly fell into deep conversation with our neighbours. They were so friendly and so welcoming, and so interested in our programme, that neither of us realised when the radio was turned up for the sundown prayers! We stopped for a local dignitary to chant his own short prayer to which all the men solemnly replied, something similar to the way Christians would murmur "Amen" during a rousing sermon. Then we all took a date from the plates on the table, and broke the day's fast with it. Or at least, the men and children did - of course Fiona and I had been snacking all day long :) After this initial fast-breaking, the men all disappeared for prayers, and while they were out, the women appeared and invited us to help ourselves to platefuls of food. The teachers had prepared the food in a sort of bring-and-share buffet, and although I was limited as a vegetarian, I wasn't complaining - I heaped piles of satay and steamed rice and curried wild greens onto my plate, and by the time my neighbours returned for their own dinner, I was digging in happily.

Unhappily for the Boss, who is a little man in a little job out for all he can get, my neighbour turned out to be his Boss, the District Education Officer, and we got along so well, we've been invited to break the fast next Friday at the District Office in Ranau - where I shall be sure to display my close friendship with the Big Boss...

Other than hobnobbing with the locals (the British Council calls it "relationship-building" and it's actually part of my job! It's a hard life...), we've been viewing a few of the local sights too. Today we went out for a "fish massage" which is a famous attraction in these here parts. You know the trendy salons in the UK that let you stick your feet in a tank for half an hour while little fish nibble all the dead skin off your toes? A pleasantly tingly pedicure? This wasn't like that.

We bought our tickets at a little booth and then walked down to another little booth by the river, where a smiley lady checked them and stamped them. We turned to walk over to where lots of chairs were laid out in rows and where we were obviously meant to sit and wait, but we were the only ones there, and we'd only taken a couple of steps before our numbers were called out over the tannoy - a little unnecessarily, as we were still within whispering distance, but there you go.

When we got down to the river, we realised that this is not your standard London establishment. For one thing, a lot of the fish are very big fish.

Basically - for that is the word for this fish massage, basically, which is why we were intrigued in the first place - a lot of river fish have been trained with the use of fish pellets to gather at a particular bend; you wade in ankle-deep on the sand and the fish swarm expectantly. You have a few fish pellets to give them, which they go crazy over, but in between being fed, they nibble on your feet.

It's pretty tingly. But then the big fish get involved, and this is not tingly. Not tingly at all. The big fish are very big, and their bites hurt. I jumped out a couple of times, but Fiona was braver - until she came out of the water and we saw her ankles.

I think we may have completely put off the Korean ajummas who arrived just as we were taking photos of the damage!

So. When you come to visit, and I suggest "a lovely fish massage", and you happily accept, imagining an afternoon of relaxed pampering at a spa, I shall know who's read this blog to the end...

;)