If I can make it through the next couple of hours then I will have completed a whole day saga-free (woohoo!). Saying that, there is still a good couple of hours for me to have a nosebleed, walk into a beam, or spontaneously burst into tears, but positive thinking and all that!
At 7:00 this morning we left the hostel in Kota Kinabalu and loaded ourselves onto the coach once more. It was raining again - in fact, last night we had the biggest thunderstorm yet, and I'm pretty glad we were inside an actual building for the night, because it was kinda scary! (It was also really nice to have an actual bed with a proper mattress again for once... Not that the beds here have been uncomfortable, but they do take a bit of getting used to.)
Anyway, it was about a 3 hour journey to Camp Bongkud. We stopped off on the way at a little local market which sold lots of souvenirs and food. I didn't buy anything but several of the boys bought lots of local food that none of us had tried before, so on the bus we all shared them around. There were local versions of cookies, crisps and prawn crackers, which were all completely different to what we know in England. The cookies were really nice, and the crisps were a little strange but still edible, but the prawn crackers left a particularly long and pungent aftertaste of fish in your mouth which I wouldn't recommend... Some of the others had also found some Malaysian Pringles and wafer biscuits so we finished off the feast with those.
At about 11:00 we arrived at Camp Bongkud. Bongkud is much bigger than Tinangol and Gaya and can have 100 people here at once, but at the minute there's just us and one other group (about 42 of us in total) as we're the first groups to arrive for the summer.
First things first, we quickly settled into our accommodation, which is a traditional longhouse very similar to the one in Tinangol, except much bigger and laid out slightly differently. In this one, the boys are in the same longhouse as us, but across a kind of corridor. Once settled in, we were briefed about life here in camp by the camp manager, Eve, and then we tucked into lunch, which was fish. (Don't worry, chicken and rice appeared back on the menu at dinner time.)
After lunch we took part in a 'reflection activity' where we all had to make and decorate an envelope with our name in it. These are now pinned up so that we can place positive comments inside them about each others' achievements, and we can then keep them at the end as a memory of our time here. Then we had another Malay lesson, and also learnt some Dusun (the dialect of the local tribe here), which is a lot longer and harder to pronounce than Malay! The other group that are here have only just arrived in Borneo and this is their first camp, so all the Malay was new to them. We've been telling them all about what we've done so far and giving them advice on everything from bites to showers - even though we've only been here a week it suddenly feels like we're the experts!!
The Malay lesson was followed by our attempt at singing a traditional Malaysian folk song, and then we had to begin learning a basic dance, which mainly involved a lot of delicate footwork and graceful arm movements in the style of a bird. Or, in my case, a lot of tripping over my own feet and arm movements which made me look a little like I was drowning.
After a short break we went for a walk down to some of the project sites in the village, which are right in the heart of the community, so we got to see some of what we'll be doing over the next few days as well as meet some of the local people.
The thing I've noticed the most about Borneo so far is how green it is everywhere, and that's especially true here. It's so quiet here too (except in the city of course), which makes such a huge change to what we're used to in England where everyone is bustling around nearly all of the time. We were shown the community centre, which is incredible considering that it was built entirely by volunteers just like us over the last four years. Seeing the finished product of a project like that is so motivating in helping us see the good that we're doing out here by working with the community in this way. We also saw the primary school, which has 200 pupils, and the field where all of the village's children gather to play.
The camp has only been at Bongkud since 2010, but way before then the village has a history of being helped out as a community. In the 1950s, a man named Trevor, who the villagers called Asang,
came over to do missionary work and stayed and lived in the village, helping them to build their first community centre and school, which are only now being replaced through the work of Camps International volunteers. Some people stayed in the village for a little while longer to play volleyball, but most of us used the time to go back to camp and get showered before dinner.
8:40
After dinner the village Chief came to welcome us to camp, and this was followed by a traditional sumazau dance from members of the tribe. It was this dance which we had tried for ourselves earlier, only their version was a lot more elaborate and much nicer than ours! The dancers also performed a section of the dance using bamboo poles, which some of them laid down on the ground and then tapped together, making a kind of percussion sound, while the other dancers had to skip over them to the beat of the music whilst they were being moved. It reminded me of skipping rope routines from when I was younger, but harder...
Once we'd seen it performed properly there was the chance to try the bamboo part for ourselves, but I decided that that may not be the wisest idea as those poles were moving pretty fast and the chances of me breaking my neck we're looking pretty high - definitely a saga waiting to happen!!
One thing that I still haven't got used to yet is how quickly it gets dark here. Being slap bang on the equator means that it gets dark about 6:00 in the evening; sometimes the light slowly disappears into a beautiful sunset, but other times it fades so quickly that you almost miss it - I think it depends where you are. In a way it's quite good that it gets dark early though as with how active we are we all need a lot of sleep anyway, and it feels a lot more acceptable to go to bed at 8:30 when it's already pitch black than it would if it was still light!
There's so many dogs here too. It was the same in Tinangol as well, and I expect you'd see the same thing in most of the villagers. They're not kept as pets in the same way that they're domesticated in England, instead they're kept by families as guard dogs but act like strays, spending most of their time wandering around the village, and often into camp too. They're all ridiculously skinny as they're only fed scraps - the villagers can't afford to feed them in the same way that we do back home. Most of them are incredibly friendly (despite the fact that they're supposed to be guard dogs) but are usually flea-ridden, so you stroke them at your own peril!
I'm definitely getting used to cold showers too. I never thought that I would, but in this heat they really are the best thing ever. Trouble is, you only have to be out of them for 5 minutes before you feel as sweaty and dirty as you did before all over again! When you're all in the same situation you soon stop noticing it anyway though. Even when you've washed your clothes they're never entirely clean, and often you have to shove them back into your bag when they're not quite dry, so there's a constant smell of damp surrounding your rucksack, but there's a point when you just laugh and get on with it!
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