Phil, Charlie, Tash, Lucinda, Katherine, Jason and Tom..."fresh" of the flight!

Unbelievably it’s day 12 now with the April Leapers in Borneo, how quickly time flies by! Everyone’s in great shape and having a great time here. It’s not always easy when one comes to an unfamiliar place, meeting new people, trying to overcome all kinds of fears they may have had but we feel that the group have adapted themselves amazingly considering they’ve only been here for over a week.

On the 1st day of arrival, they were welcomed at the airport, a stop over to a southern indian restaurant for roti and 2 and a half hour drive to their first Camp after. The first few days of the project were spent on familiarization with the environment, activities.

Meeting the locals...

It was an Easter weekend when they arrived, the leapers joined in the community for a celebration. In a space of 3 days, much were covered from doing the Rungus traditional dance at the longhouse to visiting the beads making centre to running on the field for a friendly football match to visiting the Tip of Borneo and much more.

Charlie and Jason pick up some new moves!

The chief of village were quite pleased with the groups’ friendliness and their interest on learning the Rungus culture, tradition and way of lives that he paid them a visit to the Camp on their 3rd day for dinner and spent that time getting to know. Much talks of the world and project work in the village were shared. This is quite rare!

The last group’s effort and good work on building the Tinangol Kindie foundation were continued on after the easter weekend with much hardwork on peeling off coconut posts with some “parang” (machete) action and will be doing cementing work on getting the posts up.

Tash and Charlie show off their "parang" action

We have in the past organised English teaching at the pre-school (ages between 3 to 5 years old) and with great progress with the works by volunteers there, we have gained some recognitions and have been upgraded and welcomed new volunteers to teach English at the primary school (ages between 7 to 12 years old) about 15 minutes away from the village. Much discussion have been had prior to start of classes to agree with the Malaysian educational system and came to an agreement on a rotation basis with 2 volunteers assisting and teaching as per every mondays-fridays.

More from me on Batu Puteh and Sepilok on their next phases. More photos are on their way. Till the next phase, have a great week ahead!

Cheers
Mel (Borneo Leap project leader)