Planning for a service trip is never easy. And on May 24, 2014, I went on my first service trip to Sabah Camp Bongkud as part of SJI Senior School's International Project Week (IPW). While you could view the trip's highlights on my previous post published in Chinese, I would like to share more about my preparation process and my during and post-trip reflections. Hope you'll enjoy it! :)
But before the sharing, here's the context of the service project. Our service project was located at Bongkud Village, Sabah Malaysia. It was due for 8 days and 7 nights. Our group of 20-ish students were supposed to help out as student volunteers during our stay. Throughout the service period, all students slept at Attap Long Houses at Camp Bongkud, a camp operated by this company called Camp International. Camp International specialises in various volunteering projects across mainly Asia so if you're looking to volunteer somewhere, I guess Camp International is a good place to start with.
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| Painting for Bongkud Village's Community Centre! :) |
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| A group photograph when we all got home! :D |
Sabah Service Project Pre-Trip Preparations
The pre-trip preparation for Sabah Camp Bongkud was rather rushed. Our group was expecting to go to Thailand Bamboo School all the way until two weeks prior to the service trip (due to local uprisings in Thailand). All of us were caught by surprise and we did not know what we were supposed to do for the trip. We were briefly told that we needed to teach the children English. There were lots of apprehensions and we had to do our planning all over again, from preparing suitable books for the children at Sabah Camp Bongkud to packing goodie bags for the children there.
What we did then, for the pre-trip preparation, was that we separated ourselves into 3 groups: the group that is in charge of performances, the group in charge of learning the Malay language, Logistics group and the group in charge of preparing study materials for the children at Camp Bongkud. I was in charge of performance along with my schoolmate Jean Wei. So the first thing we did was to look into the possible songs that we could sing for the natives there, and we thought of choosing both a Malay song and an English song.
After much surfing on the internet, we found Chan Mali Chan and We are Young, which we thought would be interesting. Chan Mali Chan could be the bridge between Singapore and Malaysian culture whereas We are Young can help to bond the children together. So we went on to find the lyrics for both songs and put them in a Google docs for everyone going for this trip to learn beforehand.
Apart from being in the performance group, I personally wanted to pack goodies. As such, I stayed up the day before the trip to pack some jellies and candies for the children.
And that's pretty much our pre-trip preparation!
Sabah Camp Bongkud During-Trip Reflection
We took off on 24 May 2014 evening and reached Kota Kinabalu, the city of Sabah on the same day at night. Everything was really fresh and nice and I get to experience a night at Kota Kinabalu waterfront area while eating a Kids Meal at Fish & Co. for SGD5.
The days after were the start of real work. We took a ~3-hours long bus ride up to Camp Bongkud at Bongkud Village. It was my first time at a village. Everything was new to me. But that's not to worry about--as we had an orientation trip around Bongkud Village shortly after we arrived. To add icing to the cake, we also managed to catch a soccer match at the village field. At night, we even had a welcoming party by the village chief. The warm hospitality made us felt much more at home.
I had some conversations with teenagers there and it happened that we both share the same liking for Korean dramas! While we are from different countries, but deep in us, we are "different but same-same altogether".
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| The group of us watching a football match played by the locals! :D |
The next day we started our service project(s): building Bongkud Village Community Center and teaching children English. We split ourselves into a couple of groups once again: a group to teach English, a mural painting group, a landscaping group, a "wooden panels" group, a recycling corner group and a weaving group. I was part of the mural painting group along with Zhui Ning, Hans and Yu Chong. Our job was to paint a (well-designed) wall for the villagers. Hence, we spent the remaining 5 days painting a picture of Mount Kinabalu on an area of 25m^2. Fortunately, all of us had great chemistry, and we managed to finish the entire painting within the given time period (5 days).
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| Mural painting. :D |
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| Weaving. :D |
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| Mural painting. :D |
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| Mural painting. :D |
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Painting the mural wall. :)
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| Weaving. :) |
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In addition, we also taught the local children captain's ball during our afternoon free time at Bongkud Village. The children were really active and spontaneous, contrary to what we had believed previously.
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| Captain's ball. :) |
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| A game of captain;s ball with the villagers. :D |
To add on, we also engaged in cultural activities such as bead making, cooking our very own ondeh ondehs, playing the traditional Gong, and learning the traditional Sumazau dance and Bamboo dance.
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| Bead making session. :) |
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| Cooking sessions--making ondeh ondehs. :D |
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| Cooking sessions. :D |
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| Monitoring the heat. Hopefully the snacks would turn out well! :D |
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| Another snack we made--banana cakes. :D |
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| Plating. :D |
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| Our dishes! :D |
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| Sumazau Dance. :D |
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| Sumazau dance practice. :D |
On the 6th and 7th day of our trip, when we were almost done with our mural painting and other service projects, we went to Sabah Tea Plantation as well as the Poring Hot Springs. It was really great to be able to step out and take a breather after being in the same place for 4 days :) As the 7th day was our last night at Camp Bongkud, we had a farewell party where we sang songs, played our gongs with the locals. At the end of the farewell party, we each received a bead necklace from the village chief as a gift. And to wrap the week long project, we had a cake cutting session.
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| Singing session at out party. :) |
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| Farewell party. :) |
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| Our cake! :D |
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| Group photograph! :D |
And on the early morning of the 8th day (also our last day), we set off for Kota Kinabalu. We had a some light souvenir shopping at the Waterfront area and had some spaghetti before heading to the airport for Singapore.
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| Spaghetti |
After several hours, we were back into motherland once again!
Sabah International Project Week 2014 Post Trip Reflection
This was the first time I went on such a long trip with my school. It was challenging, especially when I tried to bathe and live in a Kampong (village) environment. I was extremely not used to the squatting toilet and bathing in a bamboo cubicle. So I missed my house toilet a lot. I could still remember the day when the shower at Camp Bongkud was able to work (with enough water pressure finally), I was really touched at that moment, where I got to have cool water coming out from the shower head after two days. In addition, I could still remember the day when I saw a sitting toilet at Sabah Tea Plantation and I was like "WOW!". That has never occurred to me (in Singapore).
Other than that, all the other things were fine, and as much as I do feel a little homesick here and there, I had great friends to cheer me up and keep me company (with poker cards sometimes). This trip really acts as a friendship booster and I can see how we (especially our tutor group friends who were all in the same trip together) really rely on one another for emotional support.
On the whole, I felt that I survived the week rather well as a first timer, and I felt that my mural painting was rather well done, I can teach the children Captain's ball, I can speak Malay with the teenagers in Sabah, I can do some simple weaving, Sumazau dance and cook delicious ondeh ondehs (I tried to cook again in Singapore!). It was quite a good experience after all! :D
On a sidenote, while I did survive the week (quite well as said), I came back being a little unclear about many things such as: What is considered clean? (Sabah is clean, but it is not modernised. My house's toilet is not necessarily cleaner but it seems so because it is modernised.) AND MOST IMPORTANTLY: What should we do to permanently improve the villagers’ lives?
Perhaps there's an answer to these questions soon.
(Photo credits to Ms Boon Yen Ping, teacher, SJI Senior School)
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