Petabi Lekedang [petabik-leketang]
Greeting. It means "Good Morning"; one of the very first few phrases I learnt that's very useful in building good rapport; say this to everyone in the morning to receive amused smiles (applies to non-Kelabits only).
For our first Saturday, I was looking forward to both community service and visiting tamu (the market).
Tamu is basically a morning market, where villages take turns to sell goods - like crops or cooked porridge - each week. It is held near a stretch of shop lots around the slightly more urban area of Bario, where the hospital is.
Where there is urbanisation, there is Internet. Let me introduce eBario to you; a telecentre where my friends and I attempted (not in vain!) to get in touch with "the outside world". It was there that I used the free wifi to post my first tweet from Bario.
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| Replies for my tweets were just: Wow you're alive! |
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| Project Coordinator, Daniel Agan on the left with the lively Tepuq Sinah Rang! |
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| Sitting across Shu Anne with her porridge and me with my Laksa + Milo. |
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| Tamu sightings: I think it's safe to say wild boar meat is a typical Bario staple. |
Later, we returned to the longhouse for a short break before getting up and running again for community service - cleaning the Bario Asal church! My first thought when we stepped onto the holy grounds was - "Woah, this place is dusty." Then, I was enlightened that due to the nature of the church's surroundings, dusty floors are practically inevitable.
So why are we cleaning it? Well, that's like asking why you keep eating rice when you'll get hungry anyway, right? Haha.
We borrowed cleaning equipments from helpful residents of the longhouse and the local pastor before we started sweeping and mopping away! The most fun for me was definitely cleaning up the cobwebs, an oddly satisfying chore, even though I knew it would soon be back in the next 24 hours (according to the locals); GG spiders!
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| COBWEBS OFF YOU GO. |
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| Look at them tall peeps Kee Kiat & Dev go! |
Cleaning with everyone while John Mayer played from Dev's playlist on his speakers was really rather nice! Like I keep saying, so many little things to appreciate. It's crazy how easily we just got along and worked together in making this inevitably-dusty church as clean as possible - some things just happen, some people just click.
Later in the day, we dropped by the hydrodam for a dip to cool down. Even though the water was freeeezing cold and the walk there was waaaaaay longer than I thought, at least it happened with the best bunch.
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| Grateful for these wackos. From left: Cathrine, Jangin, Sria, Ganit, Liging, Gerawat, Lian. |
# Xueh Wei Cathrine #
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