Lihan re-opened school this morning. The water level had only dropped a few inches, but I think he felt it couldn’t be delayed indefinitely. So I took the opportunity to go over + take a look at what was going on. Which was not very much. The school roll was down to 20% of what it should have been, so there were only a handful of kids in each class. What was more, the teachers didn’t want to be teaching, + it showed. In a couple of classes, nothing was going on at all, mostly there were time-marking exercises, + nowhere was there any dynamic teaching. I saw what there was to see in about 5 mins, but I didn’t want to make it too obvious I thought nothing was happening, so I too marked time; I wandered up + down a couple of times, + sat in the staff room reading. Lihan had given me a cartoon history of Sarawak joining Malaysia, + tho’ it had a heavy pro-Malaysia bias, it was nonetheless interesting. Explaining something of the numerous political parties of the region. It seems that a major impetus to pushing Sarawak in to Malaysia came thro’ fear of Indonesian-sponsored communism. I don’t think Sarawak has gained by the alliance – they have merely exchanged one form of colonialism for another.
After lunch, Lihan took us to Long Pelajau, the longhouse from which we’d bought the fish before. There were more people about today, so we sat for a while + chatted. We’d brought along our small photo wallet, so had that top spark off some conversation, + after a while we were invited inside for some tea. I took a photo there that I hope will turn out alright, of a small + angelic boy with dark hair + enormous eyes with, I assume, his grandfather. When we left, we came away with 3 fish out of the trap, as well as some newly–harvested rice.
Later on during the afternoon, Lihan took us to the other longhouse we’d visited before, called Something Ratau, + he left us there, going off to do his own work. The photos were brought out once again, to everybody’s great interest, + I also started work on one of the macramed belts, + got one bloke sufficiently interested to try it himself. When we left (he was the one who brought us back) I gave it to him to carry on with.
When we returned, Val helped Telun prepare the meal. We also took the opportunity to give them the presents we had for them: a can of beans, a can of pineapple, a cassette of English pop music, + a game of Mini-Mastermind, picked up in Marudi. Lihan was very struck by the game, tho’ he wasn’t all that quick at picking up on the idea of it.
I thought I did have a photo of the boy and his grandfather, but I can’t find it, sohere you are. I think we are starting to cpome to the end of the things we have to do here, so it is probably time to be returning to Marudi and heading north, to Brunei and then Sabah, the other Malaysian state on Borneo.
