My first volunteering experience in Northern Borneo

First of all I want to say that I am a free thinker, non-religious. Though, I am always interested to see churches and other religious characteristics in another country. So I did here in Kota Kinabalu. My colleague invited me to join her to her church, Protestant Church. This was wonderful! So different from Holland! In this church they sing out loud, dance how they want and say what they feel. Really amazing!

By my colleague and this community I got invited to join their volunteer work in the north of Borneo: Pitas. This area consists out of 10 remote villages. These villages are only reachable by decent 4 wheel drives. During the monsoon seasons they often deal with floods, so since 2006 the Skycommunity offers disaster help here and have made long term goals for the future. This time they were going there to give medical service and I joined, not knowing anything about anything medical.

We departed from Kota Kinabalu on 17 April 2010 at 5.30AM! There was a good team who took care of all the logistic parts, because wow… that is complicated! Where to put in all the stuff, do we have cars enough etc.

It was about 3-4 hours driving and the last half hour was totally off-road! Finally we arrived in Kampung Dandun ( small village) and everybody immediately went to work, make themselves useful. There were 3 departments: Logistic department, cooking department and the medical department. The logistic department looked for a place to sleep, because the normal school building was not available this weekend. The cooking department set up everything and started cooking lunch. The medical team, including myself, went to the community hall to set up everything: a table for registration, smaller tables for checking the people’s height, weight, temperature and blood pressure. Other helpers took benches from the church, which were used when people were waiting before they could see a doctor. Because yes, we had 8 or 9 real doctors with us! All volunteers, who are so busy with their own job , but still are willing to help! After the check up they were setting up other tables that were used as a pharmacy and free of charge ‘store’. They gave the community people new slippers, toothbrush and toothpaste, towels etc.

During the set up all the local people came already to the entrance and started queuing. After a while we could let them in and the check up started!

First, I was measuring their temperature with help of another colleague who could speak Malay, always very convenient :-). In the beginning it was all a bit like see and wait how it goes. But it all went well! There were a lot of children. Young mothers with at least 1 or 2 children or 1 on the way. There were some very old man and woman as well. They had lot of wrinkles, it fitted really good though, as this may sound very weird. Life at a Kampung (village) is not easy and takes a lot of physical effort. These older people looked like they had lived their kampung life as they should. Every wrinkle probably stands for every difficulty they have been thru, but see: they have survived! Beautiful people and they were all so kind!

At 6 we quit for the day. One of the volunteers started to sing and dance with the kids, which looked so cute! After that it became very obvious that they liked taking pictures. Because I could speak a little Malay they tried me out haha. I guess kids will always be a bit naughty ;-). They asked me if I wanted to take a shower with them, in Malay. One of the volunteers kindly explained to me that they were asking me to come with them to the river. This was one of the highlights of the total trip! They all ran into the river and all started playing together, splashing around and they had such happy faces, it made me feel so privileged to be there, that I could actually help them by also just being there.

Then one of the mothers came along in her beautiful sarong and did her dishes in the river before taking a shower in the same river…

The second day we did again medical checkups and at 3 o’clock we were said farewell by all the local children and parents.

Although I had the feeling I didn’t do something really important, just measure temperatures and measuring the blood pressure, this feeling started to change very soon. I realized they need also people for things like this, so that the doctors can focus on their job. We made the people very happy also just by being there and taking care of them. Unfortunately the doctors found out that some children probably had Tuberculoses and sent them to a hospital in the nearest city.