TAMPARULI : My first field trip

In UMS, Every first year student is required to choose one activity for their curriculum credit. This activity will only be carried out for one semester (provided you pass). So being all "adventurous" I decided even before i came to sabah that i would take anyting that has to do with the sabahan dance also known as Tarian Sabah. And true enough they had Tarian Sabah in our curriculum activities. And... I went for it.

I honestly thought it'll be fun and significant for my course. And it was. But it also meant serious business. We had to learn 5 different types of the sabahan dance, like Tarian Mangunatip, Tarian Sumazau, Tarian Daling-daling and so on + the music that was used + little bit of history + the technical side for 3 hours every saturday. 3 hours seemed pretty short but honestly they felt like the longest 3 hours of my life (excluding French classes). Now this is coming from someone who had never had any professional dance experience in her life, so do excuse the complains. Okay so back to the topic, in every curriculum group, we are required to come up with a community project called the UMS SPRINT. This project must be under the budget of RM500 and will serve as your mid-exam evaluation.

Our section came up with a bengkel seni in Kampung Raganan Kiulu, Tamparuli. This was my first experience going to a village. Coming from Ipoh I couldn't picture what it was like to be in a village where that was a village chief and how the people would actually come together and participate in activities like the one we were about to host for them. Back in my neighbourhood, it was every house for itself. So this was going to be a new experience for me and i was pretty excited. We stayed in an open-aired  village hall and had only one outdoor bathroom stall to bath/answer the call of nature at. There were no fans/lights in the hall and the only lights we had were battery operated. Overall it was a good trip, where we hosted games for the village kids and adults and taught them one of the dance which we learned- The Mangunatip dance from the Bajau ethnic. It was a good way to just put the phones away and get out and be a kid again,

The long bridge that you had to cross to get to the Village. Scary bah.

The village's open-aired hall aka our bedroom

The village's kindergarten 

The villagers trying out the Bajau traditional wear

Our group picture was taken by the river :D

The Language Barrier

Today i would like to share with you all about one of the biggest challenge i faced ever since I've been in Sabah. As i was walking back from my class today, I was stopped by one of my course mates whom I've never spoken to. Peter* (name has been changed just in case Peter* reads this hehe) was from Sarawak and probably the most good looking guy in our entire class (which consisted of around 110 students.) He asked me where was i from and we made small talk. Then he asked the question which I'm sure has been playing in his mind the whole time. He said.. 'So Hilda, why do you speak.. differently?' I politely asked him what did he mean by that although i already knew what he meant. And he began to explain. "Um.. when you speak Malay. Its different. You have a slang". I laughed and gave him the one reason that seems to satisfy everyone. "Oh my mom is an English lecturer". And like everyone else who had asked me the same question, he goes like "Ohhhhh patutlah" and gave me the 'that-explains-it' look. Peter* wasn't the first though. Just last week, my lecturer apologized because she forgot to make a bilingual exam paper for me. Somehow she seem to think I'm some Malaysian kid who doesn't understand Malay.

My mom being an English lecturer probably only played a tiny part with the fact that i speak Malay with a "slang" so as they would put it. The truth is, I'm just not used to it. In my family, we all speak English. Despite being so "rojak", I speak none of the languages. No i do not speak Punjabi, or Chinese and definitely not Portuguese. So English and Malay are practically the only languages i know. Yes its a shame i know. In school, I've always been the weakest in the class for the subject BM. But I went to a convent, and then to a Lasallian school. Where everyone was good in English. My friends always consisted of a variety of different races BUT we all had one thing in common. We spoke English. I'm not saying that my English was perfect. I still use Malay in my conversations, but i was never comfortable with it and i did not have the right environment to improved myself. I dont blame anyone though, I should have taken the effort, being a Malaysian and all, but i did not.

So when i came here, you can only imagine my situation. My Malay is on a level below average. Maybe even lower? Sabahans take the Malay language to a level that's way above average. They have their own slang. They talk fast. They have their own words for certain stuff and they use alot of "bah"s in their conversation.  Its amazing really. And i adore the sabahans for that. But it definitely took a lot of getting use to for me. Even their texts were difficult to understand.
I guess i made it sound like it was a bad thing. But its not really. I come to realize that this was the beauty of going to a different place. There are days when I feel extremely embarrassed and intimidated but there are days when things like these makes me smile. I could have an entire conversation with a sabahan in my broken Malay and at the same time he or she would be replying in broken  English. And we would both be assuring each other that its okay to just speak in our own mother tongue but still refuse to give in. We're two groups that are still trying to improve. Plus i get to learn some really cool words. Like just yesterday, I learned a few. Like "punyit" which means bat. As in the animal bat. And "gobuk" which meant monkey. And also "vogok" haha. They laugh because the way i pronounce the words tickles them. I laugh because likewise they take English to a whole new level as well.

So yea, for all you "bananas" or "coconuts" who are coming to Sabah. Dont worry. Because sabahans will do whatever it takes to make you feel welcome. Even if its out of their language barrier.