Today I’m going to post about two exciting events that TONIBUNG
have recently been involved in. The first was a training course based in Sarawak,
and the second a wedding!
After our experiences in the Philippines, our journey to the
training course seemed like a breeze. We kickstarted the first day with a
McDonald’s breakfast before hopping on a plane to Miri. A six hour drive took
us to Tanjung Tepalit, close to the Indonesian border.
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| Traditional houses in Tanjung Tepalit |
The course was run in partnership with several other organisations
such as JOAS, Save the Rivers and the UNDP, and several of their
representatives had travelled to support the event. Around 60 people in total
had descended upon the village and the atmosphere upon our arrival was buzzing
with high levels and enthusiasm from locals and non-locals alike.
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| Exploring a local waterfall |
The course was targeted at people from the surrounding area who were interested in learning about micro hydro. The first two days consisted of classroom sessions covering a range of topics such as basic technical theory, management and operations. Particularly relevant to my project was a workshop where teams pitched productive end use ideas to each other. These included carpentry workshops, traditional longboat manufacturing and rice milling.
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| Classroom-based training |
The third day was spent in the nearby jungle, where we
rotated around stations and learned how to survey a potential micro hydro site.
This knowledge was consolidated on days four and five, when surveys of three nearby locations were performed. The people who attended the course will now
be able to perform similar surveys on their respective villages and contact
TONIBUNG about any feasible sites they discover. This is a significantly more
efficient way for TONIBUNG to source projects than conducting the surveys
themselves as they are time-consuming and involve considerable travel from our
base in Sabah. The training course has also provided these people with an
understanding of TONIBUNG’s other project requirements, such as strong village
leadership. Their appreciation of these criteria and approach will
hopefully increase the project’s likelihood to succeed in a sustainable manner.
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| Measuring flow rate |
We will now fast forward by ten days to Helen and John’s
wedding. Helen is the sister of Bani, one of the directors of TONIBUNG, and the
wedding was held in the Create Centre (the site of TONIBUNG’s workshop and the
place where we live). The week running up to the workshop was spent preparing
for the big day. The whole community came together to cook, clean and decorate,
and by the time Saturday arrived the Centre had been completely transformed.
There was even tissue paper in the toilets, and not a gecko shit to be seen!
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| The family arriving |
Traditional dress was worn, but was quickly ditched for more
the more temperature-appropriate attire of shorts and tshirts after the
ceremony! This consisted of several parts. There was the priest’s blessing in a
flower-adorned archway whilst the bride and groom touched their feet on a stone
that symbolised the rock of their marriage. They then fed each other rice balls
and chicken soup that represented the sharing of their first meal together, and
traditional gongs were played. The family sang a traditional indigenous song
and the couple shared their first dance. Then the ceremony was over and the party really began.
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| The priest's blessing |
A feast of local dishes was served and the rice wine began
to flow. I’d been previously warned about the beverage capacity of the Sabahans
- and rightly so, because these guys can seriously drink. Novel ways of serving
rice wine included drinking from an earthenware pot with a straw and taking
shots from bamboo glasses!
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| Rice wine through a straw |
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| Some really delicious food |
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