Recently I went to another medical camp. We started driving at six in the morning. Since we did not have to travel in a convoy, we had time to eat breakfast.
One hour took us to Ranau, 1 800 feet above sea level. Another three hours we reached Tambunan, 5 000 feet above the sea. According to those who travel yearly there, the roads were much better than the previous year. It was muddy and bumpy last year. This year most of that road was widened and a lot of gravel were added. It was not only less bumpy, it was less dusty too.
That part of Sabah is mostly mountainous. This is the first time I heard that Sabah is the Switzerland of the East. It is beautiful!
This particular camp brought doctors, nurses, dentists and eye doctors. Broken into three groups, they served one remote village, an orphanage (for children of single parents) and a hostel. There were a few lady hairdressers who cut hair for the children, for them it was a day trip. I hitched a ride with the chuck wagon, therefore I went to the cooking shed near the river. After a hurriedly cooked lunch, I went to the hostel to put down my bag. Some volunteers cooked white rice and fried 5 kilos of small fish with salt the afternoon before. We reached the hostel by 11:30 am. A group of us set up shop and shelled onions, garlic and shallots. The chief cook fried a vegetable that is made up of a local leek, ginger pink flower (bunga gantang), onion and garlic and anchovy. It is a most delicious dish. Apparently a doctor first had it in a previous medical camp, kept asking for it and he even bought the ingredients on the way and took the trouble to cook it himself. In order to maximise his productivity, the organisers made a point of providing it for every future camp. We had onion fried eggs and two type of sambal. The cook used chili padi, sugar, salt, lime juice and belachan to make a watery sambal. Some individual bought a small jar of dried shrimp sambal that cost $15, to me it is expensive.
The night before our trip, it was 19 degrees in Tambunan. The night we were there, I had on one t-shirt, long pants and long sleeve plaid shirt and I slept in a sleeping bag all zip up towards the morning. Seven girls moved in with their school mates to accommodate us. We ended up ten people sleeping in the room with eight mattresses. The next morning, the mountains were spectacular with thin veils of sheer white misty clouds, like the long white veils that Chilean mountains are famous for.
All in, thirteen pairs of spectacles were needed for the orphans and the pupils in the hostel. The Lion Club will under write it all. These children, age 7 to 12, live too far to walk to school daily. They board five days a week, and return home during week ends and holidays. It was heartening to see 7 year olds washing their own clothes. This will produce a very independent group of young people.
It is a tradition that medical camp collected money form well wishers to buy a Kentucky Fried Chicken meals for each student in the hostel. Folks donate money to send 100 frozen chickens to the orphanage. Alternate year, either fish or pork were sent too, depending on the prices of sea catch. Since the past year, a very rich unnamed man donated $10 000 earmarked for buying medicine each medical camp. Apparently after donating the money, he hired a helicopter to fly him to that inaccessible place and check on the work. He was very pleased with what he saw, the cheques kept coming.
This is the last official camp for this year, as the monsoon rains will hit in November. By then it would be too dangerous to travel to the interior where there are no paved roads. However, I heard that there is one last one in December. Around Christmas, four all-terrain vehicles would fetch a cooking team, one doctor and two nurses, they would bring food, used clothes, toys, and new clothes to this really poor group living on the main road a reasonable distance from where I live. These are indigenous folks who are citizens. There is no school nearby, therefore generation after generation are being left behind in the economic pie. I saw a few photographs, those wooden houses have no walls. Dogs and people live in one room hovels. Before the medical camp people heard of them, all children under six have absolutely no clothes to wear. We cannot expect them to wear even slippers.
It took the Health Department officials to take a bunch of well wishers to this remote site. It is actually near enough for a day trip. Yet in more than 20 over years of medical camp history, they only learnt of this needy group a year or two ago. God willing, I hope to follow either the founder and his wife or the chuck wagon. In any case, my thick skin self would appeal to all and sundry for used clothes, clean toys or any household items those around me would donate over the next two months.
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