Ben Wilson in Malaysia with Project Trust: Painting, pancakes and party

February has proved to be one of the busiest of the 6 months I’ve been out in Malaysia. A combination of painting, pancake making and late nights watching sporting fixtures have contributed to what has most probably been the most exhausting period of my time here; but that’s not to say I haven’t enjoyed it!

Early February started off on a high note as we were invited to one of the boy’s sister’s birthday parties. It’d be some time since Rory and I had been to a celebration out here and think we’d forgotten at the extent of the attention we would receive. Like the weddings we’d been to earlier in the year everybody from the village was invited to these celebrations; and it was great to feel famous again purely on the basis of being white. It came as no surprise when we were lined up early doors for a karaoke cameo, as well as some traditional dancing to some ‘Kadazan-dusun’ songs. After much debate of a song that we could sing, for some reason that I can’t explain, we found ourselves churning out a performance of Robbie Some of the boys in their shirtsWilliams’ - ‘Something Stupid’. The performance went down as expected considering both Rory and I are both awful at singing and the few sympathetic claps confirmed it was time to take our seats. I don’t know what the craze is out here but if you go to any form of celebration without having had some ‘Tapai’, you’re doing seriously well. It’s basically a home brewed rice wine that has potency of 40% and looks like glue... lethal! This particular party didn’t seem to be running dry of the stuff and the hardest part about it was trying to make it clear to this one drunken lady, that I couldn’t stand the stuff. Towards the end of the party I successful managed to lose my stalker and get stuck into cutting some shapes on the D-floor and after a couple Dusun songs, we were on our way back to the hostel – a truly exceptional weekend!

Painting

A couple weeks into February, we finally got the go ahead from MYTC to re decorate the classroom and so Rory and I have been at it most days. We started off by sanding the walls and then put three coats of paint on and it was exhausting. However, there's nothing like a few tunes to pass the time and i can speak for both of us that the song 'Timber' is not getting a run out for a while. I’ve painted before but because the weather hasn’t dropped below 30 degrees for as long as I can remember it meant that shower breaks every 30 minutes were a necessity. It’s taken best part of a couple of weeks to finish off the sanding/painting but the hard work has paid off; even though I’ve successfully managed to sand more of my hand off than I did on the walls! We’ve still got to put posters etc. on the wall and I’m waiting for when Sam comes out as he’s bringing some posters that I’ve bought to donate to the hostel. In the meantime at least now the classroom won’t look as dull as the students probably find my lessons!

The other day we organised pancakes for the boys as it was Shrove Tuesday. We had to make something like 120 pancakes as we’d promised the boys two each and they made sure we stuck to it; meaning we had to mix some silly amounts of eggs, flour and milk! Even though we had a couple of the boys helping us, we hadn’t anticipated how long it would take us and I think I the end it took best part of three hours! I tried a few flips and after successfully landing some i got a bit big headed, and therefore got together a crowd of boys to show. To my disgust it completely backfired as it ended up setting alight in the flame of the hob; it just had to be that one.. I was a laughing stock! Off the back of Rory's fair suggestion, I took 5 mins to cool down after displaying such appalling behavior and as Rory said i thought to myself 'you're so much better than that'. Nevertheless, i put it behind me and got on with the task ahead, because at this point we still had 50 pancakes to cook. We settled for a classic topping of chocolate and slightly obscure but surprisingly good topping of condensed milk and the speed at which the boys ate them confirmed that we’d done a good job. It was great fun making the boys the pancakes and I'm hoping that the boys can hold back their cravings from pancakes for a while or at least until i can recover from the howler in that last batch.

Pancake making

I’m looking forward to Sam coming out in the coming weeks and even more excited to be doing a couple weeks travelling with him around other parts of Borneo, including: Sandakan, Kuching, Miri and climbing Mount Kinabalu! The climb was one of the main things that I wanted to achieve when I came out here and it’ll be so good to share this experience with Sam, Rory and Max; as well as making all of you jealous back home.

Hope you’re all well...