Miso Walai Homestay

This past week I was a chaperon on a week long school trip for the students CAS week, which is community service. Many groups of students worked at places like homeless shelters and orphanages here in Penang, but others went further afield to Kuala Lumpur and Thailand. There is even a group that will be departing this week that is going to Kenya to build sink/toilet facilities at a local school there.

The group I was with went to the eastern (Borneo) part of Malaysia, a 4 hour plane journey that landed us in the city of Sandakan in the province of Sabah. Another larger group was heading to climb Mt. Kinabalu first and would join us later in the week. Due to some mix up of the plane ticket bookings my small band of 6 arrived late at night. From Sandakan we had to travel 2 hours by bus to the village of Mengaris where we were paired off and sent to stay with local families through the Miso Walai home stay program. Since it was so late, I can’t say that our family was brimming with excitement to see us, but they quickly made us comfortable and we tried to sleep. I found this extremely difficult as my bedroom was 5 meters from a highway, right above a chicken coup, and with no mosquito net.

The next day we headed to a local school to begin work on a covered walkway which kids from our school had started in previous years. Here our real adventure began as we began to see the village in the daylight. About 100 houses spread over roughly 5 square kilometers. The village had no gas station, no grocery, no mini-mart, and no hospital, but they did have a mosque conveniently located about 10 meters from my bedroom which is perfect for the 4am call to prayer to wake you up, whether or not you would like to pray at 4am.

Unfortunately on the first day there was a problem locating the proper tools for work on the walkway, but the pta had another project going on building some walls for a storage room so we helped with that, mostly getting in the way. At the end of the day, very tired and dirty, we decided to take a short ride across the river to where there were some shops, a couple of restaurants, and a gas station.

We perused the shops and had dinner at a Chinese place, then reluctantly headed back to our home stays. The home stays themselves were not terrible. People were nice enough, the food was fine, and there was an effort to make us comfortable, but I couldn’t help but feel like the family I stayed with wasn’t thrilled to have us there. At one point I asked how home stays were decided and I was told it is on a rotating basis so that all families have equal chance to earn some money from the home stays. I imagine that is the overriding objective, to make some money, in household decisions to become part of the home stay program. I can’t say that I blame them, but it didn’t make for very lively evening interactions.

By day two we had the proper tools and so on that day and the next worked on the covered walkway. The students and I would work in bursts of about 40 minutes, then take a break in the shade with water as the heat of the day was too much to bear continuously. Often my students would interact with the local students, which was nice to see. I think overall the home stay was good for them and me as we are used to living in comfort with aircon, flushing toilets, hot water, etc. and it makes us appreciate them even more to be reminded that most people don't have those things. 

By the end of our 4^th day the covered walkway was nearly complete and the larger group who had climbed the mountain joined us. All 30 or so of us stayed in home stays for the night and then were gathered to come to the Kopel Eco Tourism center for a community traditional dance performance. I have been to shows like this before and I must admit that I was expecting some corny dance routine, but it was quite good. The best part is that it seemed like the whole community took part. Not only were many of our guides/helpers/drivers adorned in traditional attire dancing and drumming away, but their kids were ambling around all over the center as the performance went on. It was a real community affair.