Recently I led a team of visitors to Sabah to visit our literacy centers for children who cannot attend school because are ‘illegal aliens’ (aka refugees from Philippines).
In the team were 4 South Africans who are interested to start similar learning centers in South Africa.
One of the centers that we visited was situated in a village built over the sea. This center had just started a week earlier. When we visited the center, the enthusiastic teacher was teaching her class of about 30 children the alphabet in the open area just outside her mum’s little wooden shack.
The visitors were standing on the walkway by the side of the makeshift ‘classroom’ observing the class of eager students, when all of a sudden the entire walkway of sticks gave way and dumped all the four South Africans plus a little village girl into the sea!
Fortunately I was able to grab a pole that was still standing and hung on for dear life! Thankfully all the 5 who fell into the sea were spared any major injury – and made their way back to safety.
The cause of the collapse was probably due to the fact that the walkway of sticks was designed for lighter locals rather than heavier South Africans, plus the fact that continuous rains had softened the sticks.
The South Africans contributed 50 Ringgit (about US $12) to repair the walkway so that kids could safely get back to school and continue to learn their alphabets!
In spite of the dunking into the dirty water, we continued our visit and managed to visit 6 (out of the total of 14) Goducate learning centers in Sabah.
Hopefully, they will be able to start similar learning centers in the near future in South Africa – and the dunking and drinking of dirty swamp water would not be in vain!
