During our recent visit to Goducate’s Sabah Literacy Centers, we crossed little rivers, climbed little hills, hiked slippery muddy tracks and “crawled” under a fence to get to the different centers. However, the most memorable visit was to the literacy center that was built on a swamp.
This community had earlier lived at the edge of the swamp (or fairly dry ground) nearer the road. However, as the area along the road was acquired by a developer who started building nice two-storey shop-houses for sale, they were forced to move into the swamp. I am not sure of the details of what happened, but it appears to me that their houses near the road were destroyed – leaving only the stumps on which those houses stood in the past. I was told that their houses were an “eye-sore” and a hindrance to value of the new shop-houses.
As we walked from the main road to the school-house, we passed what appeared like a “ghost town” of house-posts sticking out of the swampy ground. These people had salvaged the rest of their former houses (the walls, floor boards, roofings) and carried all this into the swamp and rebuilt houses right over the swamp. Today, the school-house built by the community stands proudly in the midst of the kampong – right over swampy ground.
The water level under the school-house depends on the tide. As we were walking to the school-house, our guide told us that we were lucky because just an hour before we came the water was about 65 cm deep!
We tried our best to keep our shoes dry by stepping on planks and stones but as we arrived at the school-house to attend the “welcome ceremony” from the eager students, we were ushered to our seats which were placed on the watery ground. For most of us, it was the first time we had sat through a school concert with our shoes in swampy water.
I was so proud of our Goducate students as they “showed off” what they had learned in the past 6 weeks. My heart was rejoicing, in spite of my concern for my “Ecco” shoes that were soaking in swamp water.
Swamp or no swamp, Goducate wants to help Asians help themselves!
But what was even more amazing is that the shy girl that I saw only 6 weeks ago was the confident MC of the impressive show that the students presented to us. She spoke without a script in fluent English. She did not look flustered even when the sound system competed with her with jarring interruptions.
