FIRST DAY
On 17th March 2017, at 6.30 a.m. we gathered at Pokok Tanjung located at 3rd residential college. While we were waiting for people I can see some faces were tired from lack of sleeping and some were excited as this was their first trip to Orang Asli village. Later, after all, have arrived we began to transport our things such as mineral water, sleeping bag, banner and so on to the bus. We brought a lot of stuff since we stayed in the village for 3 days and 2 nights and just to be prepared in case something happen. It took us a while to sort the stuff in the bus so we departed from the University of Malaya at 8.30 a.m. which was quite late from what we planned.
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| While waiting for the others to arrive.... |
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| Nabila was happily transferring all the cooking equipment to the bus |
The journey took us about 4 and a half hour combined with the time we stopped to take a quick restroom stop. In the bus, most of the people I saw were sleeping soundly while others who did not sleep were playing with their phones like me. Actually, this was my first long distance trip using a bus and since I have a bus phobia I cannot force myself to sleep so I just listened to music or watched Grey’s Anatomy to keep my mind off from being freaked out every 10 seconds. At 12.30 p.m. we safely arrived at Kampung Sungai Tementong in Kuala Lipis but sadly the bus cannot enter the village so we had to walk for 0.7km in order to be in in the village but we didn’t mind to walk as this was part of our experience.
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| The kids' reaction when we arrived |
The ladies were given almost one hour to settle down and perform Zuhr prayer while waiting for the men to finish their Friday prayer. Later, at 3.p.m. we all gathered in front of community hall for the next activity which we were divided into several groups and did the given tasks. I was signed for kindergarten task where the guys painted the wall and the ladies did butterfly origami to decorate it on the wall so the kindergarten will look lively and a fun place to learn. After 2 hours of doing origami we went back to the community hall to do “Senam Rakyat” activity with the Orang Asli kids and villagers. This was the first formal activity that included the villagers and it was so fun to dance with them as they were an easy-going people especially the kids who did not afraid of new people. We danced for 30 minutes and after that, we had “Sukaneka” among the villagers and participants. One of the games we played was “boling padang” where we used coconut and mineral bottle to play. The villagers were so sporting even old-aged people joined together and make the games even more happening.
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| Just having the time of our life while waiting for the games to finish :) |
At night after we cleaned ourselves and performed our prayer, we gathered again at community hall for the next activity which called “Sesi bersama Keluarga Angkat”. Basically, this activity assigned everyone to one family where we were given an opportunity to have a conversation with them and ask them anything about Orang Asli’s life. For instance, I personally learned a lot from this activity because I can directly ask them about activities they do on a daily basis, what do they for a living, how far is the village to the nearest town and how they buy raw foods if the nearest town is about 5 km and so on. Even their kids joined together where I asked them about school which is located a few kilometres away from the village and they have to wake up really early in order to arrive on time but I can see from the way the kids talked their spirit didn’t change and took it as a challenge to achieve success. We finished the family session at 11.00 p.m. and then we went back to our staying place to sleep.
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| Sesi bersama keluarga angkat |
So that's it for this entry. I hope you enjoy reading my first day experiences and make sure to stay tuned for more exciting activities that we did in Day 2 (Spoiler alert: MyDreams slot by ANSOS).
Sincerely,
Dayang Nur Syahidah
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