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Extracted from
Malaysiakini
Apik's love of learning
Keruah Usit | Apr 22,
Apik can survive in the rainforest, completely alone, with a
parang and some salt. He hunts, dives for fish and makes a bed for himself
under the forest canopy.
He climbs trees to harvest honey from wild hives. He picks ferns and bamboo
shoots to cook, and finds edible fruit and roots. He collects herbs to heal,
and uses
He travels to neighbouring villages in a wooden longboat, with an
engine modified from a grass-cutting machine. He manoeuvres the longboat
through rapids strewn with giant boulders, as expertly as KL folk weave through
rush-hour traffic.
If he finds snakes on jungle trails, he picks up them up with twigs and
branches, moving them away from the paths, and from other travellers. He makes
fishing nets, and mends them, with a dexterity associated with more delicate,
less muscle-bound, maidens.
He can remain underwater for an astounding length of time, looking for fish or
a missing propeller. He rears puppies, teaching them to hunt for barking deer
and wild boar. He can carry a wild boar heavier than himself, on his shoulders,
through the forest, for hours.
His real passion, though, is teaching. He teaches pre-school and primary
school, in his small, remote Orang Ulu village in
He takes them down to the river, to cool off and indulge in some horseplay. The
children mob him, climbing all over him. They beg him to push them around in
their makeshift dinghies, made from truck tyres. They perform somersaults,
shrieking and splashing into the water, to impress him.
“I like
watching the children grow up, watching them grow in knowledge and
understanding,” he says. “It’s a wonderful feeling - hard to explain.”
He says kampung students are far easier to teach than urban children. He
endured a nightmare, during his training, teaching in an urban school, trying
to get students to listen.
When asked why, he ventures, “Maybe it’s because the kampung children get more
attention. When the children go to their neighbours, they’re made welcome and
cared for, as if they were their neighbours’ children.
“Parents in the ulu talk to their children all the time, even when they are
bathing the small children. And then, of course, there’s not much television,”
he smiles.
No IC until he was 25
Apik came to his calling late in life, graduating when he was nearly 30. He
could not attend teacher training school when he completed secondary school, he
says, because he had no identity card until he was 25.
“I didn’t think I could ever get to teachers’ training college,” he remembers.
“To tell the truth, I was lucky to get to Form Six. The headmaster in my
boarding school encouraged me to stay on, and he turned a blind eye to the fact
that I didn’t have an IC.”
Apik was born to farming parents, in a quiet Orang Ulu village. His parents had
been born and bred Sarawakians. Apik’s father even had a shotgun licence given
him by the British colonial rulers, dating from the 1950s. But they could not
obtain ICs for many years.
“My father served as a border scout during the Konfrontasi with
“He helped keep
Many times, Apik’s parents were told the decision to confirm their Malaysian
citizenship and ICs had to come from KL, and the decision took time. When
Apik’s parents asked when they should return, they were bestowed the
time-honoured advice of the bureaucracy – “just wait”. They waited for the
letters from the Registration Department, but the correspondence never came.
Apik’s parents obtained ICs eventually, in the 1990s. The Registration
Department had established “mobile units”, travelling to remote communities.
Apik says the villagers appreciated these visits, because they could not afford
the cost of travel to town. But the visits were rare.
He walked four days to school
“My parents were highly respected in the village,” he says. “They were always
good to their neighbours, including the Penan communities who were beginning to
settle down near our village.
“They spoke Penan fluently, they helped the Penan with farming techniques, and
helped make relationships easier with the rest of the village – many of the
people in my village looked down at the Penan.”
Most of Apik’s fellow villagers grew to accept the Penan, thanks to Apik’s
family.
Apik went to primary school in the next village, where Penan children formed
the majority.
“I learnt a lot from them,” he remembers.
“I learnt to be gentle, to respect my neighbours, and respect the forest. I
learnt to value the trees and animals in the forest. The Penan are the best trackers around. They can walk for hours. They
share what they have, so I always knew I wouldn’t go hungry when I went hunting
with them.
“And they never waste. If they hunt a bear, and the dead animal’s young is left
behind, they take the cub in and care for it.”
Apik went on countless hunting trips with Penan friends.
“Every time I went into the forest, the first few days were hard. I was tired
all the time. But when my body settled into the routine of walking, I began to
appreciate the beauty of the forest. The streams, the waterfalls, the animals,
the trees, the wildflowers… the stillness.”
After
primary school, Apik moved on to the nearest secondary school. Children in
Apik’s part of
“I walked to the Sekolah Menengah, Form One to Three, when I was 13 until I was
15. Twenty of us, schoolchildren, walked four days, carrying our food rations,
sleeping in the jungle.
“Some parents asked me to look after their young daughters, so I ended up
carrying their books, food, clothes, even packets of sanitary pads… I ended up
carrying 30 kilos,” he laughs.
Teachers ‘parachuted’ into rural schools
Many rural children suffer far worse than walking for days to get to school.
Children are bullied by fellow boarders and even by teachers.
Penan children, especially, are shy and unfamiliar with shouting and aggression.
They often leave school because of bullying and loneliness, and sometimes
because their parents take them away to help in the harvest.
But Penan
children do well if they stay on, according to Apik. Many become top students,
both in the classroom and on the sports field.
Apik gives chilling accounts of teachers beating and bullying rural children.
“Children from my home village tell me how one teacher in their secondary
school lost control of himself, and chased them with a parang.
“Another teacher threatened them with a shotgun. The headmaster knew, but took
no action. The school has received many complaints from parents, but nothing
has improved,” Apik says bitterly.
Few teachers volunteer to work in rural schools, and there are few trained local
teachers. Apik himself has been posted to an urban school in the past, even
after he had requested to teach in a rural school near his village.
Teachers “parachuted” into the rural schools experience culture shock. Many of
them are poorly motivated and ignorant. They receive little support from the
education authorities in the towns.
Apik likes to tell the story of a teacher from Peninsular Malaysia, posted to a
remote primary school. The young teacher had never heard of the place, and did
not know the school is nine hours’ drive and three hours’ boat ride from the
nearest large town.
The teacher arrived at the airport, climbed into a taxi, and asked the taxi
driver to take him to the school, Apik relates with a smile.
Contractors profit, children suffer
The schools Apik teaches in are dilapidated, without adequate electricity
supply, treated water or clean dormitories.
The
children bathe in the nearby river, downstream from the rest of the village.
Scabies, head lice and worms are routine (left).
One rural primary school had toilets installed and closed down the same day,
because of the contractor’s sub-standard work. The children used the bushes for
months, until the toilets were repaired.
During lunch hour in another school, the children’s usual meal is rice, tinned
food and cabbage. The schoolteachers say the food supply contracts are
determined and awarded “centrally” by the Education Department.
Vegetables and fish supplied from the towns are often rotting, so that
well-connected urban food suppliers can make their hefty profits. The teachers
would prefer to buy chickens and fresh vegetables for the children from the
villagers, but are not allowed to.
Many children in these schools have no shoes. Their families struggle to buy
them stationery and uniforms. Poor rural children are meant to have an
allocation for these items, and are exempted from paying school fees.
Yet many
children are still forced to pay fees in rural schools, according to headmen
and parents in remote villages. Why? The parents ask. Incompetence,
overzealous bureaucracy, or most likely, corruption.
One headmaster in a rural school provides an analogy: “The allocation provided
by the Education Department starts out in the towns, loaded onto the transport.
“But the amount gets smaller and smaller as it makes its way upriver. By the
time it arrives, it’s a tiny amount. Most of it has fallen off the transport,
on the way to the ulu.”
Long walk, with a helping hand
Poor rural children throughout
A rural indigenous girl used to walk for days to school in
Her results were good enough to go to medical school. Her employers helped her
through university, for five lonely, trying years in Peninsular Malaysia. She
works as a doctor now, and supports her family and community.
Some rural folk, doctors like this young Sabahan, and teachers like Apik, seek
education, so that they can contribute to their poor communities. They support
their neglected communities as best they can, in their labour of love.
How many of us, the other Malaysians – educated Malaysians – do the same?
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KERUAH