View from the mountain top

 

BA KELALAN: It’s Sunday. Lun Bawangs observe the Sabbath. The already quiet town seems frozen in time, except for activities in the church.

Church service at magnificent BEM (Borneo Evangelical Mission) Buduk Nur starts at 10am followed by other youth, adult and women activities.

Our homestay host Porait told us that the service today would be shorter because after church service the villagers will send off an elderly man who went home to the Lord on Friday. The funeral service is a reflection of a close-knit community.

In Ba Kelalan, gotong royong (community work) is a way of life as even the church was built in this manner.

We spoke to Sang Sigar, 52, a school teacher at SK Ba Kelalan, who drew up the plan for the church. Sang who is also an artist lives in an elegant comfy house overlooking the church with a wide football in front.

A view from his window reveals the church blending into the green mountain behind and the blue sky above.

“The wooden building with a blue top was meant to blend in with nature,” Sang said, proud of his masterpiece despite having no training in architecture.

“The church speaks of unity. The interior structure is held together like parts of a body, each part having its own function.

“The body is not made up of one part but many parts that become a body as mentioned in the book of Corinthians,” Sang said.

He brought us to the church and showed us how the weaker parts in the structure are, in fact, indispensable, signifying the community as a body with each part helping the other – how beautiful!

“The church was built by the community in six months,” Sang revealed.

In a village so far in the interior, the only way to get things done quickly was by gotong royong. It’s God design. It’s divine wisdom.

The church is the nucleus of activities with all roads leading to it in this Christian village on the Sabbath Day.

And life in the highlands is closely tied to nature, so it won’t be a Ba Kelalan trip without making it to the mountain top for a bird’s eye view!

Some of the BAT IV team members came on the trek for which we hired a guide as advised by Sang Sigar for RM50.

Before our climb, we assumed it would be a walk in the park for us BAT IV members who thought we had seen the worst in our trip. The reality was our local guide Sigar Kadil had to hack our way through the thick undergrowth with a parang.

It was a dry morning and the terrain was not slippery but it did not stop us trembling and falling on our butts as thick shrubs hid from our sight the many holes in the track.

We trekked slowly through thick undergrowth on the mountain floor as the merciless grass cut our legs and our hair got entangled with the branches.

We constantly asked “Are we there yet?” with Sigar reassuring “Almost there.”

“We were told to be ready for a 40-minute walk up the mountain to its top but ended up taking an hour.

As we broke through thick shrubs, the breathtaking view of Ba Kelalan from the summit greeted us. It was worth the buckets of sweat shed on our way to the top.

As the mountain breeze cooled us down, we enjoyed this God given scenery, our hearts made glad by the amazing view.  All too soon we were reminded by one of our members to prepare to descend the scrub-covered steep slope.

If the mountain climb was challenging, getting connected to the internet tested our patience. Our five days in Ba Kelalan consisted of a routine of working in the morning until noon or 2pm and writing stories from 2pm to 4pm. Some days we spent two hours just sending the news to the newsroom while seated outside the eBakelalan cafe aka Community Centre.

Each holding a laptop while seated on the stairs, team members wait to get connected then attach the story and pictures for up loading.

The saving grace was a green football field that befalls our eyes against the lush mountain green with an occasional cool breeze blowing.

With the World Cup in Brazil just concluded, we found joy in visualising  Ronaldo, Messi, Neymar, Kroos and Rodriguez playing in the field. Who knows, these children from the highlands will be stars one day! Doesn’t it usually start with a dream?

Unlike Bario where the telecommunication tower has been installed and operates 24 hours for calls to be made and SMSes sent, Bakelalan folks are not as lucky. We thought probably because Ba Kelalan doesn’t have an Idris Jala in the Prime Minister’s Department (read Dato Sri Idris Jala’s Transformation Unplugged column today).

These folks are at the mercy of an elderly man they fondly call Pak Tagal. Though not IT literate, he holds the key to communicating with the world outside.

We found this the reality of life when we needed his service to make an urgent call back to our news room. With a flick of his finger, he opened to us the world of communication. And it was not without much persuasion and rational talk to get that magic touch!

All thanks to Liza Buing for allowing us to use the internet service free of charge.