BUDOK BUI!!!

I have not written a blog in 2 weeks simply because I usually write on Sunday evening or Mondays.  Sunday before last we left immediately after sacrament to go on a trip to the Interior.  We arrived home last Thursday evening, did laundry, and prepared the apartment on Friday for visitors from Miri( a small town near Brunei).  They just left this morning(Monday) for the Phillipines.
Week before last was a very uneventful week for us anyway.  Nothing much exciting to show or tell.  Wednesday of that week, Kate and the sister missionaries came over on the spur of the moment and stayed about 3 hours with us.  I fixed them dinner and we just laughed and talked.  Kate and her husband are now separated.  She is having a very difficult time in her life.  It is not something that happened suddenly, but has been coming for a long time.  They have led 2 different lives for a long time.  We are just simply trying to help, love, and support her.  The bubbly sister missionaries help her also.
After sacrament meeting Sunday before last, we were picked up by our Rotary Club friends, Patrick and Ann Pannai from Kuching.  They are just simply delightful.  Ann is Chinese and Patrick is a native from the Interior--the village of Budok Bui.  They have been married for 42 years.  They are retired school teachers.  We are partnering with them in a huge fresh water project.  This project has 3 different sites.  One in Sandakan on the other side of the island of Borneo, one near Tawau where we have been before, and this area where Patrick comes from.  This area is called Bakelalan.  We had to go to the town of Lawas and from there take a small plane into the Interior.  There is not a plane from KK to Lawas except for 2 days, hence the trip with Patrick and Ann on Sunday. 
They picked us up here in our apartment soon after we got home from church.  We went downtown KK to pick up our driver, Lee Wei.  The drive is suppose to take 3 hours to Lawas, but took us 7!!!!  We stopped at every few stands along the highway to have a drink, to have a snack, to buy dried fish, to meet friends along the way and have dinner, etc.  This is the Malay Way as we like to say.  Here are some pictures of our trip to Lawas.

This is one stop along the way.  Dad, Patrick, Lee Wei, and Ann.  Ann had to have a Chinese dumpling when we stopped here.  They are yummy!
Next we had to stop for Patrick to buy some thing to take to the village that they do not have--bread, honey, peanut butter, toilet paper, etc.

This is a picture that Dad took of sunset on Sunday afternoon in a little fishing village called Sipitang.  It was almost indescribably beautiful!!  We had dinner here on the waterfront and were joined by some of Patrick and Ann's friends.  Their friend Evelyn treated us to dinner.  Her husband is a politician in Lawas.

This is Ann, Evelyn, Patrick, and me.  We had beef and chicken satay, fried bananas, noodles, and vegetables.  So goooooooood!
We finally reached Lawas at about 8:30 pm.  We stayed at a new small hotel there.  It was my last real shower for 3 days!  The next morning we went to the airport in Lawas to fly into the Interior--that's almost the only way to get to Bakelalan in the rainy season.

This is the airport in Lawas--not only do they weigh your luggage, but they weigh you!!  The plane seats 18 people and all of their rice and boxes(luggage).  The pilots fly by just looking at the villages!!  We made it safe and sound to Bakelalan!

This is the airport in Bakelalan as our plane landed.

This is the luggage carrier bring the luggage from the plane!!

This is our transportation to Budok Bui!!  They are bring a bench for Ann to get into the truck. Our driver was a young man named Martin who makes a living transporting people to and from the airport to the villages.  Dad , Patrick and I rode in the back and held onto the roll bar!!!!  WHAT A RIDE!!!!

Helping me get in the truck for the scariest, hairyest ride of my life!  Even some of my ride as a teenager in Brunswick County with Wiley Hewett were nothing compared to this!!

WE MADE IT.  WE ARE IN BUDOK BUI!!!
I could not believe it.  We stayed in the home a a retired couple who are childhood friends of Patrick.  The couple are Liaw and Beslik.  They are nnatives and have lived in this village all of their lives!  She is his second wife.  He has 5 children who are all college educated and no longer live there, but do come to visit.  They built their own home with materials from their village.  The do their own construction and work very hard to live.  They help each other.  They now have electricity supplied by a micro generator that the government supplied and they set up.  We are going to bring fresh water to them and 3 other surrounding villages.  It will be gravity fed from the surrounding mountains.  We went on this trip to get the village chiefs (they have 2) to agree to this project and sign the agreement to do the work.  They formed a water committee and are excited to have water in their homes.  The home we stayed has some water from a stream piped to their house but they have to boil it for comsumption.

This is Beslik's kitchen where we ate.  Beslik is the lady in the red pants and orange shirt.  She was so very nice!  They cook with wood over an open fire.  Every day we were there 3 or 4 women would come early in the morning to help her fix breakfast.  Then at lunch time, 3 or 4 different women would come to prepare lunch, and 3 or 4 at dinner!!  They killed wild boar, wild deer for us to eat while there.  They women who came to help prepare food always brought live chickens with them to kill and eat!  They brought vegetables from their gardens.  Beslik picked us fresh bananas and even made fried bananas one night.  She had never made them before!  Someone told her that we liked the and she walked up the mountain to pick some and fix some!
The womwn sit on the strawmat in front of the fireplace and prepare the food, laugh, and talk.  One afternoon  Liaw went to find us some pineapple.  He came back with one that was the best I have ever eaten.  They are hard to find because the monkeys eat them!

This is Liaw's rice that he hasn't been able to get to market because of the rainy season.  Dad counteed 120 bags.

These are som of the 42 villagers who came to the meeting to agree to do the water project.  The is the oldest head chief signing the agreement with the church--that the will do the work and maintain the system and that the church will supply the equipment and pay for it!

The second man from the left (in the purple shirt) is Liaw--our host.  He is a very, very nice man!
The weather was cool at njight and pleasant during the day, as we were in the mountains, on the Indoeisian border. We slept in a second story room on a comfortable floor mattress, with mosquito netting.

Our trip back to the airport was eventful as the trucks universal joint broke, but as luck would have it, it did so near another house and they yelled down and a man brought his truck and took us the remainder of the way. The road was worse due to a heavy 4 hour rain durihg the night but somehow we made it through. We spend the night at a small lodge, as our flight left the next morning at 9:00, and we did not want to stay in the village and have the road impassable. We would have had to wait another 3 days for the next plane.

We made it home, and really enjoyed the experience doing things one can only dream of. The local villagers came and gave us bag after bag of their rice and a bag of the salt that they had made. We can only imagine what they will try to do for us once the project is finhished and we go back for the turn over and closinhg cereamony. We will never forget---oh how I wish we could have had you there!

Mom wanted to share how our bathroom was at the home. There was no toilet,only a squatting hole and water was in a 55 gallon drum with a dipper for bathing. The dipper was used to pour the coldest water in the world over you and then you bathed and poured cold water over your head to rinse off.

This is Mom again.  I also want to show you a pic of the bathroomat the airport in Bakelalan--I'll have to do this some other time as I can't seem to browse anymore.