Kibbabaig

I spent the last three days working on turfing and constructing a play area for a “learning center” in a small village built around a noodle factory. I worked with students from D.A.R.E. a program from the University of Dundee, Scotland. They are also here in Sabah for the summer doing a variety of service projects. We had a lot of fun and, as you may see in the pictures, constructed a nice small play set for the students to enjoy.

The children served by this learning center mostly have parents who work at the Noodle factory for extended shifts. Many of the children don’t have appropriate paperwork to enroll in the Public Schools and this learning center serves to help provide preschool education and continue to educate older children so they can enter school when they receive the appropriate papers.


A local church provides and oversees most of the schools needs, so they coordinated our time working here and connected us to contractors and suppliers to assist in the work. This outreach encouraged me greatly to see the Body working to build up the community around it.

I enjoyed interacting with the children, one day we helped provide some activities for the school time. We sang some songs, learned some songs, although some of the Malay ones sounded quite similar to children's tunes I remember. We played a version of "Duck, Duck, Goose." In this version the person walking around caries a stuffed animal/ball and quietly sets it behind another person. That person now needs to notice and pick up the item and then throw it at the person who set it down. No Tagging.

The heat while working was almost as bad as Batang Ai at the beginning of my trip, but being more adjusted to everything helped, and on the last day it rained, cooling everything down. Working with other people has a way of making everything a bit more bearable, and we even recruited some child labor- don't worry, it wasn't for self-profit, they sort of volunteered, and they're benefitting from it too.


I hope the Kibabaig community enjoys their new play area and also that the new play area enriches their learning. I will wonder what becomes of it, but be entirely unable to check up on it's status.