JLD expedition to Borneo
Members of the JLD have recently completed a pilot international public service project in association with Raleigh. The project saw 13 participants travel to Borneo where they lived as part of a remote community building a gravity feed water system, and making connections with young Malaysian lawyers.
During their ten days living in the community, the group worked with Raleigh International personnel and community members to provide access to clean drinking water from newly installed taps located throughout the village. Participants also spent some time teaching English at the village school.
Following completion of the community project the group met with members of the local bar association during a series of workshops. Participants learnt about how the legal process in Borneo co-exists with community based systems of sanctions that still apply in the remote tribal villages. There was also a discussion of legal ethics, and the extent to which the Malaysian lawyers' viewpoints and experiences varied from those of the members of the expedition.
Successful outcomes
The expedition was CPD accredited, with participants working to develop strong team building and communication skills, and to build self-awareness. Individuals were given leadership opportunities and received constructive feedback on their abilities throughout the project.
Everyone who participated felt that that the pilot expedition was a huge success. The team came away with a sense of pride and achievement, both individually and as a group, having developed key skills that will assist them throughout their careers.
Expeditions in 2010 and beyond
We now hope to launch the project to members of the wider JLD community. Discussions are underway with Raleigh about a programme for next year. A national launch event is planned for February 2010 and it is hoped that this will generate a high level of enthusiasm for global development projects.
More information will be available in the New Year. In the meantime, if you are interested in participating in a project in the future please contact us on juniorlawyersraleigh@gmail.com
Nicky Berry shares the JLD group's experiences on the pilot development project with Raleigh....
I was lucky enough to be one of 13 JLD volunteers who participated in the first ever JLD Raleigh Project. This took place in Kampung Nibang in Sabah, Borneo in October/November 2009.
I first found out about the possibility of a JLD Project with Raleigh International in October 2008. My initial reaction was that this would be a fantastic opportunity for junior lawyers to participate in a worthwhile project and make a meaningful contribution to the world. I was right!
Kampung Nibang is a remote rural community in Northern Sabah. The community is close knit, but survive on subsistence farming and, as a result, have neither money nor free time to devote to improving their way of life. Essentially, the Nibang villagers wanted clean drinking water. They were collecting rain water in big water butts outside their homes, where it would sit stagnant until used. However, this only worked for them in the monsoon season. In the dry season, they were trudging down to the river once a day to collect brown river water. This water was then used for washing and drinking. It was far from ideal because, due to logging in the area, the river was often full of sediment and it was also often polluted from the run-off of the palm oil plantations upstream.
The villagers had been trying to resolve their water issues for some time, but it was only when their plight came to the attention of local NGOs and therefore Raleigh International that their prayers were answered – in the guise of us 13 junior lawyers from the UK!
From the moment we arrived in the village, the fun started. As Nibang is right next to the river, it is only accessible by fording or over an Indiana Jones style rope bridge. We had to cross the river in 4 x 4 pick-up trucks as we arrived. Fortunately the water was low enough. Otherwise we’d have been lugging all our personal clothes, equipment, building tools, food and medical supplies, over the very wibbly-wobbly bridge, just wide enough for one, and just high enough for vertigo to be a real concern!
We arrived at about 4pm and darkness was due to fall at 6pm. Somehow we had to convert an empty wooden hut into our new home. Not only did this involve stringing up mosquito nets and unrolling bedding, but building a kitchen and other ’facilities’ from scratch. We had to create a toilet of the long-drop variety. This involved some serious digging once a suitable location had been determined, as well as a bit of creative tarpaulin construction to affect a privacy screen! We had to dig another two pits for food waste – one for solids and one for slops, again in a location nearby.
We had to carry all our supplies up the very steep hill, into the hut and unpack it all, particularly so that the designated chef for the day could subsequently concoct some sort of gourmet delight for us in the make-shift kitchen (in the dark). As it happens, we had spaghetti bolognese made with TVP (Textured Vegetable Protein for those of a carnivorous persuasion!) and garlic bread; and it wasn’t half bad either! All this work and then into our rather uncomfortable beds for a night of sleep before a 6am awakening for our first day on the Project….
Day 1 on Project was interesting. After what soon became our ritual ‘powdered milk porridge in a mess tin’ breakfast, cooked to perfection by our resident junior lawyer / porridge master-chef - we were ready to meet the villagers. Rather earlier than expected in fact, such was their eagerness to crack on! We didn’t have a translator at that stage, so communication was all about the visual gesture!
Our first task was to carry the black plastic piping in 100m lengths from position A (across the wibbly-wobbly bridge!) to position B (through the jungle, 2.6km up the side of a hill to the dam at the top). Ooh we did have some fun! Did I mention that the temperature was a fairly constant 32 degrees centigrade, with humidity an equally constant 85%? There were several amused looks from villagers as we failed to skip up the hill at their pace, continually stopped for water, frequently tripped over the undergrowth and slipped on wet rocks!
As soon as the translator arrived, communication was much easier; even if it did take all the fun out of it! Within a few days, working closely with the villagers, who had taken time away from their paddy fields to work with us to get the project completed, we had got all the pipes up the hill; transported a 400 gallon water tank over the bridge, through the jungle, and up the hill; dug space for and concreted a platform for the tank; and erected taps in readiness throughout the village. Phew!
Somehow while achieving all this physical project work, we also found time to teach extremely interactive lessons in the school, involving brightly coloured balloons, colouring in and songs with gestures. The children of Kampung Nibang were in no doubt where their ‘heads, shoulders, knees, and toes’ were all located by the time we left. Indeed they even knew what was required to ‘put your left leg in, and your left leg out’. At their request, we also conducted an evening class teaching English lessons to the adults, at the home of the JKKK (Government paid Head Man). His home was the best location for this, it was the only house in the village with electricity (supplied by a generator).
We even managed to fit in a church service on Sunday and a volleyball match on the school field (think less Olympic standard and more “mosquito net strung between two recently felled trees”)...
So come our last day, what on earth was left for us (exhausted) lawyers to do but to get that water to the village?! We were up at 6am, every man to the pumps (well, pipes/ taps... you get the picture!) and all systems go! With every other piece of pipe connected the night before and all the other connections primed, within no time that morning we were stationed from tank to tap, at every other connection… waiting!
At connection one, Tank / Top Team, consisting of two lawyers (myself included!) and two villagers were having a whale of a time. We learned that there were many names for the flora and fauna all around us in the local Dusun language. Try as we might we couldn’t help with the English translations for the same plants, given that “we don’t even have those in England”. So after a while we dropped the vocab lessons and resorted to magic tricks and Cat’s Cradle... best CPD points I’ve ever earned!
Then the water came… not much at first, but enough. We quickly connected the two pipe ends together with the appropriate connector and seal and then moved as quickly as possible through the jungle down the hill to see how the next few teams were getting on. By the time we got to the bottom of the hill, where we needed to put a stopper in, the pressure was so great that we got absolutely soaked! There were a few hiccoughs caused by this pressure in fact, but ultimately we were well and truly reassured that at least the water was going to get all the way down the hill, across the valley and up to the far side of the village.
And it did! By about 4pm, we had seen water pouring out of all 10 taps in sequence, and the taps weren’t the only things gushing! The sight of the children playing in and soaking each other under the clean water was enough to secure there wasn’t a dry eye on the JLD team. It really was an awesome sight. We’d spent the whole week drinking our own brown water, carried uphill, from the river, in 25 litre jerry cans, in the heat of the day, every day. We well understood what this delivery of clean water meant, and it was no surprise they were keen to celebrate it.
Celebrate we did, Dusun style! It is true to say that them Dusun folk, they know how to party! The next day we were invited to the “Tap Ceremony” at the JKKK’s house. The villagers had constructed a woven palm shrine over the first tap, complete with pink ribbon, which was to be cut, in declaration that the water system was open!
We had Dusun traditional music played on Dusun traditional gongs, to accompany Dusun traditional dancing. Ok, so it was weird... but man it was fun! We were fed a special thank you meal and we were even given a Dusun language lesson in thanks for our English lessons to them. I can’t write it accurately, but I can still tell you that “my job is a lawyer” in Dusun! We danced and danced, to random Malaysian speed techno accompanying a bizarre exercise DVD with the kids, as well as to the gongs with the adults. It was truly the best Tuesday night I’ve ever had!
I was very sad to say goodbye to Nibang, but I was very happy to look back across that wibbly wobbly bridge, up at that village, and know what we had achieved. The JKKK had told us the day before that we had “made history in this village”. Although taking such enormous credit didn’t entirely sit comfortably with me, when the whole thing (ok fundraising aside!) had been so much fun, and not much like hard work at all, I guess it just goes to show that it doesn’t have to hurt to help others.
I know we made a real difference in Nibang and if this group of junior lawyers is completely honest, Nibang made a real difference to all of us.
Get out there! Join the JLD Raleigh Project 2010!
(contact us on juniorlawyersraleigh@gmail.com)
NBJL Committee member benefits from advice from Wesleyan for Lawyers; read about her experience here.
