Back "Home"

Suddenly the emotional string that connects me to my Dad got pulled too tight and I had to step on a plane, well several actually, to see him.  After six months in hospital following a pointless knee operation, which he wheedled out of the NHS with great skill and determination, he was discharged home with an "intensive home care package" and from our 'phone conversations it sounded like he was struggling to cope.

In fact, by the time I got to Lincoln, tired and jet-lagged following a thirty-odd hour journey, the initial crisis had passed and he was beginning to adapt to his new wheelchair bound existence.  Far from being a sick man awaiting my succour, he greeted me as if my arrival was a pleasant surprise motivated by my desire to see him rather than by his desperate circumstances.  I felt conned and manipulated like I have been so many times before.  Then I felt guilty for feeling exasperated that he didn't seem more sick than he was.

I've given myself a couple of weeks to do what I can before returning to Borneo.  So life passes in a whirl of visits to local care homes, social workers, builders and mobility shops in an effort to make me feel I'm making some sort of difference.  Last night we watched a documentary together about the fall of Singapore.  Dad spent a lot of time in the Far East in the Navy and the programme provided some common ground as he flashed back to his days as a Royal Marine in the forties and fifties and I looked at the suddenly familiar Malaysian jungle and longed to return.  Before the programme finished at eight pm Dad's home carer arrived to put him to bed.  He meekly followed her to the bedroom in his NHS issue electric wheelchair.  By the time the programme had finished he was already fast asleep in his single bed with the home-made motto burned into the headboard - "blessed is the man that loveth a kip".

"Good night Dad" I intoned, before quietly letting myself out and driving back to my bed and breakfast.

Teecher!

Sue's and my cup is running over.  She took part in a blowpipe competition at one of her schools yesterday and was given one as a present by a teacher who had been given it by his grandfather when he was a boy.  An honour indeed.  Following a period of indolence I am now working flat out.  After some tweaking of my prices for English lessons to encourage groups of four and five to get together, I've had a rush of clients and now find myself with thirty odd students in seven classes and our downstairs bedroom has been transformed into a classroom complete with tables, chairs and a whiteboard.

Although I trained hard for my teaching English to speakers of other languages course in November last year, I am still a novice and having to work up lessons for seven separate groups has been very hard work, even though I have only about ten contact hours per week.  So for the last three weeks I've been hoovering up like a maniac illegal copies of English course books from dodgy Russian websites.  I now have a bigger selection than Foyles and I can get cheap copies run up by our local photocopy shop for practically nothing.

My students are almost all Chinese and range from a delightful group of nine year olds up to a very focussed bunch aged nineteen who are determined to do well in their final school exams.  I'm not sure about the students, but I'm learning a hell of a lot.  Unfortunately, Sue and I now hardly see each other as she leaves home at about six thirty most mornings and returns at about three in the afternoon and I start work between five and seven in the evening and finish at eight thirty.  We actually met up by accident for lunch today in one of the cafes in Saratok.

So, here I am in steamy Borneo, teaching Chinese boys and girls English in our large semi-detached house to an audience of geckos.  Nine months ago, who'd have thought ...

Iban Graveyard

I went out for a bike ride this afternoon with one of Sue's Mentor colleagues, Catherine.  We cycled up and down a tarmac jungle road until it petered out into a track.  The track seemed to know where it was going, so we left our bikes and followed it across a small wooden bridge over a muddy stream.  It took us into the jungle, past rubber trees with telltale grooves cut in their trunks through which the latex flows.

After a few hundred metres we came to a clearing in which there was an Iban Graveyard.  We spoke to each other in hushed voices, although we could see or hear no one.  I instinctively took my cycling cap off as a mark of respect.  Most Ibans are Christians today, and the majority of the plots were marked with a cross.  But their Christian beliefs are blended with much older animist traditions in which the spirits of the jungle and their ancestors loom large.

One grave had only a traditional urn buried in the ground and next to it a rotting rattan bag of the type rubber tappers and others harvesting the jungle carry on their backs.  The urn is there to catch the rain that drips regularly through the jungle canopy, I understand.  Looking at another, I thought at first that there must be someone nearby, as there was a sun lounger and an umbrella and a few unopened cans of beer.  Then, we realised these had been set up for the deceased to enjoy.  An electric fan had also been thoughtfully left, activated by spirit power presumably.  Nearby there was a grave with a TV set positioned I guess so the loved one could prop themselves up and watch it on quiet evenings.

We left after a few minutes and returned to our bicycles full of our own thoughts.

Having seen an Iban grave set up for tourists to enjoy at the Hilton Longhouse I felt privileged to see the real thing.

Half-Marathon Man

What on earth am I doing running long distances in this heat and humidity?  I'm an old man for God's sake!  After fifteen minutes of jogging you are bathed in sweat to the extent that your socks start squelching inside your running shoes and everything is ringing wet.  In these conditions the body behaves  like the engine of a car when the air conditioning is going full belt.  Because the air is so humid the sweat doesn't evaporate, but drips uselessly out of your pores making your heart work hard just pumping blood to your extremities to keep your temperature down and diverting more and more effort away from actually running, so you get slower and slower and wetter and wetter.

Anyway defying old age and common sense I ran the Sibu half marathon on Sunday in two hours and nine minutes.  It's an interesting place Sibu, our nearest largish town with maybe a couple of hundred thousand inhabitants and shopping centres and supermarkets that wouldn't look too out of place in Oswaldtwistle or Totnes, for example.  The population are predominantly Chinese Christians, descended from families who fled to Borneo during the days of the White Rajahs, when they were being persecuted in mainland China.  The run itself started from Jubilee Park on the outskirts of the town.  The park encompasses a site sacred to local Iban tribespeople, who go there to sacrifice chickens, as Sue discovered when she took a stroll around the sacred hill while waiting for me to stagger home.

Sue's fellow mentor Grace came too, to do the seven kilometre fun run.  I came fifty second in the main run, narrowly missing a £10 prize for fiftieth place.  There must have been several hundred people taking part in the two events and I even got featured in the Borneo post the next day for no other reason than I was the biggest pinkest finisher.

I've just put my name down for the London Marathon, but if I am "lucky" enough to win a place it won't be half as much fun.