top speed.

Sometime I feel like a really bad blogger because I barely blog anymore. I remember a time when I used to blog at least every other day. But now? One post a month. Oh well...

To continue on with my Raleigh experience.

After "Dive Island", it was back to basecamp for 36hours of rest and group reshuffling.

I had been hoping to be put into the water gravity feed team because that project seemed harder to come by than the community learning centre/kindergarden building project. But of course life never really gives you what you want and I ended up in the CLC/Kindergarden group.

HOWEVER, I really ended up enjoying myself on the project!

What we first arrived to. Quite a lot of work put in by the first phase but also a lot of work to be done if it was gonna be in operation in 5 weeks.

Where we would be staying.

This project was considered one of the "luxurious"one as it is it only project where you get to sleep on a bed. That's right! A real bed with sheets and pillows and blankets. So basically it was either 2/3 to a room which had double decker beds. Also electricity. 

One interesting experience was the first night. Most of us in the group(Alpha 1) had just come off the Adventure phase which meant we were still in "jungle" mode. And on the first night of dinner, we had taken the tables and chairs out from the living room and had our dinner out in the dark with our head torches. Nobody made any comment about this at all until halfway through the meal Hugh (one of the PMs) made a comment how this was a new experience for him. As he had been in the same project in the previous phase, we asked him how the previous group had their meals then. He simply replied that they had their meals in the living room where there was electricity and therefore light! The funny thing is none of us even thought of having our meals indoors as we were all so used to being outdoors all the time. One benefit of not using the light is that insects were less likely to fly into our food. 

The next day we were all invited to a wedding. The village we were in Kampung Togudon, is not that large and made up of mostly one family. Domissin (one of the brothers) would be leading our project as head carpenter and it was Zita (one of the sisters) who had pushed for the building of this centre. 

The wedding was a new experience as I had never attended a Dusun wedding before. However weddings don't really differ from culture to culture, they all are basically a large joyous affair with lots of food, dancing, singing and drinking. 

The bride and groom have to drink out of this. 

Not quite sure what's in it but the straw is made out of bamboo. 

Let me talk a little now about the process of building the CLC. Pretty much all of us in the group had little to no experience in the building/DIY experience. Now we were expected to pick up a hammer and nail all day, take measurements accurately and do a hell a lot of sawing. I would say it was a slightly steep learning curve for the first one week as we learned the proper techniques for hammering, measuring and sawing. Safe to say that the first week had a lot of bent nails that wouldn't go in and planks/boards that were cut too short or crooked. But vast improvement once we got the hang of it!

Can't tell you how happy I was when I hammered my first 3-inch nail in perfectly! Sounds like such a small thing but it was definitely an achievement for me who had never held a hammer before. 

Sunday was our rest days so we usually did some sort of activity. We went down to the local town to just hang around and do shopping. We also went to a nearby "swimming" area which is basically just a river. But we had missed out power showers. Haha. 

There was a sort of karaoke session going on at the swimming area. 

Our two beloved PMs Dickie and Hugh having a little sing-a-long. 

And that was us being dragged on stage as well.

Lots of fun and laughter!!

Phase 2 was also the time to film our music video. Every group had to film a music video in tune to the chosen theme song for the expedition. The song for our expedition was Let's Get Ready to Rumble by Ant & Dec. It was fun to record to as the lyrics are just ridiculous but also a bit strange as unless you were British, very unlikely you would actually know the song. Another funny story is that the song is mainly rap and we didn't get any lyrics to it! So we had to spend an hour or two listening intently trying to figure out exactly what was said and never being sure whether we were right. At the end of our phase we found out that we were actually given the lyrics but the PMs left it behind at basecamp. No harm done but it did make filming a bit more tedious. 

Some photos of us prepping for the video. We went for a gangster theme.

The girls.

L-R:Me, Char, Kate, Stef and Jenny.

The boys minus Jack who doesn't do dress up.

L-R: Archie, Q(although you can't see his face), Michiel and Will. 

Welcome to Kg. Togudon's tattoo parlour. 

Will's arm. 

Part of the lyrics were "Raw, a kill like sushi." So that's Archie being wrapped up as sushi.

Hugh and Dickie who were sporting enough to be roped in to our little dress up!

Now the reason the music video was of the utmost importance is because the winning theme would get a COOKED BREAKFAST. A full English breakfast!!! Now if you read my precious post you'd know that for 10 weeks all we'd have for breakfast is porridge so a cooked breakfast was quite a reward!

WE WONNNNNNNN!

The compilation of our winning clips!

Below is the music video played at the end of expedition party which is a compilation of every groups efforts which made for a funny video.

On our last night there we had a party with all the villagers. We cooked some food they cooked some food, we sang songs they sang songs, we danced together, we even got a go at their gongs! Much harder to keep the rhythm that you would think.

A look at what we accomplished over 21 days. 

Cladding all round.

The ceiling panels. 

Where we left it.

What proved to be a recurring problem is the bendy wood. Cause all the wood was sourced from the nearby forest, the quality was not consistent. So sometimes we had perfect pieces of wood that we nice and straight, and other times they were bent like a banana! It meant getting everything nailed in straight required a lot more patience and nails than normal. 

But overall a great phase with lots of fun but lots of learning too. 

Other things we did that I won't blog about in detail. English lessons for the village women and children (everyone was soooo nice!) the ladies brought us bananas and even gave us a cooking lesson. Going to a church service where everything was in Dusun (the church was an hours walk uphill). The bajillion card games we played that we even had a "Speed" tournament board.  

Was sad to see this phase end as it meant we were only one phase away from the end.