Day Eight, 11th of May, 2006, Sabah Poverty Research

The building built by the donation of former Japanese volunteer.
Children of Gana..What kind of future will they have?
The successful case of forest community... Forest community..seemed to be a shocking euphemism to me.
At 8 oclock, the guy who is in charge of Linkabau Forest Reserve came to the hotel to guid us. We had a brief over the tea at the hotel restaurant. According to his explanation, the people in FR lived there long time ago, and the government asked them to move into newly-built residential area in Gana. The FR project started between the 1980s and 1990s and the new residential area and infra such as roads were built in 2001. Since there was a heavy rain, he told us that the road condition would be very bad. Alas.. the ride was indeed extremely bumpy and I hit the ceiling of the car several times. It took about an hour and half from the hotel. When the residental area was within my sight, it remined me of the prision camps which I saw in the movie, the Great Escape. In the wide open field were the dotted houses. Dotted houses without trees surrounding greem mountains, I thought myself how the life of those people who were so stick to their jungles would be!!. They built 450 houses, one clinic and one school. Out of 450 houses 375 were occupied and the rests are still empty since other households refused to move out of the jungle. 231 out of 375 don*t go into the jungle and 144 still come and go. Among They still come and go between the residential areas and the jungle, their workplaces to collect fruits, grow veges and hunt. According to the survey the JAFROS (the Department of Frestry) in 1996, two thirds of the 10 Kampung (villages) people had income below 100 RM. We found one relatively good conditioned common hall built by the donation of the former Japanese Volunteer worker. Having a traffic accident when returning back to Japan after his volunteer work, he donated the compensation money to build this hall. What a marvelous man he is!! The slightly rusted small bronze panel was the only sign of his but we heard his story from everybody we met at the hall. He would have been very happy to see the scene of us listening his story from the locals.
We came across the UNDP workers working on several remote towns (headed by Malaysian UINDP staff, Ms. Azrina ) and they told us that the most serious problme the people were facing there was the lack of the water. They have a water pump but it is out of order very often and people are suffering from the lack of water. The amenities were not well maintained and nobody would want to live there, I thought.
We returned to Marudu Inn and got some reports from the officer and came back to KK. We made courtesy visit to Vice Chancellor, Datu Nor(?) and had a talk about the projects. His studied Physics at Imperical College in London and very much humrous guy. He suggested some possibilities to set up the institution focusing on the poverty in University of Malaya, Sabah. If it is the different fund from the JBICs I think it would make a very much meaningful project.
That was my last work in my mission in Sabah this year. Tomorrow I will fly back to KL and Fukuoka.