(photo journey of a short mission trip with medical service to Nabawan and Tataluan, interior of Sabah, Malaysia 15 – 17 July 2016)
Dad said he would pick me up at 6:00am on Friday morning for breakfast before dropping me off at church to meet up with the rest of the team. 6:00am!!! It definitely was far too early for me to finish the bowl of noodles I ordered although the area we went to with lots of eateries and a morning market was already buzzing with activities and full of early risers. The strong cup of black coffee had certainly helped with my waking-up process.
It has been two years since my last (and first ever) mission trip organised by our church of the same nature, i.e. leading a team of doctors and dentists to the interior of Sabah to provide basic medical and dental service to the villagers. Though I was excited about this trip and could not wait to see what God had in store for me, I still had slight apprehension about giving up creature comforts to rough it out over the long weekend.
getting ready
We were informed to be at our meeting point at church no later than 7:00am to help with the loading of items onto the respective transportation before our targeted departure time at 7:45am.
loading of bags and boxes onto one of our vans
loading of more boxes and bags
eh, the buckets are coming too?
being prepped mentally and spiritually
our pastor, Ps Renny dropped by to pray for us and release her blessings to send us off
let’s pray…
on the way there
a pit stop on the Kimanis highway and managed to be treated to some leftover durians by a generous durian seller — finger-licking good!
finally, we arrived…
After just over 4 hours with about an hour’s brunch break in Keningau, we arrived at very small town Nabawan. We proceeded to our base, Basel Christian Church Malaysia (BCCM) Nabawan not far from the town centre.
base for the medical service and where we would put up for the night
the pharmacists setting up shop (seated from left – Goh Qing Liang and Florence Chong)
the doctors checking out the medications available (from top Dr. Christina Martin, Dr. Lee Yu Wei and Dr. Amie-Anne Augustine)
working out the layout in the hall and moving furniture around to allocate space for registration, medical consultation and dental service
dental team setting up the necessary
the registration team and helpers being briefed
but first, let’s get our power recharged before facing a long and hard-working afternoon ahead
and also get this out of the way first — camp commandant Gem handing over bibles for the BCCM churches in the area and 2 fans for BCCM Nabawan to pastor in-charge, Ps. Ishak
open for business…..
ever cheerful fresh medical graduate Chloe rendered assistance in registration
Chloe’s sister Claire helped share the responsibility in manning the registration counter
the girl-power medical team in action
all hard at work
dispensing…
dentist Dr. Michelle Shu flexing her muscles on tooth-extraction with the help of young assistant Elliot Heng
Dr. Wesley Tan trying to pacify the brave young patient with soft words and encouragement while handling the needle expertly at the same time!
really non-stop back-breaking work the whole afternoon servicing patients of all ages
the efficient 2-member team dental assistants – Wesley’s mum Margaret bearing the afternoon heat washing dental tools outside and passing them to Elliot through the window to disinfect
at one corner Pit Fung got her assistants to help pack stationeries to be given out to the village kids
happy kids
folks from the nearby villages coming for the medical and dental services
buzzing in the hall
The medical and dental service concluded at around 6pm with 87 patients for medical and 53 for dental (49 teeth extracted).
the other bits and pieces
The “official” role that Gem had assigned me to for this trip was to be the “journalist and photographer”. That was easy I thought as all I needed to do was to help a little here and there when needed and then spend the rest of my time walking around taking pictures of the team members hard at work and all of the happenings. While I was trotting around and shutter happy only then I realised my presence actually intimidated the shy villagers while they were consulting the doctors especially the young kids when they were getting their teeth extracted! To put the village folks at ease I decided to be subtle and quick at the same time to take the shots, and then disappear out of their line of sight!
When I thought I had taken enough shots of the actions, I took a breather and went for a short stroll with two brothers to the nearby village in the early evening.
It was great to be in the countryside, a totally different landscape from what I am used to in the city. Here there are fruit trees growing abundantly in the surrounding, chickens everywhere, kids running around, big open space, lots of trees and flowers, basic wooden dwellings and people lead a very simple life. But as for us the city folks, the first thing we noticed when we arrived and were more than a little bothered by it was the two dreaded words that appeared on our smartphones — no service!
What I captured during the walk…
good looking bananas!
unripe rambutans
an amazing view with the early evening sky!
fellowship evening
After dinner we were joined by quite a few members of the church for fellowship. An enriching evening of praise and worship and sharing. It was especially encouraging to see the villagers who made the effort to come on foot and not even the young kids on tow managed to deter the mothers from joining us.
started with praise and worship
sharing of words by Gem
split into small groups to share – scriptures taken from Romans 12:1-12
before the evening came to a close, BCCM Nabawan presented to Gem a memento with bamboo woven panel, craft of the local Murut people and witnessed by Ps. Ishak
It was a tiring day for us started with the long car journey that began early in the morning. We managed to sort ourselves out with the usage of the bathroom as we had to share one bathroom among the 20 of us, made do with whatever space we could find to lay out our sleeping bags, put up the mosquito nets and some sprayed insect repellent generously before we called it a night.
Exhausted but satisfying was the general consensus for the first day of our trip. We knew when the morning came we would all be refreshed and renewed, and more than ready to face another exciting day ahead!
(end of Part 1 of 2) – part 2 here
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