Week 11: Big Tree

WEEK 11 - BIG TREES

The moment that I will never forget and I learn something from it.

On 25 October 2009, Sunday, again our BEACA's have another activity, a jungle trekking at Mentiri, Brunei Muara Districts. This might be our last trekking for BEACA’s group. My post for that week was as a leader, it was the first time that I become a leader for the trekking that we have done. As usual, before doing the real trekking with the entire BEACA student, at first we have to do a recce.

During the recce everything worked very well. The starting of the trekking was very challenging, where we have to climb a very steep hill. The hill was very steep that I have to grab everything on the ground even a grass to prevent from slipping. After we finished climbing the hill I was so tired that I breathe heavily and started too unmotivated and loss eagerness to finish the trekking. And for the first time I saw Dr.Irene look tired, which is rare to see because she is really fit both physically and mentally. Dr.Irene told us the pathway of our trekking was like a lollipop; straight, and then go round a circle.

Then the trekking started to become more challenging yet interesting. I started to become excited. We have to get through many obstacles. We have to do a lot of climbing again where at some places the hill was so steep that we have to use rope to climb the hill, we have to walk on a very steep ground. The trekking was fun; I said to myself that I am ready to go trekking on Sunday as a leader to bring my other colleagues.

Then on Sunday, I was told by Dr. Irene to get into the Big Trees forest as a first group. In my group were Malek, Azmey, Keem and Azri as a sweeper for our team. So we get into the forest, at first everything going very well but not until me and Azri realized that we were moving on the opposite way of the lollipop we were supposed to move clockwise but we move anticlockwise. Therefore, to be fair and responsible I decided to turn back and go to make the right way. It was for the first time that I lost in the trekking and it really tested my endurance both mentally and physically.

However, it was also good to go round the lollipop for almost twice, we got so many chances and time to enjoy the beauty of the environment. The not so good part was when we know that we lost our way to exit from the forest; it was frightening and really tiring and unfortunately we were running out of drinks.

We were actually somewhere on the lollipop stick but we could not managed to get the exit way. We kept trying to look for the exit way but we still fail to find it, and it was very difficult for me, I tried to remember the way and keep trying to look for the exit way but I still couldn’t get it. We had been in the forest for four hour and we were getting extremely tired so I decided to call Dr.Irene and she came with some of our friends and thankfully, they managed to found us. Although the trekking was very tiring and we end up getting lost but we did manage to enjoy the trekking and something from it.

The thing that I enjoy from the trekking

· It was very amazing to see pitcher plant and a few of gigantic trees for the first time in my life and I was told that the tree is almost 100 years old, no wonder it is so big and I never thought that trees actually can live that long

The big tree

· We get to see the waterfall. The waterfall, it does not look great from the picture but in real, actually it was great. The waterfall goes down slowly and calm and it was great to see the rainfall.

the waterfall.

· We also managed to see different kind of insects, wild orchid, trees, I learned few names such as wild Ixora, resam ferns, spike vines, tarap trees and etc 'Tongkat Ali', ixora, 'Kelamunting', orchid, and 'sumbui-sumbui'

The thing I’ve learn from the trekking

· As a leader I admit that it was my fault that we get lost, I was careless and didn’t really focused

· When we get lost we have to stay together and stay somewhere near our path

· We have to be patient and do not be panic when we were facing a difficult situation

Brunei's South Pole Girl Talk

23/10/2009- THE BRUNEI’S SOUTH POLE GIRL TALK

On Friday 23 October 2009, a talk was held at the UBD by Dk Najibah Eradah who is known as the first Bruneian to go to the South Pole, the purpose of the talk was to motivation to the student in UBD. Not all students in UBD were invited to the talk, and we, as a BEACA students was so lucky to be invited to attend the talk. The talk started at 10.00 am and finished at 12.oo pm.

The talk started with Doa Al Fatihah, then Dr. Asmah continue by introducing the South Pole girl, Dk Najibah Eradah, or known as Era, she is 26 years old. Actually, she is a teacher, where she used to teach at S.O.A.S.College. I know that from my brother who used to be one of her student during her time at S.O.A.S.College. She told us lots of thing about her, she started to love adventure since she was 6 years old. She has been studying at Kingston University at United Kingdom where she took Bachelor of Science. In addition, she is the member of the Brunei Adventure Recreation Association.

Era with the BEACA students

Then she talked more about herself and shared in front all of the students and lecturers on what she have been through during the training before the actual journey. The training took part by 8 commonwealth countries which are Brunei, Cyprus, Ghana, India, Jamaica, New Zealand, Singapore and United kingdom, each country have their own representatives which is all women. The training took part at Norway then to New Zealand. Then she told us the difficulty she faced during the training, one of them was when they setting up their camp. To set up their camp they have to use the metal stick, which is very cold and the difficulty was because they have to wear glove which make it more difficult for them to grab the stick, and if they don’t wear the gloves, they may suffer frost bite where their finger will swell and discolorated then their finger will have to be amputate. She also told us that the cold and snow weather creates so many difficulties for them and the wind makes the weather colder.

Their sources of drinks come from the snow where they have to melt and cook the snow into water. Moreover, she told us that its takes a time to melt the snow. Then I started to realize how difficult it is in poor country where they suffered from the lack of water, unlike in Brunei where they take the water for granted, they waste the water. What she has said really help me to understand and be more aware on how we make use of our natural resource such as water. As for breakfast, they eat cereal porridge and they eat chocolate to get more energy. For every camp there will be two women living in the camp. Era was in the same camp with Sofia, I could not remember where Sofia comes from. Therefore, in the camp both of them have creates a lot of good aspect such as teamwork, responsibilities, discipline and so on. Before sleeping, they only have a very short time to do their cooking, drinks and sanitation. So in order to make use of the time, they divide their work into two. For example, if Era is doing her sanitation so Sofia will do the cooking and they do it one after the other for every day.

For me she is a very good person, and I was amazed when she revealed how actually motivates herself to change the bad habits of her for example on punctuality. She uses the word `Janji Melayu’ as her own motivation. And because she herself is a Malay, she don’t really like that the Malay people being labeled as `Janji Melayu’ because for her that actually shows the other races that the Malay people is not punctual so she work on her punctuality to remove the label and being a good example to the other Malay people.

THE THING I HAVE LEARNED:

· The talk was very useful and it gave a lot of inspiration to me. Era is very motivate with her goal, she show us how to work on our motivation

· She taught us how to creates teamwork, responsibilities and discipline

· She make me realize and understand how important for us to preserve the resources that god gave to us, we shouldn’t waste it

· She gives me inspiration that one day I also want to make my country proud

Lastly, I wish Era a very good luck. May Allah bless you along your journey and back in Brunei at safe.