Another new group :) yayyy...! Outward bound Sabah delivered a 6 days programme called the Voyager Course for students aged between 15 to 16 years old from a private school of Asia Pacific Smart School from Peninsular Malaysia (formerly known SAPURA Smart School).
At the beginning of the course, the students embarked on a 2-day 1-night sea expedition paddling and rowing to Dinawan Island. We were blessed with good weather during that day but the paddling on a strong sea current wasn't that easy. After striving for 3 hours we finally made to Dinawan island and rewarded ourselves with swimming and dipping in the clear blue shallow sea water.....!
Upon reaching the campsite... the participants were taught to set up their tents and started fire using firewood for bush cooking. The group's teamwork was fantastic and the group leader managed the activity effectively.
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| The REWARD....! Dip in the clear blue water...! |
The second expedition was the 3 days 2 nights Jungle Expedition in the Crocker Range! The group was given with map and compass to navigates their way to the checkpoints and to find their campsite. It was so nice to see the team supporting and encouraging each other when climbing up the slope. We reached the campsite at around 4pm and the team managed to pitch their tents and cooked their meals just before dark. It was really great to see the group performed all the camp craft skills and bush cooking skills that were taught to them earlier on.
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| Jungle rice has always been the best.....! Cause u'll eat it anyway:) |
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| The Campsite |
The next day, the group was in high spirit and reached the 2nd campsite early. With so much spare time, the group took the opportunity to have a nice dip in the stream which they called it "The Jungle Spa". The have a lots fun time splashing water and of course sometimes you can hear loud scream from them " Leeeeech....! leeeeeech......!" Most of them have never experienced showering in the middle of the jungle in a crystal clear stream water... again.... its was rewarding.
At about 5pm, we heard the roaring thunder from far so everyone started securing their tents including the instructors. The rain started to pour heavily and it continued for about two hours. The clear stream water earlier on started to get milky color and the stream water level started to raise. And then a few minutes later we heard a loud whistle blown by the students...(when the whistle is blown it is actually a sign of emergency!)... So we (the instructors) quickly changed into our wet clothes (oh! we were comfortably in our dry clothes already!) and hurried to the group's campsite. We heard them shouting "Move...! move...! hurry up...! safe all you can...! cepat...!". We could see torch lights moving up and down the slope. We found out that the group panicked as they saw the stream water near their camp site has risen so they decided to move up to a higher ground.
From our assessment, we can see that the situation was manageable and decided to let the group to experience the situation. We asked the group to calm down and here are our conversation with the group:-
Student: We're not panicking....we are excited....!
Instructor : Oowwhh.... well okaaay..... (confused) so what's the plan.....?
Student: We need to relocate our tents but we need to save the girls first.......
Instructor : Okaaaay...... (awww so sweet....!)
What we saw that night was actually a rewarding experience for them as the group help one another and really work hard together to rebuild their jungle house (tents) in the dark and in the middle of the rain. It was great to see that nobody was sitting around waiting for help to come during a disaster.
So...they survived the night as they called it "the rain disaster". We, as their instructors were really proud of them....:)! High credits to all the students because with their backgrounds we know it was not easy for them. They have successfully overcame a huge obstacle as a final challenge in this programme.
At the end of the 7-day programme, the group shared their great experiences, completing a great Outward Bound course with great pride on their face. For us the instructors.....we also shared the joy, seeing another individual's life improved through an Outward Bound experience is rewarding :)....! This is what we called an experience that will last a lifetime......
Written from the Instructor's point of view,
.JPG)
