Today was quite the day out in the wilderness of Malaysia.
It started like any typical day as my watch chimed away at 8 am trying to lure
me out of bed. I groaned and blindly groped the watch until it stopped making
that awful racket… Just a few more minutes.
I get a nudge on my butt from Craig’s foot fifty minutes
later telling me we’re leaving in ten. I
stagger out of the room yawning and rubbing the sleepiness out of my eyes. First thing I see is three of our girls
sitting at the kitchen table, each pair of eyes glued on their individual
bibles. I can’t help but grin and praise God for the new morning, that kind of
stuff is contagious you know.
Daniel, noticing I am lagging a bit behind this morning,
kindly offers to make me breakfast and I gladly accept the offer.
He’s a good guy.
I glance down at my leg and run my fingers over the skin
starting to heal on the infection on my ankle. I raise my eyes and behold,
scrambled eggs and potato wedges appeared out of thin air.
I raise my arm and mumbled a tone resembling, ‘thank you’ towards Daniel. He gestures
and mumbles back, ‘yeah, don’t worry
about it’. I lift my fork, actually spoon now that I think of it… all the
forks were dirty. I lift my spoon and watched the steam slowly raise into the
air as I take the first bite. Delicious… uh-oh
it’s time to go…
their respective yellow rain boots we bought at the convenient store down the
road. I average putting on 3.5 wrong boots before I finally put on the right pair.
the farm that is nestled right on the edge of the jungle on the outskirts of
town. My knuckles are pure white by the time we get there due to my death
clinch on the ‘Oh ___ handle’. Turns out Malay drivers do not drive like it is
Sunday and the roads happen to be quite windy and narrow. The absence of
seatbelts makes that handle my very best friend each and every time we get into
that van.
I jump out of the van upon arrival and we all start to walk
down a dirt path toward the farm. I start to slow down and let the pack pass on
by to stop in my usual spot to ‘water the
plants‘. The perfect spot where the bush next to the path clears up… right
here… and I look at this…
big tree.’ …. Every time without fail.
At the farm we see Maleak and Nordstrom, our brothers from other
mothers, Bangladesh mothers to be more exact. They both live and work here on
the farm in Malaysia to support their families back home. We greet and make
small talk. Nordstrom doesn’t speak English and Maleak speaks only a little. He
tries to explain what we are going to do today but we are all left confused. He
says, ‘Pipes’ , and points up the
hill. We say, ‘Alright! After you’, all
of us curious to see what we’d be doing for the day.
The farm is irrigated with an ingenious system of pipes
syphoned from rivers up the hill in the jungle that allow gravity to do what it
does best to supply limitless water. Turns out that the water flow was too
weak, so the pipes had to be rearranged so the plants could get the water they
needed. The process is ingenious yes,
however as I learned today it is quite difficult to set up.
There are several pipes, each pipe approximately 3 inches or
so in diameter and several hundred meters long. Each of these long pipes are
drug through the jungle from the water source to the farm. Task 1- disassemble
existing pipe system. This was pretty easy because the pipeline was on a trail.
Task 2- drag pipes to a new location. This was slightly more difficult and
tiring to drag the cumbersome pipes to the different river, we were still on a
trail nonetheless. Task 3- assemble new pipeline in new location. The kicker…
no trail this time.
So there we go, lugging these
awkward huge pipes off the beaten path, down a steep hill into the heart of the
jungle. As we become engulfed in the lush green beauty I try to recall if I got
all of my shots as I swat at bugs while slipping on wet rocks and logs. As I am
looking down I step onto a leaf that is so big that I could easily use it as a
blanket. I smiled and needless today, I stopped caring about the shots. No worries
in paradise. (Cue Bob Marly’s, Three Little Birds- ‘Don’t worry about a
thing, cause every little thing is going to be alright.’)
