February will be spent in Malaysia! This is an especially cool country for me because while I know nothing about Asia, my mom grew up there as a missionary’s kid. Being able to serve in a place my mommy spent some of her childhood is really nostalgically cool to me. Plus with as much as I love Asian food, I’ll do my best not to complain about whatever strange things come on my plate in the process. 🙂
MALAYSIA
Geography: Malaysia is located in two parts in the South China Sea. It’s much like Michigan, separated or divided by water. The right half, commonly called East Malaysia, is on an island called Borneo. Malaysia is spooned up against Indonesia with Brunei carved out of the top (much like Haiti and the Dominican Republic sharing the island of Hispaniola.) The left half, commonly called Peninsular Malaysia or West Malaysia, is at the tip of Thailand with Singapore at the very very bottom.1 It’s located strategically for trade and the capitol is located on the Western half.
Size and Climate: Combined, Malaysia is about the size of the state of New Mexico, but here’s what it looks like hovered over the southeast.
Kinda crazy, hu? It just makes you realize how HUGE the world is.
As for climate, it looks like I’m gonna be investing in that $100+ rain jacket after all, REI. You’re welcome. Take more of my money. We will be there smack in the middle of monsoon season. I have a feeling if I end up bringing a rain jacket I’ll probably use it, or at the very least I can wrap some of my stuff up with it so it doesn’t get wet inside my pack!
Malaysia is tropical and hovers right over the Equator. In fact this is the closest we will be to the Equator the entire trip. We are as far south as Brazil. Can you say sunscreen??
Language and People: Bahasa Malaysia is the official language, but English and Chinese are also spoken, as well as some indigenous languages in Eastern Malaysia.
Muslim is the official religion, as practiced by over 60% of the people. Buddhist is second, represented by almost 20%, but Christianity ranks a solid third place with nearly 10% of the population claiming those beliefs. Malaysia is a country of 30 million people, just like Nepal. 10% of 30 million? That’s better than we’ve seen in the past few countries…
Here is the population pyramid of Malaysia:
Pop quiz: what are the major things this tells you?
- Stable but growing population (because the base is expanding)
- There’s not a lot of disease killing off the people before they reach old age (because there’s a pretty constant level of people right up until you start to hit 70.)
- There’s a pretty even distribution of ages, aka it’s not predominantly infants or under 14, etc. (because the bars of the graph are closer to a square than a triangle)
- They are not growing nearly as rapidly as India or Eastern Africa (check out the bars on the bottom not busting out the sides of the graph)
- There are more males than females in Malaysia (as seen by there being closer to 1.6 million boys on the left and closer to 1.2 million girls on the right)
- So overall, this country isn’t in terrible shape! Let’s check out the economic side…
(But first, I don’t want you to just look at these and go “ok whatever. She’ll explain it.” I never learned a thing in math class when the teacher showed me once and moved on. The nerd/teacher in me wants you to know what to look for, what these are supposed to illustrate, and how you can tell for yourself. You can learn a lot about a society and the problems it faces by just glancing at one of these things. ((Think Uganda)) These are pretty cool.)
Ok, now economy. Get ready for some GOOD news: GDP per capita?? $24,000. Not 24 hundred, 24 thousand. Guess what else: population below the poverty line (those living under $1.25 a day)? not even 4%. Bonus fun fact, their unemployment rate is less than half of what it is in the United States. Yep. You’re more than two times as likely to have a job living in Malaysia than you are by living in the land of the free and the home of the brave. Anyone wanna hop on a plane? Anyone?
Another thing we haven’t talked about is that poor countries tend to primarily survive off of agriculture. Slightly more developed countries primarily generate income through industry. The next step above that, when you’re finally breaking out of being a third-world, underdeveloped country, is providing services. This is the first country we will visit that falls into this category. Even in India the majority of their labor force is still agriculture, even with as booming as their economy is (Their largest percent of GDP is through services, but labor force is still agriculture.) Malaysia fits into both categories, the majority of it’s GDP and labor force provide services as opposed to growing coffee or making plastic toys.
THIS DOES NOT MEAN that Malaysia will be a vacation. It does not mean that there aren’t hurting people. In fact political corruption, ethnic tensions and discrimination have long been an issue, and under-5 deaths and HIV rates have not been lowered in over 20 years. Guess what else: according to Open Doors, which is a ministry serving persecuted Christians, Malaysia is on the top 50 watch list for persecuted Christians – in the top 50.
This is a halfway decent idea of what in Malaysia might look like. However this is another halfway decent idea of what Malaysia could look like. I’m not expecting every day on the race to be a glory-filled, life-changing Jesus moment. What I am expecting is to be available and have God use me. If He has called me to do this, there is someone (hopefully several someones) that only I can touch. This is why I go.
If the Lord is leading you to give, click here -> SUPPORT ME Thank you for helping to send me to the nations.
1 – http://traveltips.usatoday.com/major-landforms-malaysia-43237.html
2 – All other information from the CIA World Factbook for Malaysia
