Requirement:
Minimum 3 months of placement with academic background or work experience in the above-mentioned fields

Benefits:
Accommodation, uniform and daily meals provided. Medical fee included (subject to terms& conditions).
Great learning experience and meet new friends!

Please submit your resume and application letter to jobapplication@borneoecotours.com

		Annemarie Morak, The Netherlands Volunteered from June-August 2011

I'm on my way back to civilization after finishing my volunteering program in the jungle of Sabah.

What an experience. I went in without knowing where I would end up or what my program would exactly entail. I saw it as an adventure. And I can say that if they would ask me again now, I would definitely do it again!

The reason I came in is that I believe deeply in vocational training. I think that through this you can give people a future. You can teach skills they can use to generate an income, or as Ghandi said it: "Give a man a fish, you'll feed him for a day, you teach him how to fish and you'll feed him for a lifetime!"

My job was training the staff in Hospitality and teaching English. And with this my main goal to empower the girls; make them believe in themselves and believe in a future. The last part I expected to be very hard, but by being an example of where Education, dreams and hard work can bring you, I saw the girls changing. Supporting them, motivating them and training them did the work. I've seen the girls change from shy and quiet to enthusiastic, talkative and even pursuing their dreams. This is the biggest 'wage' that they could've given me.

Besides my work I've spend a lot of time in the jungle. And of course I've learned a lot about the culture of Malaysia and more specific the Uran sungai (river people).

I would definitely recommend volunteering at Sukau Rainforest Lodge. Living in the jungle of Borneo, sharing your room with your colleagues and going on trecks and cruises will give you an experience of a lifetime!

		Michelle Noronha, Edith Cowan University (ECU), Western Australia Internship completed: April 2008

Hidden Paradise in Sabah

"There are two aspects in Nature: the perishable and the imperishable. All life in this world belongs to the former; the unchanging element belongs to the latter."

The Bhagavad-Gita circa B.C. 400

During September 2006, I visited Sabah as part of a university field trip with a group of students and my lecturer Ross Dowling. Sabah is one of Malaysia 's 13 states which lies on the island of Borneo , the world's third largest island. There are 3 countries on the island of Borneo 2 of Malaysia 's states ( Sabah and Sarawak ), Brunei and the Indonesian state Kalimantan . The field trip was conducted as part of a supervised research unit at Edith Cowan University . We started our 10 day trip from Kota Kinabalu, the capital of Sabah, where we could see Mount Kinabalu or Gunung Kinabalu' as the locals call it. We were also given the opportunity to visit a number of remote Rungus

Communities where we were welcomed very warmly by the local people who spoke little to no English. We also visited Sabah Tea (where we were given a tour of their tea plantation and production facilities), Sandakan (a place used as a POW camp during WWII where over 2000 mainly Australian and British troops were held captive and forced to construct a runway by Japanese soldiers) and an orang-utan rehabilitation centre. Our visit to the Sandakan War Memorial was by far a very humbling

experience. But the highlight for me was our visit to Sukau, situated along Malaysia 's second longest river, the Kinabatangan. We were entering into one of the worlds most biodiverse regions. This place has been referred to as a �mini-Amazon'. The lower Kinabatangan floodplain supports a multitude of wildlife which people come from all over the world to see. To name a few, there are proboscis monkeys, gibbons, pygmy elephants, orang-utans, crocodiles, several species of hornbills and a whole range of birdlife that could entertain birdwatchers for hours and days. It is a very unique setting.

The local people are called �Orang Sungai', literally meaning people of the river, who are mainly a fisher-folk. Changing land uses in the surrounding areas has led many to seek work in palmoil estates and some of the tourist lodges operating in the area. However it is sad to say that while the palm oil estates provide local employment, they also contribute a range of environmental problems in the area including chemical runoff into the Kinabatangan River . In order to preserve some of the remaining pockets of wildlife habitat, there was a recent gazetting of over 26 000 hectares of land as wildlife sanctuary in the lower Kinabatangan region. Large tracts of land in the region have been converted to palm oil estates and there is an urgent need for the protection of the vegetation fringing the river for wildlife to use this as a �highway� and for habitat.

Albert Teo, the managing director of Borneo Eco Tours , established a forest regeneration project in the lower Kinabatangan in June 2000 which is run by the staff at his eco-lodge in Sukau (Sukau Rainforest Lodge). After being given the opportunity to participate in this project during our field trip, I decided that I wanted to return to this wonderful place and help out. I realised that their project was in urgent need of assistance, and my 3 days at Sukau had made me determined to join the conservation efforts of Sukau Rainforest Lodge. After I completed my degree at the end of 2006, I arranged to conduct 3 months of unpaid work experience at Sukau Rainforest Lodge. This trip spanned to 4 ½ months, and would have gone for longer if it had not been so difficult to renew my pass to remain in the country. I returned to Sukau Rainforest Lodge in August 2007, and was rewarded with a most life enriching experience. I was housed in their staff quarters which was surrounded by jungle and there were occasions where orang-utans would hangout' in the trees above, or the migrating pygmy elephant herds would pass by in the night.

After some initial communication barriers (many of the staff speak very little English), I managed to learn enough of their local language to be able to have basic communication with them. Most of the staff was from the local village. They welcomed me very warmly and were delighted to see my efforts at trying to learn their language. I was initially providing some English tuition for them but soon found myself so busy with other tasks that I could only provide tuition through simple conversations if one of them were to ask for my assistance. I found myself participating in all sorts of activities as I was given chores across all their departments in order to understand how the lodge ran. But my main interest was their tree planting project. It was a project which appeared to be failing, but to me was just in need of some maintenance and a persistency in this task. I understood the importance of this conservation project, and I wanted them to see that giving up was not an option. Many of the young trees that had previously been planted at the site could not grow freely due to entangling creepers and grasses thriving in the open conditions. And many of the trees were struggling to grow because the soil was lacking in organic matter and was highly compacted due to the site previously being a logging dump. As well as this there were a myriad of other problems encountered over the years including elephants trampling and uprooting the young seedlings, flooding, and insects. But by far the greatest two problems was the lack of persistency and consistency with site maintenance and soil improvement.

With their limited funding and access to resources, I tried to use whatever was available to improve the soil conditions at the site. I raked and collected dead leaves from around the lodge to use as mulch, I buried food scraps from their kitchen at the site, and I even collected and placed elephant dung around the young trees as a fertiliser. And each time I visited the site I cleared a little of the weeds that choked the planted trees (although this was a continual thing because if you blink in that environment of high humidity and heat, things just grow right back!) I was using a 'parang' to clear the weeds, which is a long blade with a handle. It was back to basics, but I didn't mind. It was hard work but each time I went back, I could see the results which for me were very rewarding. It took some time, but after a while, they could see that I was not joking about not giving up. I was given permission to handle a wooden boat powered by a small outboard engine, and later two permanent helpers (Hassan and Ali) whom I shared my horticultural knowledge with before I left Sabah .

I passed on whatever knowledge and skills I thought were necessary to maintain the site as well as improve the growth rates of the trees. I used the little Bahasa Malayu I had learned and we often joked among ourselves while we worked in the sweltering sun and high humidity. I worked with and among them as one of them, and in doing this I gained their respect and they trusted and listened to what I taught them. I gave them a reason and the know-how to continue with the tree planting project, and to not loose heart despite all the problems the project faced.

My departure from Sukau was both a sad and happy moment. I was happy because I felt that my efforts to improve the lodge operations and their tree planting project were finally showing some positive results, but sad because I was leaving such a beautiful place and people. I had made lifelong friends and to me they are my second family. I had fallen in love with a place and a people who were never too busy to smile or joke or invite me to play soccer on their rice-paddy like field. They taught me how to be happy with less, and how the things that make us happy in life are free. I wish the people of Sukau Rainforest Lodge and Sukau all the best and am forever grateful for their making me feel welcome and at home.

By Michelle Noronha