Port Kuching, Malaysia

In Kuching we served in 4 different schools located in a rural area, 2 hours away from where the ship is docked.
The program in the first school was at 7:30 am, so we had to be ready and leave the ship at 4:30 am, a very early start for a long day to come! The programs in all 4 schools went very well and the kids really enjoyed them and were very responsive. Though timid at the beginning, but after breaking the ice they enjoyed interacting with us, singing and running, learning about the ship, lifejackets and life rings as well as learning our flags and countries and matching them to the correct person. Most of them have very little experience of anything beyond home and school, thus meeting us, foreigners from 4 different countries was a big excitement to them! After this long amazing day we headed back to the ship on a longer than expected journey due to bad weather and heavy rain. It wasn't until late at night that we made it to the ship, but thank God we made it safely!

I was also given the opportunity to join a building team that was going to build a toilet for a widow’s house. We took some shovels and gloves and some other tools and put on our working clothes and headed to the widow’s house. When we arrived we saw the modest conditions that she lived in with her daughter. On the previous week another team from the ship had finished building the toilet, and we worked to lay concrete in the backyard to connect a drain with the house.

Port Klang, Malaysia

Going on a team to visit a school specialized for Cambodian migrant kids. These are kids of Cambodian migrants (mostly women) who work as domestic helpers in Malaysia. First we played with the kids, taught them to sing “my God is so big”, then we helped prepare their lunch, served them the food and ate with them. Later we did a small program for them, introduced ourselves & the ship, did some balloons and drew on their hands or faces.

They seemed so excited and happy to break from the routine, see & learn new things and meet new people. Noticeably these kids were so excited to see us, even before we started to interact with them, just because we were “white”, a bitter and sad realization to how these societies think of themselves as “lower” and the West as “higher”. But these kids were so genuine and friendly, and because of the little they have, they are easily contented with what little we could offer.