Source: The Malaysian Insight
Many have become rich harvesting the low-lying jungles leading to the mighty Mount Trusmadi, the second highest peak in Borneo. – Pic from the writer, December 12, 2017.
IT was well past the usual dinner hour when two vanloads of travel-weary medical camp volunteers stumbled up the rocky gravel path into a two-storey, one-bathroom wooden house in Kampung Sinua.
The second half of the six-hour journey from the Kota Kinabalu airport, across the Crocker Range, passing by Keningau and Sook was uneventful except for the many unpredictable stops to negotiate around herds of village cows and buffaloes settling down for the night, which was cold, on the warm road surface.
Dinner was simple but good with loads of steamed rice, stir-fried vegetables and a melon-chicken soup shared among the many of us and the host family. Our kind hosts, including the children, had
waited many hours for us to arrive. In keeping with custom, they would only eat after the guests had done so.
The chilly night breeze carried tales of those who had made great fortunes harvesting the rich low-lying jungles leading to the mighty Mt Trusmadi, the second highest peak in Borneo.
The landscape, once clean and green, is now scarred by the crude, muddy tracks of timber-laden lorries and tractors. The once pristine streams of the lower slopes are now polluted and their water unfit for humans. Read more →
