Borneo
Question: How on earth can a girl manage to put the four most life-changing weeks of her life into a few paragraphs? Answer: with a lot of patience and a whole lot of crafty thinking. Let’s be real for a second, Borneo was incredible but now at the time that I am finally getting around to writing this blog post, my trip to Borneo was a whole two years ago. In all honesty, I have been putting it off because I just don’t think I can do the trip any justice. However, during my trip to Malawi, I have met many incredible people some of whom have been travelling for decades and they have all told me that I should just write it because although it will never encapsulate everything about the experience, it will be able to give you a small taste about what it was like.
So, here we go! The first thing I need to mention about this trip is that this was supposed to take place in the summer of 2021 but due to Covid, it got postponed to 2022. This meant that instead of being at the end of my secondary school education like I had planned, I was in the middle of my college education. I had already gained huge amounts of independence in my daily life at home because I was taking the train to college daily and I was in charge of my meals every day and various other things that made me feel like an adult.
Anyway, back to the trip. We, sixteen young people, three members of staff and our camps international embarked on this trip and not to be overly dramatic or anything but this was a truly life-changing experience. We met the most incredible people who were always smiling and happy even if their house only had three walls or they had to walk miles to get water.
It was insanely incredible to see the impact we were making right in the moment we were doing the thing. For example, we assisted in making a community building and got to plaster the walls and begin painting them before we left for the next camp. The awesome thing about Camps International is that they constantly have a rotation of groups moving through the countries where they are based. So, we were apart of these projects but so where everyone else who were in-country during the times we were. A prime example of this was when we got to Bongkud (the first and biggest Camps International base in Borneo) and we started assisting in three main projects. The first was painting some furniture that the group before us built for the local school. The second was starting the process of building a sewage system for the local community. We were mixing cement and shovelling sewage out of ditches so that the next group could come and put the cement blocks in the ditch. Finally, we also assisted in teaching some local kids for a few days.
Every single thing we did, we felt the impact of. And the best thing about this was that as a very privileged sixteen year old who lived a pretty comfortable life in England, this experience was so eye-opening. Sometimes it felt like the impact I was making was so inconsequential in the face of the monster of injustice, inequality and poverty but sometimes like when we brought those pieces of furniture into the school when they were painted, it felt like we were doing a huge thing for the locals.
Needless to say, I am forever grateful to Camps International and my trip to Borneo in 2022 because it truly did change my life and make me see the entire world in a new light. It was overwhelming yet beautiful, it was gut-wrenching yet incredible, it was difficult yet so worth it. And it has made me into the woman I am today who is happily volunteering around the world because I truly believe that without my trip to Borneo at 16, I would not have the confidence or the drive necessary to do what I am doing today. Borneo gave me all the tools I needed for my life now. And I will be forever grateful for that!