I met a
German tourist yesterday who was so surprised that we have a telecenter
in Bario! ‘I can’t believe this,’ he kept saying to me. He planned to email all
his friends when the telecenter is opened. It is worth Rm4/hr to email my
friends from Borneo !!”
Here
you go, many people I met see us as exotic people who live in Borneo! The
jungles, the tigers, the lions….. the giraffes. A tourist from Europe asked me
where she could find one to take a picture!! I told her that all the Kelabit
men are giraffe as they are tall and handsome! (Ha ha… My Kelabit humor is
still alive.)
When
UNIMAS came about ten years ago to talk to the elders about something called
“Internet”, some saw that as something like a big telephone with the ability to
do many wonders including showing you pictures of things! Some elders who
hardly left Bario at that time saw things they had never seen before including
giraffes! And real lions eating deers! We talked about such pictures for
weeks!
TheUNIMAs project has brought tourists to us.We young people now are learning
computer to reach out to the rest of the world.
After listening to me about the story of the telecenter, the German
tourist exclaimed, “ This is so interesting, a telecenter in the jungle.
So if I meet a nice girl here, and we fell in love, she and I can talk to
each other every day through skype!”
I looked at him and did my big sister thing for any Bario young girl who
may not understand financial management, “Are you paying the Rm2/hr or she has
to pay? ” ( Locals pay Rm2/hr)
He looked at me, “Oh, I never thought about it! I guess I shouldn’t fall
in love here……”
“Well, you can always live here!”
His eyes turned dreamy, “Ya, that would be really good!”
So, you see, telecenter always brings love to Bario!
