An overused adage to be sure, but time is really flying here in Sabah, and unfortunately not at the pace of the almost unnervingly tall ayam kampung (village chicken) that wander freely within most rural areas here. I am quite firmly in denial that as I write this, we are well over halfway through our time here, with less than two months remaining of our internships. The past two months in particular have sped by, in no small part because they have been very busy months for PACOS, with numerous multi-day programs occurring at regional, national, and international scales of organization which I have had the chance to attend and help out with.
In all honesty, it has felt quite daunting to begin writing this blog; how to try and encapsulate so many new experiences, places, friendships, and learnings? Where to begin, and where to end? My words here will inevitably be but a glimpse, an impartial grasping at a few moments out of many.
But begin I must, and I do so from the other side of the rice padi, having just returned yesterday from an extended weekend spent planting in its watery depths. This felt like a milestone moment in my time here and specifically in terms of my internship with PACOS because of the significance of rice within many Indigenous cultures here in Sabah (especially for Kadazan and Dusun communities) as both a source of food and of cultural identity and continuity. Learning about the multiple, labor intensive processes of rice farming, along with the cultural and spiritual protocols entwined with these processes, has been very cool.
In June, I’d gotten a small taste of harvesting rice, or mengomot, in PACOS’s Kivatu Nature Farm (KNF) miniature rice paddy at PACOS, which is a trial plot (only 20 by 30 ft) for teaching and community use. Joining in with the kids from the kindergarten adjacent to PACOS, I learned how to cut the golden yellow stalks with a linggaman (traditional rice cutting tool), avoiding the stalks that were still too green. As part of the rice harvest process, seven stocks were tied together and left untouched in the paddy, to honor and thank the rice spirit Bambarayon for the harvest and encourage a bountiful harvest for the next year.
The planting this weekend was at a 4-acre plot of wet paddy land that PACOS uses in Tambunan district, about 2 hours away. In July, Jelyna and I spent three days separating the husks from the grains (a process called moniri) of 50 kilos of rice harvested from this same plot in January, but planted last year around this time by Sarah and Santiago, last year’s CAPI interns. Sitting there with Jel, as the massive tarp of unsorted rice in front of us slowly but surely dwindled, I was reminded quite tangibly of the ways in which my internship here exists within a broader continuance, or through-line of relationships and experiences–amongst CAPI, PACOS, and interns–and the responsibilities that comes along with this.
Although moniri and its meditative qualities will always hold a special place in my heart after 50 kilos of it, rice planting (mananom parai) has now taken the top spot for me of rice-related processes after this weekend. The paddy field we were planting was around 1.9 acres out of the total 4 acre piece of land, a patchwork of plots of varying levels. This is only the second year it’s been opened up for planting by PACOS, and also acts as a teaching plot for community members to learn how to rice farm using SRI, (System of Rice Intensification), an agroecological method of farming that uses less water, less seedlings, and no chemical inputs, while increasing the rice yield. To give a quick explanation of how the wet paddy system works, plots are bordered by raised batas (dikes), with saluran air (waterways) connecting each plot to the next. This allows water to flow into the parit (ditches) that line each plot and are of a deeper depth than the plantable area of the plot itself, all coming from the single irrigation source, which is a gravity-fed pipe from the river that flows just parallel to the field.
To finish preparing a rice field for planting, and then also to plant said rice field, is labor intensive to be sure, but there was something quite wonderful about sloshing around in the mud all day amongst friends to do the satisfying work of planting 15-day-old seedlings into neat, bright green rows. One of the associated tasks of the planting was to be a collector of gondang, an invasive species of golden snail that eats the young rice stalks. Frances took up the role of Snail Collector with abandon, searching through each flooded plot for the little menaces and filling buckets and shirt pockets alike. After the work was done, we spent the evenings camping on a nearby property, eating and cooking much good food together, playing cards, and resting before returning to the field the next day. (or, in the case of Ujang and I for one of the days, waking up at 3:30 in the morning to drive to a different PACOS program for the day before returning to camp that evening–an example of the sometimes ad-hoc, go-with-the-flow, flexible nature of being an intern and saying yes to the opportunities that come your way!).
Planting rice in the paddy field felt like a clear testament to the varying nature of activities, programs, and roles that I have been grateful to be able to experience as an intern with PACOS. While this weekend my hands learned the now familiar rhythm of tucking rice stalks into wet mud, last week they were holding a camera at the ready as I acted as event photographer for the annual Hari Belia Orang Asal Sabah (HBOAS), a four-day intensive program for Indigenous youth from all over Sabah co-hosted by the Sabah Indigenous Youth Council and PACOS. HBOAS was oriented around the theme of ‘Inheriting Identity, Continuing the Struggle,’ and participants attended workshops and lead discussions and presentations around Indigenous rights, customs and culture, and language. At the end of August, I was given the opportunity to attend the 6th Indigenous Knowledge and Peoples of Asia (IKPA) conference with PACOS (a joint organizer) where I also acted as an event photographer. It was a five-day conference centering Indigenous knowledge, territories, and rights within discussions of global climate solutions, biodiversity targets, and sustainable resource management, and was incredibly inspiring to attend and to learn from the participants, who represented Indigenous communities from Bangladesh, Cambodia, Nepal, Myanmar, Thailand, India, Taiwan, Indonesia, Laos, Timor and Malaysia.
A few photos from the HBOAS and IKPA programs
One last program that I would be remiss not to include is PHOAS, or Perayaan Hari Orang Asal SeDunia, which was the national-level celebration of the International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples in early August. Participants from Sabah, Sarawak, and Semananjung gathered together in Kg. Rantai over three days to strengthen collaboration and solidarity efforts, share knowledge, and to celebrate and empower the rights, culture, and future of Indigenous communities across Malaysia. I had visited Kg. Rantai just two weeks earlier when I joined a PACOS program documenting traditional food systems and natural resource conservation, and so it was wonderful to be able to return again and spend more time with newly met friends, whose generosity, warmth, and friendship extended towards Frances and I has been appreciated beyond measure.
Several of the dusun phrases that have stuck with me were learned in or nearby the kitchen of the community gathering hall of Rantai, as communal food preparation and language lessons merged together–with the patience and laughter of our many mongingya (teachers) prevailing through it all.
(The days of PHOAS held much joy and learning and laughter and friendship and dancing and tapai and general eventfulness that I have not touched on here aside from a few mere photos, but Frances has done a wonderful job of describing that week in their blog, and so I urge you to please give it a read!)
https://capiblog.ca/2026/09/09/frances-mccleary-blog-3-three-months-in-sabah/
