The Kampung Babagon Experience

In the years that followed, he stumbled upon an opportunity to honestly explore and expound his vision to establish a school for deprived children, the possibility of introducing a Kadazandusun school of some sort, modeled from the situations prevailing in the Catholic Misssion Schools in Kampung Dabak, not too far away from the administrative centre of the Penampang District. According to his personal recount of a happening one evening a long time ago, he narrated, reading in parts, to the village folks a Christian bible story, Cain and Abel. His intention was simply to share with them a Christian story familiar to him. To aid his memory of the story he read some parts of the story from a Kadazandusun of the Tangaa’ dialect translated storybook. The elderly village folks indeed came closer to see what he was looking at from the book. They were amased as to how he could vocalise minute black marks into cohesive stories in a language they could understand. Unbelievably strange but it was true, such was the bare simplicity and ignorance of the elderly village folks of Kampung Babagon as recently as around the early 1950s! K.K. Emmanuel Tangit Kinajil explained to them that what he was doing was reading and such ability could be learnt by all people, especially the young ones if they went to school. He therefore siezed the opportunity to convince them of the importance of building a school in Kampung Babagon for the benefits of their young children. They were all for it. They were hooked. Undoubtedly, there must have been then a series of kampung-style meetings convened to crystalise the vision, to plan for actions to be taken and still to further convince the possible fence-sitters. Those meetings must have adjourned to an ancient version of the presentdays aramati of feasting and drinking where tapioca wine must have flowed down many a throat and sparsely-salted barbecued jungle delights were heaped for all to enjoy. All the ordinary kampung folks must have engaged themselves in communicative dialogues, as such: “I have no money to contribute but I can, together with the others, contribute my time and energy to gather the necessary round timbers from the unchartered virgin jungle”. In those days kind donations from the rich and famous, so to speak, were unheard of. The act of donating money or materials was not popular and was seldom done or never at all done. The ones who proposed the communual work done, who mentally worked the plan, would normally get the blame. To lighten the blame burdens, the initiators would have to find ways out and normally the easy way out of such a jam would be to learn to become a good donor himself. It was totally impossible to collect financial donations from those who lacked financially! Towards the middle of 1950s a Kadazandusun Primary School in Kampung Babagon was completed and it started to take its first intake of pupils straight away. It was a co’educational school and the medium of instruction was Kadazandusun! Its first teachers were the now-aged and retired K.K. then Native Chief, Gundohing Emmanuel Tangit Kinajil himself and one late Mr. Louis Majapul, a well-respected otai at that time. The first pupils of the newly put up Kadazandusun Primary School in Kampung Babagon were young and not so young boys and girls. They, no doubt, came to school multi attired and without shoes or slippers, not even the nowadays commonly available Japanese rubber slippers. They were taught to write and read the Kadazandusun of the Tangaa’ dialect. These two language functions come together hand in hand; one would not be able to write if one was not able to read! Naturally with the 1^st language, communicative competence did preceed linguistic capabilities. The abilities to really explore the simple principles and functions of the 3^rd R, arithmetics, were also taught to the pupils. It was hoped that the folly displayed in the following dialogues was once and for all eradicated. A : (a person from Kampung Koduntut) B : (a resident of Kampung Ponombiran) A : Nonggoo tongoyon nu oi Aman? Where are you heading to Aman? B : Muli’. Going home. A : Nonggoo tulion nu? Where do you go home to? B : Hilood Kampung Ponombiran. In Kampung Ponombiran. A : Songkuro sinodu’ o Kampung Ponombiran mantad hiti’d Kampung Babagon? Piro batu? How far is Kampung Ponombiran from Kampung Babagon? How many miles? B : Noilaan podii iri, do waatu nopo o tindalanon! It’s quite impossible to say, for the pathways were all covered with stones! The main aspects of misunderstanding between the speakers were, the term batu which was the word equivalent for ‘miles’ - the unit count for distances and that the distance between two places could be measured by the count of ‘miles’ - batu, in Malay and watu in Kadazandusun of the Bunduliwan dialect! The Kadazandusun school in Kampung Sugud and the Kadazandusun school in Kampung Babagon started their operation almost at the same time with the Kadazandusun Language as their medium of instruction. The English Language was also featured prominently on the lessons timetable since it was a popular hope of schooling that the ability to say, “yes”, “No” and “Thank you”, was the clear sign of education.