Introduction

The Kadazan, the indigenous people of Sabah, then North Borneo, a former British Crown Colony, with all its attributing tribes who spoke their different dialects of the Kadazandusunic language, formed the largest population, by race-ratio, of the land in the decade of the 1950s and many more years following. The Kadazan and the Dusun together were the most in number and in much later years, they merged their race-name together to give their language, especially, the name Kadazandusun. They are, as people, also referred to, nowadays, as Kadazandusun. Strategic family planning or the lack of it rendered them to lose their position as the densiest race in Sabah in much later years, especially nowadays! This could well be attributed to the effect of education in general. In and around the years 1950s and years following, there was a great awakening for the thirst of education in general from amongst the Kadazandusun people in the District of Penampang. Such desire was evidently prompted by the availability of two schooling facilities provided for by the Catholic Missionary in a Kampung in the Penampang District. There were two schools, one for boys and another one for girls. The boys’ school was named St. Michael’s Primary School and the girls’ St. Joseph’s Convent Primary School. Those schools were established much earlier, in and around 1929, or thereabout, when the foreign missionaries came to the land. But, alas! not every child could go to those schools. Only school going children from the immediate vicinity of the schools were able to attend those schools. It was the distances from the other Kampungs to the location of those schools in Kampung Dabak, to be exact, which acted as one of the main deterant factors of the children’s schooling. Children from other further away Kampungs, therefore, could not attend school. Although there were lodging facilities provided for by the Catholic Missionaries, a lodge with the Catholic priests or the Catholic nuns, there were only very limited places and they were reserved for the very far-away children, the out of the district ones. They also acted as general help of the priests and nuns during non-schooling time. The locals called or referred to the boys as “tanak misin” or mission boys and the girls as “tanak kombin” or convent girls.