The Three Kadazandusun Educational Visionaries

During those early years of the decade, there was a concentrate of three Kadazandusun kampung leaders in the Penampang District. Although they were all from the same district they happened to nurse the folly of non-communication innocence with each other. Were they naturally and by nature too secretive of their own ideas? They all had the same vision; to put up a school of some sort, the like of the ones set up by the Penampang Catholic Missionaries, and teaching all the surrounding kampung children how to read and write in their own language, first and foremost. It was also unwise to heap blames on anyone of them as they were all separated by at least one day’s walk and further more they did not really know each other socially. Still, being Kampung leaders, they could have taken initiatives to know each other better. Kampung Sugud was a good 10 kilometers walk to the nearest town in those days. One’s typical journey from Kampung Sugud to the District Office, the administrative centre of the Penampang District, would entail a straineous walk through padi fields and riverine path for more than an hour, at least, and then an upstream riverboat paid ride. The total time taken for a to-and-fro trip would be one day. Comparatively speaking, the nowadays infrastructures enable one to reach Kampung Sugud in matters of minutes from the Administrative Secretariat, the location of the Administrative centre of the District, in those days. There is a sealed road leading to this said Kampung. Youngsters call Kampung Sugud, Kampung “so good” /sougud/. Gundohing O.T. Lojimon, the officially appointed village chief and a natural kampung leader of Kampung Sugud at that time, saw to the harmoneous accord of the villagers residing in his Kampung. He would give free advice to his villagers who would come forward to talk to him and he would pronounce impartial sogit to villagers’ misunderstandings. In those days the District Officer was naturally a British National since Sabah, North Borneo then, was a British Crown Colony. The District Officer and entourage would have to ask for permission, so to speak, from the Kampung O.T. (Orang Tua), a title name-reference nowadays changed to K.K. (Ketua Kampung), if ever an official Kampung visit was made. The late Gundohing O.T. or K.K. Lojimon built the first Kadazandusun Primary School in Kampung Sugud, a homogeneous Kadazandusun Kampung, in the Penampang District. One of the many still alive products of that school was a senior Malaysian school inspector retiree, a deserved title holder of the Kadazandusun term, Gundohing, for a respected elder, Gundohing Michael Majon!