Life in Primary School 3

When I was in Primary 3 and 4 (last 2 years in Pa’Main School) there are a few things that I remember fondly. We love our teachers. Our headmaster was Mr David Lian (Maran Tala).
Over some weekends that we do not go back to our own village, we would go to help him. (We would go home every forth- night not like when we were in Pr 1 and 2 which we did weekly)
We would go to help him get bamboo to fence his ponds or do small errands that he might think fit for us to do. I remember very well the time we went to cut down a tree to saw for our chalkboard (blackboard). It was mostly us, the Pa’ Umor boys with two or threePa’ Lungan boys. We were doing it with a long saw with a person at each opposite ends – you push and pull. There was no stream nearby where we could have our drink. We went to cut some vines to drink from. Our headmaster’s young son who wasn’t in school yet come, he too wanted to drink. One of us was helping him to drink from the cut vine when it accidently slipped and hit his mouth. His gum bleed and we were all so scared of our headmaster but he did not scold us.(I wonder if Yahya could recall this) That chalkboard was used till the school closed many years later.

It was those year when we were taught (by the late Raja Ngatan @ Lawai Busan) to plant new types of vegetables - cabbages,carrot, bitter gourd etc. We were very successful in planting them but the sad thing was we were not taught how to eat them!! The cabbages had that very strong smell, the white carrot we did not know how to cook – the top (leaves) were very bitter. I remember our cabbages grew so big we later ended using them for our football (it wasn’t good for football either).
We saw at that time, the colonial governor Sir Anthony Abell came to Bario and upon landing at the airstrip (now the place where Bario Asal village is built on) he was led to a patch of vegetable garden nearby. He just pull a red carrot and cleaned it with his hands and ate it !! Well now after all these years I could do that too.

In those days the football balls came with bladder and have to be pumped and tied up. At one time we ran out of football ball. The headmaster had a few bigger boys going all the way to Lawas town to buy new ones - about a week walk away. William Anyie and Malang Mawan (Siren Lemulun) still could remember this even. Football (soccer) was the only game we knew besides our traditional games those days.
Near the football field in Pa’ Main stood an old mango tree (I think it was ‘keramut’). It used to be the gauge for us to see how strong we were. We kick the ball up and see who could over shoot its height! I wonder if this mango tree is still there.