Kampung Days

Contributed by Salome in 2019

Hello everyone!

Last week, Sim Lin Ping Salome (NYC) and I decided to blast into the past, back to the good ol’ kampung day’s for our full land expedition programme.

Objective:

• Allow students to appreciate and be immersed in the heritage Pulau Ubin

• Experience simple activities back in the kampung days

🏚 What is the whole framing about?

In our white top, sarong and rattan fan, we announced to the watches from Camp 2 Echo (Tenzing & Shackleton) that Pulau Ubin is in danger and the authority had made plans to urbanised the island. We needed their help to come up with a proposal to be presented to the board of government officials to buy over plot of land and preserve the island’s heritage for the younger generation. Thus, they would need to venture out the island to different heritage trail (HT) checkpoints or place of interests (POI), consolidate as much information as possible and compete a team challenge at every single HT or POI, the winning watch will then own the piece of land and it will be theirs to keep.

Shout out to our acting board of government officials: Muhammad Naiim bin Ahmad (NYC) and Firman Shah Abdullah (NYC)

HT/ POI involved that were on sale:

- Ubin Quarry, German Girl Shrine, Hill 31-Tajam Trail, Aunty’s Farm, Chek Jawa, House No. 1, Ubin Village, Sensory Trail and Wei Tou Fa Gong Temple

🧰 What tools for the framing?

We overlaid framing with the programme, where we build our watch and equip them with the necessary skills needed. Team charters and role allocations were illustrated on the good morning towels. Using simple props and even going propless was our way to go to present challenge to them. We also introduced the 10 lenses from Sense of Place (mentioned in Team 7 Environmental Education’s post) split into 5 and 5 for the watch to view them in their respective proposal presentations.

For the heights portion, we had a money point system where they would have to earn kampung beans (our framing currency) through their respective height element.

• Flying Fox for Shackleton where to they to reset the system on ground, ready for next flyer under 7 minutes.

• Wild Woosey for Tenzing where they have to buddy up with a friend from different gender and different school to pass the mid line of the cable.

Respectively, ST attained 200 beans and TE attained 180 beans. The beans were their money to buy the celebration dinner ingredients put up by Salome at her mini C2E market.

The whole week of buddyship was nothing but amazing, despite wearing the sarong over for about 21km for their land expedition, bamboo rafting in the quarry, pontoon jump, reminiscing the good old games played in the past and just letting the students be themselves with the elements. Kampung spirit was definitely felt and I’m glad to have did it with Salome. 🚲

Do click on the pictures we captured throughout the whole process and let us know if you have more ideas for such similar framing or better improve our delivery.

🌴🍃☘️

Additional comments

Alex Tan: We once did a land ex framing with a similar storyline, again it was gov officials vs villagers. But we left it open to the pax to decide if they wanna side with the gov (redevelop) or side with the villagers (preserve). In the end the 4 watches decided to preserve (phew!) with some redevelopment to make the place more sustainable and visitor friendly, so kinda like a compromise. It allows for critical thinking, rather than imposing a stand on them.

We also did an opening skit (Azriana and Hon Peow were villagers, Azmi was the gahmen) in the new learning room. When you switch off the lights it's really dark, can really signify "next scene" like in a play. And use rescue torchlight like a theatre spotlight. 😂

Try it! Of course it helps when you have like-minded buddies like Sin Hon Peow (NYC)