Second time at Salngan

The first time I went to Salngan, which is in Oton, it was a pleasant trip with Ps David and Laureen. But the second time was on 17 May afternoon, after finishing up the youth camp the night before. The boys and girls split up so that only Ps Cat, Laureen and I went.

It rained heavily that day and if you recall my previous post about Salngan, it's a much more rural place. The ground is not just wet, it's muddy, such that it was quite impossible to walk with our slippers on because they would be sucked into the soil. So we went barefooted. For the first half of the walk, Ps Cat didn't want us to put on our ponchos cos she says it's not fair for Ps David who doesn't have one. To this day, I'm still puzzled why she said that. Later when one of the villagers gave Ps David an umbrella, then we decided to put on our ponchos.

*I'll never get to wear a poncho in Singapore and so it felt really cool wearing one! I felt invincible against the rain cos I have my poncho!

Every stepped I took, I couldn't help but cringe cos I kept thinking that I'd be stepping on cow dung, which really looked like the mud I was stepping on! In my mind were pictures of worms and bugs and leeches biting me. I feel quite idiotic when I think back about it. The flat grounds were dangerously slippery, Ps Cat and Laureen both fell once, soiling their pants. Just when we were resting under the shelter of one of the villager's home, two crazy kids went running like 'free' past us. That scene was quite hard to absorb cos minutes ago, I was walking like a duck over that same ground.

So Laureen and I did children ministry again. There wasn't an interpreter for us this time, so with all our might, we tried to connect with the children using gestures. We taught them 3 children Christian songs but when just as I was about to tell them the story of Gideon, Ps David said it's time to go. So sad!

So we walked back to the jeepney, squish squish. We washed our legs in a mini pond filled with rainwater before going into the jeepney, which is something like a minivan. 5 minutes later, the jeepney broke down. It wasn't very surprising cos on the way there, we were riding over rather large potholes filled with rainwater, thus causing the engine to be affected. I came down from the jeepney twice to push it from the back! Finally we came to this mini waterfall, whose path was just across the road! At the side of the road was a steep fall, which was the waterfall. The level of water was just-below-my-knee deep. So we waited. Remember there's only me, Ps Cat, Ps David, Laureen and Jeban who is Ps David's 5 year old son. 3 girls and 1 man won't be able to push the jeepney sia! And we waited. Finally some strong male villagers passed by and helped us to push.

To cut the long story short, the journey was long and took a couple of hours and the sky darkened pretty soon, forcing us to abandon our next mission of going to another children programme. By this time, I was falling sick, my back was sorely aching, the ache started the day before and everytime I breathed deeply, my shoulders hurt. Other than that, I felt fine though. Somewhere along the way, the jeepney roared back to life, Praise God!

Before I slept, my back was too painful to bear. It was 'suan'. I asked Laura to give me a massage but it didn't do good. Then Auntie Mag gave me this really good chinese massage. She started pressing along my spine.

Auntie Mag: Oh, you got 'feng' in your back.
Me: Huh? How you know?
A.M: I press, I know already. It's because you every bathe so late and sleep so late with your hair still wet.

Expert sia! After her massage, my back really felt so much better. It felt liberated. What an awesome day. :) And I mean it.