People often ask me: “Wher yuuu flom?”
And I always tell them: “London”
As they always used to look blank when I told them “Mighty Mighty Loughborough”
Other things that people ask me are:
1. Did I save the fish?
2. Were there any severed pigs heads and much murder on Balak?
3. Did doing a marine conservation project change your life?
Despite the prospect of being stuck for the next 6 hours in a god-forsaken place called Tawau, that the guidebooks will tell you ‘has little to offer the traveller’, I’ll cut a long story short, and actually answer the above, without resort to changing the subject much or answering with my own questions.
1. Did we save fish: We taught one of the local fisheries department how to dive as part of our expedition phase. He protects the fish and reefs in the area from bomb-fisherman. He may or may not use a big gun to do this. His name is Jamal, and he can use his chin to point at things. He only ate one piece of protected marine life during our 4 weeks together, and didn’t stand on coral all the time. See, it’s all about education, and working with the local community. Developing capability and all that. Which we did to an extent, even getting onto nodding terms with some guy at the nearest ‘town’ on the next island who had a mullet, big boots and a grizzly scar, and looked like a villainous pirate from an 80s kungfu movie.
As a side note, did we eat fish? Yes, about 5 times in 10 weeks. And it’s hard hacking them into pieces with blunt knifes, or even blunt parangs. But we did it, protein-starved fools that we were.
On another side note, did any of the previous expeditions discover the hotdog laden freezer in the ‘shop’ in the nearest ‘town’ on the next island? No. Did Ron bring hotdogs to Balak? Yes. Where they a mjor boost to the protein in the diet of boys and the occasional girl? Yes. Did the ‘town’ on the nearest island have a consistent and constant electricity supply? Not really. Does freezing food and thawing it out really help its shelf life? Not really. Was there alot of Balak Belly? Hmm, well, a fair bit. Could he have entered photos of our toilet in RateMyPoo? Most definitely. Did we? No, the digital camera became separated from its lead.