A Job That Has a Touch of Green
By Elizabeth John
FASHION co-ordinator, spare parts salesman, accounts assistant, adventure guide. What could they possibly have in common? Their surprising choice in vocation – nature guiding, writes ELIZABETH JOHN.
Miles away from the glittering fashion runways of the capital but still stylishly dressed in casual chic, Sahak Bah Udal has come to learn how to sell Malaysia’s green heritage to the world.
“I live in the shadow of Cameron Highlands, surrounded by jungles yet I don’t know anything about plants or animals,” admits the 35- year-old, blushing a little.
In Sahak’s Semai village of Ulu Geroh – an Orang Asli settlement near Gopeng in Perak – there is a committee on business and ecotourism which he heads.
So attending the recent nature guiding course in sleepy Kuala Selangor has been as much about setting an example as it has been about learning new skills.
“We’ve got so much to offer but how to go about telling visitors about it?
“That’s what I wanted to find out so I can teach the others,” he says of the community that has an adrenalin pumping rapid-filled river and the world’s biggest flower to show off to anyone who drops by.
The course, organised by the Tourism Ministry, the Wildlife and National Parks Department and Malaysian Nature Society, is held three to four times a year throughout the country.
According to the Natural Resources and Environment Ministry which supports the course, it is meant to provide the country with trained nature guides – the lack of which is causing us to lose out to other countries in the lucrative ecotourism sector.
It’s a tough combination of field work and classes which last a good 12 hours a day for two weeks.
Participants learn everything from environmental laws to camping and first aid skills, yet for some it’s just the start of their learning experience.
One time spare part deader P. Elangoven knows all about this – he deals with hi-tech camera-totting Japanese tourists who shoot million questions a minute.
The course has opened a whole new world to him, says the 33-year- old in halting English, but he needs to read up much more to satisfy his clients.
Most of them are people he met during the 13 years he worked in little town, 12 hours from Tokyo selling vehicle spare parts and learning the Japanese language he so effortlessly speaks today.
“Japanese people like golf … also shopping.
But they like jungle trekking and bird watching too, so I must know about all this,” says the native of Cameron Highlands who speaks in tones as soft and polite as the tourists he guides.
Even with experience, nature guiding isn’t easy, as many on the course discovered. Not everyone passed, says examiner and organiser Andrew Sebastian.
Sebastian, who heads MNS’s parks division, struggled to hold back a belly laugh or two at some of the answers candidates came up with.
One aspiring guide was asked what he would do if his group got lost in the jungle.
His answer: “Kita minum kopi dulu.” (We’d have a cup of coffee first).
“Of course the idea was to get everyone to calm down “but with limited hours of daylight in the forest, there’s no time to start up the fire, put the kettle on and have a little coffee break,” says Sebastian, his voice tinged with incredulous laughter.
One candidate even offered to make an examiner a soup from a protected species of pigeon.
“He thought he would earn brownie points for the extra effort.
“He didn’t know the examiner in disguise as a tourist was actually an enforcement officer with the Wildlife Department.”
Others didn’t stop the “tourists” from throwing sticks at the macaques lazing about in the trees at the Kuala Selangor Nature Park where the course was held.
Neither did they prevent the examiners from plucking leaves or sticking thoroughly chewed gum on trees.
The scolding that followed these fabulous faux pas killed any notion that this was an automatic-pass course.
“We are serious about quality. We don’t have enough quality guides,” says Sebastian.
“Sure eco-tourism is big business but it’s also important that guides understand the value of what they’re showing to tourists.”
Even for the experienced, nature guiding is demanding.
“When you take tourists white water rafting, all you talk about is safety. But in a jungle, you have to know everything right down to the scientific name of all the trees!” says the fit and feisty adventure guide Hafizi Yeap.
The 22-year-old happened to pick a spot near a mengkudu tree during the exam and perspired buckets explaining the A-to-Z of it to examiners.
He’d come to the course thinking it would a little less rough going than adventure tour guiding.
Thankfully, examiners were sufficiently impressed when he told them that the leaves of the mengkudu tree, popularly known as Noni, was used to help alleviate a cough when heated and placed on the chest, says Hafizi.
“We’re the first to meet tourists. What they hear about the country comes from us.
So I guess it’s important for a guide to know all these funny little details,” says Hafizi with a weary sigh.
Pint-sized Nurul Huda Razali didn’t have it much easier explaining the pokok kabung, a palm with feathery fronds.
It didn’t help that her only brush with nature was a during beach holiday a long, long time ago.
But her time at the course so attracted the accounts assistant that she’s keen to pursue it at the earliest opportunity.
Now in between jobs, Nurul says she would like to continue doing it part time even if her application for a government job comes through.
“You see, I got something from this course, I never thought I’d learn. A tree was a tree to me.” says the Kuala Selangor lass.
But the course has influenced not just her choice of career, its changed her view of the country.
Malaysia, has so much. She wants to show that to the world, even if its one tourist at a time.
“If I can do that one small thing, it will be great.”
(c) 2007 New Straits Times. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.