Last weekend, @borneoairbrush and his wife, @inugarang conducted a ‘gotong-royong’ (clean up charity activity) at Tamparuli Living Arts Centre(TaLAC) where they volunteered to stay and take good care of the place since 2017.

What is TaLAC?

A place to establish and provide a cultural and resource centre for the living and creative arts for Sabah in particular, and Malaysia as a whole.

The aim of this activity was to include everyone to participate in this gotong-royong and helps to maintain the community spaces clean, accessible, convenient and user-friendly.

You can find out more about this cleanup activity here.

Day 1

When we arrive at TaLAC, we saw both @borneoairbrush and @inugarang were resting after a long, hard work cleaning up the area. @danieldoughty even brought his own ‘toy’ – the backpack grass cutter. Since we arrived quite late in the afternoon, @danieldoughty didn’t wait any longer and quickly started to cut the grass.

Less than an hour, it started raining. He continued cutting the grass for about 20 minutes before he stopped. We rested while having ‘Lihing’ – local rice wine, to quench our thirst.

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@inugarang took me for a tour around the area and we leave the guys with the ‘Lihing’ 😆.

It was then I smelled something so nice (and yummy) that I could not resist from asking @inugarang. It was the starfruits! There were so many ripe starfruits on the ground and politely, I asked @inugarang if I can take some and bring back home.

When I show it to the guys, @borneoairbrush told us the chikoo tree is fruiting too. Being a fan of chikoo, @danieldoughty took a bamboo pole and help himself getting the fruits from the tree.

We had to stop all the activities when it started to rain heavily and called it a day.

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Day 2

Today, we were joined by @srapdsign, @bboyady and his girlfriend, Liza. Despite the rain since early morning, we continued our second day of gotong-royong.

credits to @srapdsign

And today, I get to test my grass cutting skill using a machete. I did that for less than an hour before I stopped. Haha. Hats off to @inugarang for able to do that all this while in such a big area. On the other hand, @bboyyady had the opportunity to try the backpack grass cutter 😝.

@bboyady and the grass cutter

@inugarang with her machete

By the time the gotong-royong ended, all of us gathered at the common area for the delicious refreshments provided by @inugarang herself.

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@inugarang even invited me to check out her workstation. Besides drawing and sketching traditional motives pattern called ‘Simpapak’ for @borneoairbrush tattoo designs, she is also actively doing beads for wedding accessories or daily wear. She even gives me a handmade bracelet made with 'Dalai' beads.

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It was indeed a worthy effort and a sense of satisfaction to be able to participate in the cleanup activity for TaLAC. We really hope that the community especially the artists in Sabah could come to participate as TaLAC is a place where all the artists could gather and support among themselves.

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