Brian's Story
It is like our supermarket, our pharmacy, our building centre. Our everything. Imagine if someone bulldozed
down the shops that supply your daily needs and sold everything on their shelves to someone in a country on
the other side of the world. How would you feel?
My uncle got a job with the logging company, thinking that he could make some money so he could send his
kids to school. But he had to think again - they paid him so badly that he threw their money back at them
and told them to pay him properly. Many of the girls who work in the camps, doing laundry and cooking for
the Malaysian loggers, fall pregnant by the foreign workers before they are abandoned with their babies. In
the village culture this brings shame to those girls and the family. Lives are ruined before they have begun.
The logging companies create tension amongst our people, some people take the temptation to earn money,
but the money never comes back to everyone. When a company comes in they are supposed to provide
infrastructure such as roads with bridges or culverts to protect our water sources.
