From April 26 until April 30, I spent five days in Sepang for a very significant and special camp. The name of the camp is Kem Bina Negara Tanjung Rhu. Five days without phone and lack of sleep. Lack of sleep is normal for me, but living without a phone is something which rarely happens in my life. However, the absence of a hand phone was a good thing as I could save money from being used on calling or texting people. Besides, when the hand phone was not around, I didn't have to think about the safety of my phone there. I enjoyed all the activities there. They actually made us ran 2 km within 15 minutes. That was something very hard for me to achieve because I haven't exercised for a month. Surely my stamina has decreased. However, with my spirit of "I can do it!", I finished the activity in 14:17. OK la tu...girls are supposed to finish the run within 24 minutes. However, at night i could feel the pain of muscle tear in my thighs. Most of us had the same thing because we didn't warm up properly before we ran. The pain was felt especially when I tried to sit down or stand up. Apart from this activity, I like other activities too like absailing.
In my opinion, it should be made compulsory for all Malaysians who are 18 years old and above to attend Kem Kewarganeraan a.k.a Kem Birotatanegara. Then only these Malaysians, especially the young generation can understand the real meaning of independence of Malaysia. Before I attended the camp, I was ignorant about the history of independence of Malaysia. I knew that some of our ancestors had to sacrifice a lot of things in order to get the independence of our country from British. But, I never thought of understanding their feelings at that time. The last activity that we did with the facilitators was the most interesting of all. They actually brought us back to the decade before Federation of Malaya gained independence, with them playing the role of the British. The whole scene was played back with this group of ignorant people who didn't care at all about gaining independence, some people who didn't do anything wrong but was caught by the "British" and were forced to admit their mistakes (the innocent warriors), some people who worked hard in finishing our task : to produce our own Jalur Gemilang from pieces of red, yellow, white and blue cloths (patriotic citizens) , and some people who had nothing to do and just did their own businesses. I was one of those who prepared the Jalur Gemilang, so I didn't really understand what's going on with all the shoutings from all over the hall. I just know that I had to protect the flag from the "British". Only after we're done with our tasks that some of us reflected on what they thought of the whole scene and after listening to a very touching story from one of the facilitators about how hard our ancestors sacrificed for bringing independence to Federation of Malaya. OMG ! I cried like a don't know what but the tears were flowing very fast continuously. What the facilitators had done to us was just a mocking scene of how our ancestors tried to gain independence. My tears was nothing compared to their tears in trying to gain independence. I love my country, Malaysia !
On the last day, we had an exam. I thought it would be difficult, but it wasn't. It was very easy because most of the questions are common sense. One more thing, I had a minor accident in front of my dorm in the camp as I had accidentally fall into a small drain while trying to cross the drain with my heavy luggage. Somehow,while trying to cross the drain, I stepped on my black sarong. So, I tripped and fall on the ground. Whoa, it was very painful ! I sprained my left ankle. When my friends asked me whether I'm alright or not, I just said I'm ok even though I'm not ! I pretended that nothing had happened and tried to walk with the pain that only me and God knew how it felt like. I tried my best to walk normally so that people wouldn't notice that something bad had happened to me. Even until now, now that I'm writing, the pain from yesterday's incident is still torturing me...
Thanks to all the facilitators for making me understand that I should not feel at ease with the independence that I gained now because the independence might be gone again if Malaysians do not care about their country. Hopefully a lot of youngsters like me realize about this reality. I ♥ Malaysia!
