Arafats farm, Kebun Kaki Bukit, part two.
You can follow the farm on their FB page, and contact them if you wish to volunteer.
Face Book Link
For the first time in our trip we returned to a place, why? Firstly it was about air planes our next stop was going to be Australia and we found an amazing deal with Air Asia to fly from KL to Sydney. So we decided to go back and see our friend Arafat and the farm that he is building..
When we originally arrived in February he had been there just one month and everyone was living in shipping containers and cooking on the industrial part of the property, there were no growing beds and no water irrigation systems, when we had left we had moved to the new accommodation moved the kitchen to a new place and cleaned up the area and started digging fields for crops.
We arrived for our second stay in the evening and immediately felt at home reuniting with a good friend and some other great volunteers who would also quickly become friends. One thing that shocked me was the presence of new buildings, a kitchen, a place to eat protected from sun and rain, the main house had walls!! Wow it was great to see how much can change in just a three month period with a little effort and help from willing hands!
The next morning I woke up and had a look around some of the land and was happy to see that there were crops growing in the soil! Not everywhere but a good area, Okra, Spinach and Corn were planted and ready for harvest... and of course weeds!! A new water irrigation system had been built with sprinklers to help the plants in the dry season.
The first morning we started weeding, which is back breaking monotonous work or great meditation depending on you! We had a great team of volunteers which made the time at the farm the more enjoyable and we hope to stay in contact with all and see you all again.
On one of the night on the first week we had an incredible storm, the rain and lightning were intense and we had thoughts of Noah and his ark...! After many hours of torrential rain it finally stopped, the sun came up and we got up to see what the effect was of that much rain in such a short period... the moats were full, but holding. This time round the Malaysian wet season had forgiven us it did not rain again so the waters dissipated after a few days and returned to hot and dry conditions.
Arafat also organised that we volunteer at the KL zoo with some kids, we went along and helped were we could that the kids had a good day out at the zoo, Lili was sick that day, so we put her in a wheel chair to push her around the zoo, she fitted in well.
Sandrine has started making jewellery and hopes that she can make a business from her talents, so far every item has been a real work of art, although very time consuming, but well loved by all.
We also returned to the waterfall where we had previously lost our camera, this time it was a necklace and Arafat told us that previously one volunteer had fallen and broken her leg!! The place is obviously cursed.. stop going there Arafat!
Kuala Selangor is the local town and it has a market where Arafat started taking his produce to sell, we also visited the local nature park where you can see lots of crabs and mud skippers, and crazy aggressive monkeys who will steel your food.
At the end of our stay we spent two days in KL and stayed with Arafat's friends in there art cafe Findars, which is a very cool place, art gallery and music jam seasons plus a place to chill have a coffee etc. Lili was allowed a free reign of the drums and the stage and loved it!! The room that we stayed in was like a small oven but I kept reminding myself that our next stop was Sydney and it would be winter!! OMG
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