A fitting resting place

In January of last year I had my first set of Australian visitors come to see me in Tawau - my friends Anne and Paul who stopped by on their honeymoon. It was a rare opportunity to put aside my responsibilities for the weekend, and also my first time out of Tawau since arriving. One sweaty Sunday afternoon, after church, we drove to Semporna, the next town - around 100km away. I remember sitting down at the famous floating restaurant, looking out over the magically clear water, eating magnificent food (fish that had only been caught a few minutes earlier) and drinking cool beer, and breathing perhaps my first sigh of relief in one month.
Today I returned to Semporna, with Aunty Wendy, an older Chinese lady who now does much the same job in the student hostel that I had last year. She had been wanting very much to go to Semporna and could not find anyone with the time to accompany her. I, fortunately, also wanted someone to go there with. We shared the driving, ate seafood for breakfast and lunch and took a boat to a small island adjoining one of the many kampung air (water villages) peppering the coast. The boat was suitably wild, belly-slapping the surface of the water at opportune intervals, the boat's driver seemingly dodgy at first then proving quite the gentleman, and the children at the kampung initially standoffish then wondrously happy when our cameras came out, jumping and dancing for no reason aside from apparent joy. They followed us to the jetty, echoing each other all the way down with repeated cries of, "Bye bye! Terima kasih! Jumpa lagi!" ("Thankyou. See you again.") One child introduced a variation with, "Terima kasih! Jumpa lagi! Makan (eat) KFC!"), and by the time I was in the boat the cry had become, a little unusually, "Thankyou, daddy, I love you, daddy". They also enjoyed poking my feet, which they found to be delightfully white. It was a suitably odd and joyful moment that I feel I have to record, for the sake of remembering it when moments like these seem rather strange and unlikely to have ever actually happened.

I later found out that the name "Semporna" means place of rest. Like "Brunei Darusalam" ("Abode of Peace"), it forms one of the most aptly named places of momentary rest and peace in the busy life I led while here. Today it was also an oasis of peace after two and a half days of fairly solid time spent back at my old school. Driving back to Tawau, up the lush oil-palm-lined hill that led us home, I looked ahead at the clouds and blue sky set against the alarming green-ness of the Sabah landscape and thought of the resting place that still awaits me - a resting place I will never have to leave, never have to say "Bye bye" or "Jumpa lagi", but where I can dwell forever, with a permanent, resounding "Terima kasih". That, I suspect, will be the day to end - and begin - all days.