This teacher travels 101km to school

In front of him lies 46km of timber trails covered with red mud and 55km of paved roads. Around him are wild animals - snakes, wild cats and wild boars.

On his kapcai (low cc) motorcycle, Cikgu Zahir rides through this alone on his way to SK Nanga Entulau in Lubok Antu, Sarawak.

The Honda Wave 110s served him well in his five years of going back and forth from Sri Aman, several times a week.

There are three routes to reach SK Nanga Entulau from Sri Aman, the shortest of which is 90km and the longest is 101km. But the shorter route is now unusable on a two-wheeler.

“The road disconnects at certain points. I had once used it when riding at night and got lost in the jungle. I had to be rescued and only reached my place (in Sri Aman) at 1 am,” he said, in a post on his colleague’s Facebook page recently.

Cikgu Zahir, a father of one, is the only teacher from Peninsular Malaysia at SK Nanga Entulau.

The Kuala Selangor native has served as a teacher for six years, following his graduation from IPG Kampus Pendidikan Teknik in Nilai, Negri Sembilan.

SK Entulau was the first school he was assigned to.

“When I heard the name Lubok Antu, I felt quite frightened but I pushed on because I had vowed to teach wherever I was assigned,” he said, referring to the name of the district, which literally translates to ‘Ghost Gulf’.

Speaking to Malaysiakini, Cikgu Zahir said the worst experience of his long commutes was during the haze crisis which hit Sarawak earlier this year.

At the time, not only did he have to go through the long and arduous journey, he also had to do it in thick haze, with the Air Pollution Index reaching hazardous levels of 400.

“The journey to school goes through some hillside tracks. It was very risky because there was low visibility due to the thick smog and haze in the air,” the 29-year-old said.

Teaching children in the interiors also poses different challenges, Cikgu Zahir said.

As an Information and Communications Technology teacher, his job is to teach the students how to use computers and information technology.

But unlike their urban counterparts, SK Nanga Entulaus students can only access the internet at very limited speeds, making it is almost impossible for all students in the class to go online at the same time.

It is also one of the reasons Cikgu Zahir commutes from Sri Aman - his duties, including administrative work, requires him to access the internet.

He said the students are also removed from the rest of the world, making it at times a challenge to introduce new concepts to the students.

“If you can imagine, there are students who have never been on a car ride or have never seen the ocean.

“They have only seen these things in pictures or videos, but they don’t have personal experience of it so it’s difficult for them to learn and understand certain concepts,” he said.

Being far from his wife and baby is hard for Cikgu Zahir, who hopes that one day he can return to Selangor to teach in his home state.

But the kindness of the Iban community gives him the motivation to press on, he said.

“I have received all sorts of extraordinary gifts from the community. One of the most interesting was tekuyung, which is a kind of river snail that can only be found in a certain part of the river. It makes a delicious dish when served with rice,” he shared.