By Nrl Liya
Edited by Harith Syafiee
For those who did not know, there is an elective class for BENL students called Language in Community Engagement and one of the assignments in the course is for every individual to conduct a community engagement project; be it volunteering, raising awareness, or creating a donation movement, the highlight is to engage with a certain community or as we say in Malay ‘menaikkan semangat kemasyarakatan.’
So for my project, I decided to create a volunteering-based community engagement project at an animal petting zoo, G2G Animal Garden, and it was a total blast! I experienced so much fun with the animals alongside the caretakers, helping them clean up the area, feeding them, and even bathing the animals!
If you have never been to G2G Animal Garden, it is a zoo that promotes close touch with the animals, and I mean by that, I touched and petted all the animals that could be pets (except the reptiles….)
We arrived around 10 A.M. and were greeted by one of the workers who addressed herself as Obi but for formality, I called her Akak Obi. Akak Obi then introduced us to our first task of the day, to bathe the goats!
And let me tell you, the goats were adorable. They were the small ones but feisty for sure because they kept screaming and running away the whole time we tried to bathe them. And even funny, they HATED water. They kept screaming like children having a tantrum every time the water hit them, all I could do was laugh because it was cute.
We were given a makeshift ‘bathe coat’ from a plastic bag that Akak Obi cut for us because bathing the goat would not only wet us but stink us badly. (And it did, we were goated) We still smelled like stinky goats at the end of the day because their smell was indeed strong and stuck to our skin.
While my friend and I bathed the goats, my other friend was asked to feed the birds at the aviary and she loved it. She was so happy with the birds and I can’t blame her, all the birds were nice and very friendly. They would latch to your forearms if you offered it to them.
I found the birds endearing after a while, especially this one bird that latches onto my head rather than my arms.
When we finished our tasks, Akak Obi guided us to another caretaker where we needed to bathe horses, but it wasn’t just any horses, it was the smallest breed of horse, Fallabella. They were super adorable and small, and the two that we met were a couple which makes it even sweeter.
Sadly, I didn’t have the chance to bathe them with my friends because I was given a different task of sweeping up fallen leaves in bird cages. I swept alongside another caretaker who made sure that I was doing well and accompanying me. If I’m not wrong, I swept 5 or 6 cages, a peacock’s and chicken’s cages. I got scared by the peacock when it silently approached me but other than that everything went nicely.
By the time we finished our tasks, it was only 12.30, which surprised me at first because I did not think we were doing work for 2 hours and 30 minutes at all. I was ready to do more but the workers said that what we had done was already enough and that we could rest up.
Of course, the best way to rest up for us is to visit the cattery house, filled with fluffy and adorable cats. For some reason, probably the scent of the goats, the cats swarmed me and snuggled around my legs. I was the happiest woman at that time.
We received the lunch that the worker kindly brought to us (it was included in the package) which was truly delicious and ate it in front of the deer's cage. I was eating while watching the deer relaxing, truly a memorable moment. After that to kill some time, we toured the place as visitors. We stopped at every animal like bunnies, guinea pigs, parrots, cockatoos, and reptiles.
It was truly a great experience for all of us, it had been a while since I had that much fun and that was the first time I was in a volunteer program with animals. The animal caretaker was kind and helped us throughout the day, which I very much appreciated. I would love to volunteer here again, maybe with a bigger group of people, a potential TBC bonding program, maybe? Who knows!
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