'When You Learn to Laugh at the Same Things, Then You're Home'

Sabak, Malaysia

Sabah lies some 700 miles southeast of Saigon, on the other side of the South China sea. An island state in Malaysia, it occupies 29,000 square miles of northern Borneo.

Half a million indigenous peoples called Muruts, Dusuns, Brunsis, Bajaus and Kedayans live there, as do 100,000 Chinese who form the bulk of the commercial community. Western civilization, blown ashore by the winds of the British Empire a century ago, maintains a foothold on the coast. Only recently has the interior -- protected by mountainous jungle, leeches, more than 400 species of snake, wild pigs, monkeys, birds and butterflies -- begun to buckle under the bulldorers and books of the 20th century.

Sabah is also the home of 100 Peace Corps Volunteers, among them Ron Kuhl, a graduate of the University of West Virginia, and Beth Halkola, who received a B.S. in nursing from Michigan State University.

Rom is a teacher; Beth is a nurse. Both work in the interior sealed off from the coast by the dense jungle of the Crocker Mountains. Their post, Tambuman, is a town of 1,000 people. Some 10,000 people farm the surrounding countryside, where the careful geometry of the wet rice paddy is dominant.

That their work is both difficult and serious have taught Rom and Both not to take themselves seriously. "You discover what you need anywhere is to be content," Beth said. "It takes time, but you learn to communicate. When you learn to laugh at the same things as the people here ... then you are home."