Living in the Ulu

This is the story of a young man’s sojourn in the rainforest of Borneo in the late 1960s. Told through letters sent home, the book reveals the life of a small Kadazan village and the relationship that grows between the villagers and the American Peace Corps volunteer who lives among them for two years.

In 1967, just four years after the birth of the Federation of Malaysia, a young man travels from his home in Michigan to a small, remote, rainforest village on the island of Borneo. Here he finds no telephones, electricity, radios, or running water, but plenty of cat-sized fruit bats, fire ants, monsoons, mangy dogs, and home-dwelling lizards that occasionally fall from the ceiling. He also discovers a rich culture and villagers who gradually welcome him into their circle. This travel memoir, written by former Peace Corps volunteer Ed Demerly, is based on letters the author wrote home during his two years in the ulu of Malaysia. Living in the Ulu captures Demerly’s sense of adventure, his determination to teach well, the challenges and joys of adjusting to a lifestyle simpler than what he’d known in Michigan, and the love that developed between him and his students and their families.

Author Biography

Ed Demerly, a native of Michigan, is a retired educator with forty-six years experience teaching students from fourth grade through college. He was an instructor for thirty-six years at Henry Ford College in Dearborn, Michigan, where he was the cofounder of the English Language Institute. He is past president of the National College English Association and recipient of the Faculty Lectureship Award, given in recognition for his 1992 lecture on the parallels between Gangsta Rap and Walt Whitman’s poetry. In addition to teaching two years in Malaysia with the Peace Corps and one year in Australia, he served as an airborne ranger in the Army Medical Service Corps. Today he lives with his wife, Martha, in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, where he organizes public forums focused on justice and peace, tends his garden, and continues to run 5K and 10K races (at eighty-one, he finds it much easier than in the past to place first in his age group). An audiotape interview focused on his Peace Corps experience is stored at the John F Kennedy Library in Boston.