My 1st Official Visit (16 June 2012)

Today I followed 3 seniors to block 62 to visit 3 elderlies assigned by Yi An. To help break the ice and facilitate the visit, Yi An has generously sponsored 5 soya bean curds to our group so that we can eat and chat with the elderlies (applause).

Our group decided to visit Mdm Tan first, it’s my first time going to her house (and most of the elderlies’ house) so I was quite clueless of what to do. Fortunately the seniors in my group have plenty of experience and all of them can speak Hokkien (I can’t speak any Chinese dialect) so I just help out with the cleaning. A while later 3 other volunteers joined us. After we finished the cleaning, which wasn’t a lot because Mdm Tan’s house is pretty clean, we sat down to chat with Mdm Tan. My first impression of her was she has this indescribable sadness, although she’s smiling most of the time. As the rest chat with her, she would say old already, useless…  I don’t know her story but just looking at her “sad” smile I know she needs somebody to care. We noticed she’s been coughing and found out that she came down with a bad cough, a few times during the conversation she had to pause and cough out the phlegm in her throat. So immediately one of the seniors made a “pi pa gao” drink for Mdm Tan and told her the directions to make one by herself. We also reminded her to drink it thrice a day so that her cough might be cured. She thanked us, saying that she’s glad we showed concern for her. Although we’ve done so little, it seems to matter a lot to her.

Next we moved down the list to look for Mr Tan, we knocked on his door but there was no reply. We waited awhile, observing the gap beneath the door for any shadowy movements, putting our ears close to hear for any noise in the house but still, nothing. Not wasting time, we proceeded to look for Mdm Chow Moi. Sadly, “history” repeated itself. We knocked the door, waited for a response, but there was none. So we double confirmed the address, observe for movements, we saw some shadowy movements from the gap beneath the door and thought she’s in. We waited awhile but still nobody came to the door. A neighbour heard our “banging” and reminded us Mdm Chow Moi has hearing problems. Trying everything we could, we banged harder, raised our voices and spoke Cantonese to identify ourselves. But it was all to no avail. Therefore, we decided to visit Mr Chiu instead although he’s not on our list. We ran into him at the lift lobby earlier on and exchange a few words with him. One of the seniors said since he saw the bean curds we were holding we should treat him to one too.

Compared to the other houses I’ve visited, Mr Chiu’s house is less well lit and messier. We checked with him what to clean, he said nothing much, just mop the floor will do. However… we found no proper mop, we saw the “head” of the mop in the toilet but not its stick “body” so we searched a bit and found the “body” in the kitchen next to the basin. After we “assembled” the mop, we discover that Mr Chiu does not have the “thing” to squeeze the excess water out of the “mop-head”. So the senior mopping the floor had to use his hands to squeeze the “mop-head” dry.

Besides mopping the floor, we volunteered to clean the windows and scrub the kitchen’s wall and basins as they were covered with yellow stains and algae. We asked Mr Chiu whether he cooks at home and he replied sometimes, hence the yellow stains. We felt a sense of achievement when we returned the wall and basin to their original state and one of the volunteers even took a before/after photo. After the cleaning, we sat down, eat bean curds and chat with Mr Chiu, I was glad that he speaks mandarin so I managed to speak a few words with him J (finally…). We found out that Mr Chiu wakes up very early in the morning and if he oversleeps, it would be 7 a.m(!?). He’s looks like a cheery old guy, through our little chat he told us he likes to watch Taiwanese soap operas and once awhile he would take bus 61, fell asleep on bus and wakes up at the bus terminal.

After we bid farewell to Mr Chiu, we head to Mrs Ho’s place where the other group were. Mrs Ho looked at us as we came in and she recognized me from last week’s visit even though it was my first time there (“Yes!”). We stayed there awhile, talked about next week’s dumpling festival and say our goodbyes as Mrs Ho answered her phone call happily (it seems to be from her grandchild?).

(Epilogue) I found out that among my group, 3 of the volunteers are fresh graduates (the “seniors” I mentioned, not “seniors=elderlies”), although they’ve stepped into the “working” world, they continued to make time for voluntary work (it made me reflect on my past holidays… ashamed…)

Newcomer - ChunHai