Happy Chinese New year in advance! My group which consist of Weijiang, Joleen, Huijia and me visited Mr Lin today. As im quite bad with names, i was trying to recall and match the face to the name when i remember this:
credits to Kok Seng
Anyway, as we went into his house, we found two other volunteers from the TOUCH center in his house, busy cleaning. Upon talking to them, we realised that Mr Lin had actually went downstairs in the morning to seek help in adjusting his bed and the two volunteers went up to help him. However, they went beyond their duty and helped him da sao chu.
So the four of us joined in and helped with the cleaning. It was literally like a warzone in his house, we were basically fighting with all the bedbugs and small cockroaches that were spewing out from anyway and everywhere. We also realised that his mattress was infested with so much bedbugs that Mr Lin was actually bitten and dried blood stain can be seen all over the floor. One of the TOUCH volunteer decided to get a new mattress for Mr Lin and he went to the nearby NTUC, and came back with new bed sheet, pillow cases, cloth, cleaning detergents which he kindly gave all to Mr Lin.
Mr Lin do has a habit of keeping all the food stuff despite not eating them and we were desperately trying to convince him to throw away some of the food items which were expiring soon. He kept reasoning that he wants to give the food to the bangla who sweeps the floor and its a waste to throw. Luckily after much persuasion, he allow us to throw away some of his soon to be expired maggi mee.
We took almost 1.5 hrs before we managed to finish with our chores. The amount of bedbugs around had truly made some of us paranoid as one of the TOUCH volunteer, Lisa, mistook a mole on her hand as a bedbug and tried to kill it hahhaha!
Here's a photo with our new made friends!
After all the cleaning, we finally had time to sit down and start on doing the decorations, with HuiJia attempting to do the snake and Joleen improvising some artwork with angbaos. Weijiang and I, with our limited artistic skills contributed with our eye power and entertaining a happy Mr Lin, who was comfortably sitting on his new bed.
hanging on the wall is the snake deco that Hui Jia made and behind, Joleen and WeiJiang were using angbaos to make the Fu word. Initially, we wanted to paste the Fu on the outside of his door but Mr Lin keep insisting on pasting on the inner side of the door so that he can see and admire!
Time was really passing fast and soon, we were going off. Personally for me, i really hate this part of the visit because its really hard to say goodbye, especially when we are having fun. However, I think because of this, it really spurs most of us to come back weekly, if not fortnightly.
One last group photo before we leave!
Anyway, for those who will visit Mr Lin in the coming weeks, do hope you guys help to check with him if the bed bugs are still giving him problems and if you do see blood stain on the floor, it means that the bedbugs are biting Mr Lin and we do need to do something about that. And do check his food stuff regularly and coax him to dispose of those expiring soon if not cockroaches will be joining soon!
Lisa, the TOUCH volunteer posted me a question that truly sets me thinking. halfway through cleaning, she asked me: "Why are you doing this?". Not for any CCA points, not to come here xian charbo, not here just to fulfill some course requirements, but simply, because we want to help.
Volunteering, in the past, for me, is all about doing compulsory CIPs, Flagdays which i have no idea where the money which i collected goes to and clocking hours just to fulfill the quota. Since coming to NUS and joining THES, I've finally found the true meaning and the joy of volunteerism.
Signing off,
Clement
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