Yesterday was my second time volunteering with T.H.E.seniors, and once again the 3 hours proved to be a humbling and meaningful experience.


My group consisted of Pin Jin, Bryan and myself, and we were assigned to visit Mdm Ho and Mr Lin. When we arrived at Mdm Ho's house, she greeted us in Hokkien and then we proceeded to help her with the household chores. One thing that struck me was how Mdm Ho remembered and recognised me from my previous visit, and asked me if I had been to her house before. While it was just a mere sentence, it really touched me as despite her old age, she took the effort to remember the volunteers and it also showed how much these weekly sessions meant to her.

After cleaning up the house, we then sat down to chat with Mdm Ho. My dialect is, unfortunately, really bad and I can only grasp a little of what she was saying, let alone communicate back to her. Thankfully, I had Bryan and Pin Jin as my helpful 'translators'. Also, when Mdm Ho realised that I could not understand Hokkien, she tried her best to speak in English instead, just for my benefit, which was really heartwarming. She talked mainly about her children and grandchildren, telling us stories of how successful their careers were, who was getting married, and so on. But apart from all the jokes and laughter, she also voiced out how she felt youths nowadays are becoming less filial to their elders. In her own words: "You only have one set of parents. Without your parents, you wouldn't even be here today." I guess this was the most humbling moment of the 3 hours I spent yesterday; realising that sometimes we take our own parents for granted and we should not take care of them just because it's an obligation but because we want to do so.

Before we knew it, it was time to go and visit Mr Lin. However, when we reached his house, Mr Lin told us that there was nothing for us to clean because there were other volunteers coming on Monday to help him. We then asked if we could go in and chat with him for a while, but he politely rejected us as he wanted to get some rest instead. With the bit of time we had left, we ran a few errands for Mdm Ho before calling it a day.

All in all, these two weeks spent with T.H.E.seniors have been undeniably heartwarming and undoubtedly meaningful. I would just like to say a big thank you to the volunteers for being so welcoming and friendly to all of us and for giving us the opportunity to give back to the society.


Annabel