Hi guys!! Being a new volunteer, I’m here to share my experience with the THES seniors! Last week, I went to visit Mdm T.A.K and Mdm C.Y.L together with the other newer volunteers Pei Yi and Jun Yang. It is a little disappointing that we are only able to spend one hour with each beneficiary because I was already kind of used to dedicating 2 hours with each of them.

Mdm T was as cheerful as always, she always seem to love our company. We help her with the mopping of the floor and the cleaning of the windows. This is my second time visiting her and I realized that these are the weekly household chores that us volunteers do for her. Mdm T has poor eyesight and she can barely make out what is in front of her so I’m amazed that she can still keep her house clean by herself, with the exception of us having to mop the floor for her. As we were cleaning we tried our best to strike a conversation with her. She can only speak Hokkien so the 3 of us, who are not fluent in Hokkien, struggle to hold a proper conversation with her. But as usual, she laughs it off and finds it pretty amusing that we are making an effort to converse with her. I really hope that there will be a workshop held for us to improve on our dialects!

The last time I visited her 2 weeks ago, one of the volunteers from another organization has given her a bottle of honey barbequed sauce. While explaining to her what it is used for, we noticed that the expiry date of the sauce is in a month’s time so we have adviced her to throw it away one it expires just in case it turns bad. While cleaning up the place, I chanced upon the opened bottle of sauce and asked her if she had tried it. She told us that she used it on chicken meat but she finds it abit too sweet for her liking. Apparently she finds it a waste to dump the sauce once it expires so she’s trying to use as much as she can before throwing it away.

We also helped her to look through her letters, which mostly consist of flyers. She seems keen about the advertisements and asks us what promotions are available. This time, she also showed us the Pioneer Generation package she received from the government. She requested us to help her check which of the clinics around her area has subsidies so she was pleased to know that the one she frequents is included inside.

Mdm T told us that she does not go out very often due to her disability to see clearly, hence it is inconvenient for her to travel far or to new places. She would be unfamiliar with her surroundings, which made her fearful actually. But she will be quite bored to be at home all day since she does not even have a television to watch, as she is unable to see, nor is she able to understand Chinese either.  I have offered to take her down for walks once again, but she declined my offer, saying that she do not wish to trouble others and become a burden. But I have never once thought that bringing the elderly around would be troublesome so I hope Mdm T can be a little more selfish and allow us to bring her down more often. She does seem to know that we have another beneficiary to tend to so she kept telling us to go and help out the other elderly instead.

After we left Mdm T’s home we went ahead to visit Mdm C. This is the first visit for all three of us so I thought that it will be awkward for all of us. But we manage to warm up with her quickly. Mdm C is very friendly and she noticed that we are all newcomers to her home. She only wanted us to do some simple cleaning of the windows. I wanted to offer more help seeing that she is wheelchair bound so she would probably have problems cleaning her house but she insisted that she is fine.

Later we sat down to chat and we soon started talking about language barriers between youths and the elderly, which brings us to the topic of asking her to be our Cantonese teacher! She taught us some phrases that we are keen to learn, and I made an effort to jolt down what we learn into my phone’s notes so that I can show off a little to my grandma. Mdm C seems quite keen to teach us but it’s hard to learn so much in a short span of time so we had to make do with the few standard phrases for now.

I found out that Mdm C is a smoker when I asked her about the ash tray on the coffee table. And initially I thought that it belongs to the tenant that is staying with her! Apparently Mdm C used to be an avid smoker who cannot survive without 2 packets of cigarettes a day, but now she does not smoke as much, which is quite a relief. She told us about how she bought tobacco leaves from the market now and rolls them in a piece of paper to make her own cigar because it is cheaper than buying a packet.

As we are leaving, Mdm C told us to drop by again when we are free. Even though we are all newcomers, Mdm C likes having us around. This leaves a deep impression on me as I realized that these beneficiaries really enjoy our company and look forward to our visits every week. And they actually remember us well! I remember Mdm T commenting that she can recognize my voice because I have visited her before. It makes me want to visit them regularly because despite their age, they will remember each and every one of us thus I feel that they will surely be sad if we stopped visiting them one day. And it certainly makes my heart ache because I’m only able to visit the elderly once every 2 weeks

But what’s for sure is that I will definitely treasure every visit that I go for and keep every moment spent with the elderly locked in my heart J   

Lynn ^-^