The moment I walked into that school and saw the snaking long line of people, I knew I wanted to help. I couldn't help but paint a smile on my face as multiple kids and adults thanked me for coming to help.
Those kids, those adults, they were stateless people. Officially, they didn't have an identity, but unofficially, they were good, hardworking people that deserved to be recognized by the government. They had come here to seek a better life and make a living, but had come here illegally. They had stayed here for generations and generations, to the point where they didn't "belong" to any country anymore. They weren't recognized as a citizen of a country.
And me, I had come here to help them. I had come with my parents to help them and offer them help in any way possible, primarily when it came to healthcare. This was a yearly event, but as soon as my parents offered me this chance to go and help them and also take a glimpse at their lives, I knew I wanted to do so.
They had no idea who I was, and I had no idea who they were, but at that point, it didn't matter. We didn't see differences, but instead saw similarities. I knew that we all were human beings, and that we were all equally important. I was going to help, and I was going to help from the bottom of my heart.
We had come with a non-profit organization called the Tzu Chi Foundation. Every year, an outreach like this would be organized by them. Volunteers from Tawau (where the outreach is being held) and Kuala Lumpur would come to help these stateless people live a better life.
Lots of things were happening around the school. The dentists were carefully looking at everyone's teeth. The doctors were carefully inspecting the patients and making sure that they were in good condition and hopefully were thriving. The Chinese Traditional Medicine (TCM) doctors were performing acupuncture, focusing on every move they made. I watched lots of committed adults help wash kids' hair to make sure that their hair was free from lice.
I noticed that lots of kids had lice, and I think that this is because of their unfortunate living conditions. They don't have access to clean water or shampoo to clean themselves. They also don't have the privilege of bathing everyday.
When I realized this, I realized that we really are lucky. For most of us, having access to clean water or shampoo is not a privilege. Most of us have access to that and use it everyday. In fact, it's become a norm for us to take a bath with soap everyday. But these people, they don't have access to this thing that we use everyday.
I was assigned to help out at the pharmacy department. At first, I was confused because of the variety of medicines that were on offer to the refugees. I watched as many hands frantically scribbled down letters and words, labeling each and every bottle of medicine.
When reading the doctor's notes so that we would be able to see what we needed to dispense to the patients, I've noticed that lots of them suffer from illnesses such as diabetes and hypertension. Some of them needed lots of medicine - some of them took 8 tablets of a specific type of medicine everyday.
Because of that, I've learned that we are lucky. We all have a nice and comfortable life. We all have access to basic needs such as healthcare. Because of that, we can get all our problems/illnesses solved before they get worse. But this isn't the case for not only these stateless people, but also lots more people around the world. We all take this for granted sometimes. Because while we all are lucky and fortunate enough to have access to healthcare, on the other side of the world, there are many people who don't.
I also helped measure the kids' height and weight. I used that information to roughly calculate their BMI (their body fat). Some of them were really skinny and had a pretty low BMI. I think that this is because of how they were suffering from malnutrition.
I also got to take a glimpse at their daily lives and their living conditions. At the same time, we conducted home-visits. If the people were too sick or couldn't come to us at the site to receive medical treatment, then we would go to them at their house to help them.
I saw some people selling bags of what looked like ice cream or popsicles, but found out that inside those bags were oil, not ice cream. If they found a ringgit or two on the floor, they would be able to buy some oil for cooking purposes. I then realized why. Buying oil in large amounts would cost lots of money, and they couldn't afford all that. They didn't have as many rights as us, so they didn't receive as much salary as us.
They also didn't have very good living conditions. We had to walk across unstable wooden bridges to get to their houses. I was really careful not to fall off them. They had branched out into the sea (close to the shore) for more land to build houses. Most families only stayed in a small part of a house because they shared the house with other families. Only fortunate families had a whole house to themselves. Some of their houses weren't very clean either. I thought of my family and our house. We were 3 people staying in a house a lot larger than theirs. I had a whole room to myself. But my room was the size of a family's house in the village. They slept in that tiny space. I couldn't imagine sleeping in such a small room with lots of people. It would be extremely crowded, I thought, bearing in mind that one family had about 4 kids on average. Some fortunate families had a whole house to themselves, but usually, that was only because they had an extremely large family. I remember meeting a mother who had just given birth to a baby, but her oldest child was about 20/30 years old (I forgot the age) because she gave birth to a baby almost every year.
I also met another kid who suffered from what the doctors think is scabies. His hair was also white and looked like it had got infected or something (this is something different, not scabies). Some of his hair had also fallen off. I don't know why this happened to him, but I think (and the doctors also suspect) that it was because of the poor living conditions and the fact that he didn't get to take a bath very often. Even when he could take a bath, it was usually with dirty water, which could possibly explain why he had scabies.
I've learned that we are lucky. We all have the basic needs that we need and all have rights in this world. But these people don't. They have escaped from their country, and have lived here for many generations, therefore becoming stateless. Their identity has been taken away from them. We are very lucky to be able to live such a nice and comfortable life, but on the other side of the world, we don't know much about the lives of people that are not as fortunate as us. While most of us are aware that there are lots of people who aren't as fortunate as us, but never go and take a glimpse at their lives to experience and see their real suffering and what they have all gone through.
There is a closed door isolating this information from all of us. But if we take a step and open that closed door and step away from our nice and comfortable life, we will find that on the other side, there are lots of people who are not as fortunate as us, and live a life anything but comfortable. But if we do commit to help these people, I truly believe that the world will become a better place for all of us and future generations to come. And I think that this should be our main priority. To take care of not only ourselves and this place, but to also take care of others so that our world will advance and thrive, and the world will become a better place for all of us.
No comments:
Post a Comment