Saturday, July 16, 2005
Charity Work

During my sharing sessions in my RCIA class, the topic of charity work came up. Anyway, my cell group is supposed to organise one such activity where we can all participate so we were brain-storming on what we could do...everybody had their own interests of course (old age homes..children etc) but it was agreed then that children could be easier for us to deal with. I beg to differ...let me share one of the experience I had encountered during my last trip to a children's home.

We were visiting the Moral Home for the Disabled Children. This home is a private charity organisation (not subsidized by the government), runned by volunteer members of the public. The children occupants of the home are not disabled in the sense of being handicapped or crippled. It's just their mental state. The home was in a poor condition. The toilets were wet and dirty and the pipes were leaking. The gates barring the rooms are rusty and the rooms were is disarray. Tables and chairs were also in poor condition, some broken and had splinters at the sides. It was painful just to look at the place they stay and at the children. The children were nevertheless happy to see us, and they gathered around us and started talking to us. One of the girls started a conversation with me and my other half...she told us that she missed home and she hope that her sister will bring her home for the Chinese New Year. She shared that her sister had sent her here and had refused to take her back ever since a few years back. Silly me, I asked 'why' would her sister do that (Why - I think this is a forbidden question when you do visit the unfortunate...and unfortunately for me, I sadly learnt the truth). The girl became a little more violent and told us in crude mix of Hokkien and English that her father had sex with her a couple of times and her family has sort of blamed her for that. Her actual words were 'He put his penis into my chi-bai and have sex with me, you know....many nights he come into my room and use his lan to put inside my chi-bai'. We were shocked and did not know how to react. She continued to say her sister had reported the matter to the authorities and the police came, investigated and took her father away. She did not know that what her father did was worng and said that she liked her father a lot and that she did not mind what he had done to her. It was her sister's fault that she is in the home and that her father is serving time.

God! I was very disturbed after that episode. I mean it is still disturbing up to this moment. After that day, I knew for sure that I am not the sort who could do this on a long-term basis. I'll probably have nightmares after hearing the stories these children gotta share. These children, whose lives are messed up because there are perverted people in our world who would take advantage of their mental state. These stories stay with me for a long long time. Somehow, it's different hearing it with my own ears than reading from newspapers or from the TV. It's just so much more disturbing.