A
few days ago, I went with our pastors to a retreat home in Goa to have a time
of learning and relaxation. At the retreat
home, I went into the bathroom and just filled a bucket. I marvelled at the fact that I could fill a
bucket for my shower directly inside the bathroom & I didn’t have to carry
it from a water tank outside. In the
middle of my bucket-and-pail shower, I turn the shower head’s knob and to my
surprise, a constant stream of water flows out.
I have been so used to showering with pail and bucket, and no working
shower head for the past 5 months that I didn’t even SEE the shower head until halfway
through my shower. The next morning, I
walked into the bathroom and filled a bucket.
I only remembered the working shower head after my shower.
This
experience got me reflecting on the challenges of bringing higher living
standards to underprivileged individuals. When I was living in the outskirts of
Bangalore for my DTS, my friends and I became quite close to some neighbouring
kids that live in poverty. We had fun
with them, took them to Sunday School, treated them to snacks, and met some of
their needs. They had no underwear and
slippers. A few days after we bought it
for them, we asked where their slippers were, as we saw them running around
barefooted. They had left their slippers
at home because they weren’t used to wearing them. The rest of the 2 months my friends and I
were there, they only wore the slippers for special occasions when we went to
town. They also didn’t always wear their
underwear & lost them 1 by 1.
Apparently the 4-year-old boy would throw his underwear over the fence.
I’ve
seen a group of boys at a children’s home blessed with a tiled floor. They had a concrete floor before. What’s sad was that after some time, their
white tiled floor became dirty. They
swept it every day, but a lot of the dust and garbage was swept into the corner
of the room. Apparently, this is
common. I’ve seen dirty corners in a lot
of homes.
Out
of our concern for children who lack nutritious meals, my friends and I have
cooked meals with lots of fibre and vegetables. The kids looked at the big chunks of vegetables
& wondered what they were. Seriously. They didn’t even recognize the vegetables on
their plates. They were used to
vegetables cut into tiny pieces and cooked so long in spices that the
individual pieces were indistinguishable and the colour of the vegetables took
on the colour of the sauce. While they
gingerly chewed the vegetables, their faces registered shock and then
disgust. How do you introduce a fibrous
and nutritious diet to people who are used to eating mounds of white rice to
satiate their hunger? How do you begin
to teach them to savour a healthy serving of crunchy vegetables when they’re
used to 2 bites of soft vegetable—sometimes even put through the blender—for
each meal?
A
sad insight I have gained is that you can give people the best facilities and various
gifts to raise their living standards, but sometimes it’s done in vain. What they need simultaneously is someone to
live with them and teach them how to use and maintain the facilities as well as
the gifted items. Raising the living
standards of those who are underprivileged or uneducated is not as simple as
giving a few hundred dollars or building a children’s home. It’s not as simple as cooking a balanced meal
for the malnourished. It takes
unconditional love, unlimited patience, and constant education. It takes diligent surveillance and a healthy
dose of nagging.
“Where
are your chapels (sandals)? You need to
go and get them from the back porch now.”
“Come
on, I know you don’t like beans, but you can’t eat all the rice with sauce and
leave the vegetables on your plate.”
“Don’t
put your wet towel back on the shelf even if it’s folded nicely! Hang it outside if it’s sunny and inside the
laundry room if it’s not.”
“Stop! This scrub is used for the shower floor, and
that one for the toilet. If you use 1
scrub for everything there’ll be cross contamination. (like they know what that
means. I usually just say “chi chi” to
indicate that it’s dirty)”
“Who
swept the room? How come all the dirt
and candy wrappers got swept onto the back veranda? And how come the corner is so dusty?”
“No,
don’t dump the pants you peed in into the laundry basket. Put it onto the back veranda so we can wash
it.”
I
know there are common frustrations of mothers, but the challenge increases
exponentially when you have 17 children as well as a huge language barrier
between you and them. What makes it more
fun is no running water and fantastic inventions like vacuum cleaners and
washing machines. Yes, there is still
value in gifts to raise one’s living standards.
At the same time, acquiring a vacuum cleaner and a washing machine will
require more teaching and training and close supervision. In short, we need more staff!
