[23 March 2018 (Friday)]
‘Children are a heritage from the LORD, offspring a reward from Him.’ – Psalm 127:3
I woke up late around 7:00 a.m. as I just slept for about 2 hours the night before. I quickly rushed to the pick-up point in front of the UM Bioinformatics Building. Everyone has already gathered waiting for me. Really sorry for being so late. What a bad start of the day! Because of me, we departed a bit late, about half an hour behind time, to Pusat Jagaan NURI in Setapak which took around 30 minutes from UM by the ISB van. 😟
Upon reaching our destination, we were warmly welcomed by the person in charge, Tok Mek. All of us exuberantly got into the house to meet the children. As soon as we gathered all the children, we were surprised to see only 20 children or so turned out instead of a total of 67 children as told. We were then informed that some of the children were back for their school holidays with their parents. We were agitated for a while. However, having just a few children as such was not at all a depressing matter I presumed, as then we might be able to take good care and concern of the children in the shelter home. Thanks to Dr Arpah for reminding us earlier to come out with backup plans. Arinah and I, being the facilitators of Group 4, looked out for the kids stated in the name list. After a cringeworthy self-introduction and ice-breaking session followed by a casual opening ceremony by Rehana, we had breakfast together and after that, gotong-royong. Together with the kids I swept the floor around the garage, cleaned up and tidied the whole compound up while some others cleaned the indoor environment and in the kitchen. Also, my heartfelt admiration for Amir and Hazimin in volunteering themselves to clean the toilet – not an easy task indeed. 💚
Our gotong royong finished earlier than expected and then the kids practiced nasyid and dikir barat for a competition on Sunday. To me, their performance was full of sombre and poise, presenting the fragile hearts of these unprivileged children. Tears rained down their cheeks as some of them practiced the dikir barat which features the blessings from their parents. Their need for attentive care and love, particularly from the parents, which we many a time take for granted, is a luxury to these children. Gatherings and leavings seemed to be something normal to these children though it is painful for some of them. Happiness, to them, comes and goes. No matter how imperfect their family backgrounds are, may the Lord have mercy on them and bless them, keeping them as the apple of His eye come what may. 💗
We killed time by having several impromptu games after the Muslim Friday prayer. The kids enjoyed the games and soon got more attached to us. In the evening we planned to practice for the closing-ceremony performance, but it was really botched and messed up. Plans after plans were changed. By that time, we were well and truly lost. New groups were formed and just 3 groups remained due to the few number of children. Likewise, new facilitators were appointed for each group. And so, I was appointed as the facilitator of group 3 with two new partners, Arif and Wan Yin. Thanks Jeremy, for his hard work in making the rearrangement. And interestingly, there were two elder (17-to-20-year-old) children – Kamil and Syakir – in this group for my group. Wan Yin and I, together with some temporary facilitators taught the children dance based on some songs and to think of a cheer. ☺
The overall implementation on the first day had been well below par though a great deal of effort and hours had been put and spent in preparing for this programme from start to finish. The children were totally out of our control, as we didn't communicate much with them, nor did we think creatively to attract their attentions. They were not listening to our advice and instructions probably because we didn’t have a well interaction with them. We also noticed that most of the kids were uneasy and shy with us. Some of them even dodged behind doors or between rooms to hide from us. I didn't seem to be engaging with the kids that moment as I felt a little bit awkward. Also, many plans were changed because of the obstruction of the balcony. We were so disconnected from those children as if we were in a different world from them. Plus, much time was wasted. 😕
And that night we had an extremely serious and thought-provoking post-mortem at KK 5, our meeting point for the implementation phase. Everyone was exhausted, discouraged and discontented with what we had done on this very first day of programme implementation. We contemplated, listening to the comments and reviews given by Dr Arpah who oversaw our implementation. We looked onto the matter and we identified discovered and learned from our weaknesses, challenges, mistakes and failures. We also voiced out suggestions, improvements and feedbacks to be considered for the next following days to fix those problems. One of which is appointing a timekeeper to ensure organized flow of activities and to call time on them according to the tentative. We ought to be ready for any upcoming challenges and unexpected situations. Teamwork is of highly prominent here in all circumstances. 💪
And that’s the end of the first day…
Posted by: Lee Jian Di
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