TWO •: Community Project 2017

A very late post about my community project.

Year 2 Block 2 was all about community project.
We were assigned to visit different elderly homes to do research on their health statusand do a simple health screening for them. I am really excited when I was briefed about it because I always wanted to visit an old folks home and do volunteer work since young, finally the time comes.My group was assigned to visit Lovely Nursing Centre in Petaling Jaya, the home with the most residents.

On the first day of our official visit to Lovely Nursing Centre, the first resident that I had interview was a 86 years old lady. She was sitting at the side and smiling happily when I walked towards her. I was a little bit nervous since it was my first time interviewing elderly people and there were a lot of questions which included some very sensitive ones. But after talking with her for one minute, I became relax and comfortable. She was friendly and willing to share a lot of things with me. I was impressed by her personality, she was very independent since young and had to take care of her whole family. She never got the chance to graduate from high school because of her responsibilities towards her family but she did not complaint and continue to do so. At this age, she had no major health problems and she can still bath herself and hand wash her own clothes every day. She has a son who paid for her expenses in the nursing centre but he seldom visit her, she miss him a lot but he always said he is busy and could not find time to visit her. Whenever we talked about her son, she cried and I felt so sorry that I could not help her but I did comfort her and told her not to think too much about it. I really hope that her son will visit her sometime in the future and appreciate the valuable time she is now left with.

There was another old who is deaf but he likes to communicate with us and tell us his story. We had a difficult time interviewing him and make him go through all the physical examination stations. To communicate with him we need to write our sentences on a paper. He can understand most of the time and willing to do all the test as well. But he enjoys sharing his past experience by drawing a lot of things on the paper which we cannot understand. However, I still tried my best to interpret his drawings and analyse the things that he wanted to share with me. Although it is very difficult to communicate with him, but all of us never give up and helped him to complete all the assessments. Day by day, I knew more stories about the residents as they shared their past experience. Everyone there has their own stories and we should give more attention to them as this is what they need the most: someone to talk to and someone who will listen by their heart.

There's a playground we always go to whenever we have extra break time and nowhere to go, also it's our meetup place before going to the nursing home.

Almost everyday after the community project, we went for food hunt since we were finally out of Sungai Long! Tried nasi lemak bumbung for the first time :D

When we first came into Lovely Nursing Centre, there was a lady with the nickname Ah Kuan who will come to us every time she saw us. She can only communicate in Hokkien language, so most of the time only my group members who can understand Hokkien will talk to her. She is a very active person and keep following us around, just like a big child. Sometimes, she will just cry out of a sudden and I felt so useless that I can only stand there watching her cry. When I inform the care taker that she was crying, they told me it is normal and said that I can ignore her. I was shocked for that response but still, they are the ones who understand Ah Kuan the most. One day, we arrived there and saw her sitting at the back with her legs tied by chains. They told me that this was because she tried to steal money from the counter and the care takers tied her legs up as a punishment. From my opinion, I think she is just playful but not intentionally wanted to steal the money. One of the thing she likes to do when she saw us was to look at our lanyard and student ID. Then, she would shake hands with us and repeated this every time she saw us. Therefore, I gave her a lanyard and wrote her name on it because she seems to want one so badly. She was very happy after receiving it and keep showing it off to everyone. But the lanyard was gone the next day which was expected. She was so naïve and it really makes me wonder what was in her mind all the time. Maybe all she needs is more attention and care from people and that is why she kept approaching us every day.

I was also a runner during physical assessment session. My job is to assign the residents to their stations and ensure the stations flow is smooth. This job requires good team work and communication skills which enabled me to learn more and improve myself. One of the challenging part was when they feel tired and ran away while halfway doing the assessment. I had to find them and try to persuade them to complete the assessment but not forcing them. If they were feeling uncomfortable or insist to withdraw from this assessments, I will not continue to persuade them but suggest them to do it on the next day as the assessments give no harm to them. There was an uncle that none of us succeed in interviewing him. His primary language is Cantonese, which only a few of us can speak that. I felt bad for refusing to interview him because I do not know what respond I can give to him whenever he asked me: “Can I follow you all to go back later? I want to go home. Can you tell me how to go home?” He asked every one of us but we just do not know how to answer. I could not talk to him because I cannot accept myself as a person who stop him from going back home. I felt so cruel to not help him to go back his own house, everyone has their own choice, but he does not have that choice. The person-in-charge there does not allow any one of them to go out from the nursing home due to some reasons I am not quite sure. How I wish I can help him but it was something out of my control.

One day when we arrived there in the afternoon, one of the resident just passed away and her body was left on a bed at the hall. I did not realize it at first until someone told me about it. The founder of Lovely Nursing Home, Mr. Gopi came after that to host a small ceremony to send her away. He gathered everyone around the body, and asked everyone to pray for her. We did it together with the residents although I do not know who is she. Mr. Gopi said a lot of things but one of the most meaningful sentence he said was: “No one is perfect, everyone will leave soon or later. Appreciate everything you have and be grateful.” I am totally agree with this because we only live once in our life, we should make our life meaningful by appreciating everyone and everything that happen around us. Life is imperfect without all the ups and downs, enjoy while we still have the chance and stop complaining.

On the last day of our visit, we had prepared a tea party for them which included some fruits, jelly, curry puff, tea and satay. They gave us their health information, we should give them back something in return. Before the tea party, we had already asked the residents what they want to eat the most. They wanted something that they never get to eat in the nursing home, some of them suggested satay and we prepared it for them.

Besides foods, we made some paper roses by ourselves and bought the hand fans because they always complaint that they feel very hot and sweaty in the nursing home due to poor air circulation. We distributed the paper roses and hand fans to each one of them while singing songs. The smile on their faces reflected how happy and excited they are at the moment I delivered it to them. Every smiles from them is a recognition of our hard work because we were there to make them feel accompanied and brought colours into their life in nursing homes. I always feel happy whenever someone who received my help smiled too, their smiles can melt my heart and it is the best reward for everything I did for them.