Shiney.

Sunday, October 05, 2008

On saturday I volunteered to help out at HealthServe's Welcome Carnival for foreign workers living in the Kian Teck Dormitories in Jurong.

Just a little note on HealthServe: it's a volunteer-run, non-profit organisation that is dedicated to serving the marginalised population in Singapore. There are two HealthServe community clinics in Little India and Geylang providing medical and counselling services to the foreign workers in the area. In addition to the clinics, the organization is engaged in other meaningful projects like a Thrift shop selling clothes and household items at lower prices. At the Kian Teck Dormitories in particular, HealthServe is opening a Community Centre aimed at providing a nice homely 'hang out' space for residents, with the aim of extending warmth and friendship to the residents, as well as being of assistance to them whenever possible.

I didn't really know what to expect of the carnival and so arrived at the venue feeling a little unprepared. Perhaps as an act of grace on God's part (not allowing me time to work up self-induced-stress), I was very quickly accosted by one of the ladies manning the information booths near the entrance to the dormitory and put to work. There were a few 'stations' at the carnival - a health check-up station, where residents could get free blood pressure readings and urine tests, a 'foody bag' collection point, and an education section with a 'HIV prevention' theme. addition to finding out more about the non-profit organisations behind the carnival. I was in charge of the 'HealthServe Infomation Desk' with its array of pamphlets and assorted paraphernalia describing the organisation, its mission and its work. To encourage the residents to actually take an interest in finding out more about HealthServe, the event organizers cleverly worked a Lucky Draw into the programme - in order to enter the Draw, residents had to answer 6 quiz questions based on the content of the educational displays! Sneaky.. Inevitably though, this created lots of work for the volunteers manning the information booths. There were 6 of us to a few hundred workers. And because they worked in shifts, they returned to the dormitory in droves (literally by the busloads). So the bunch of us had to learn to multitask (i.e. help a few people at a time answer the quiz questions).

I started out very enthusiastically, but became a little tired and a little hoarse after 3 hours of speaking to the residents at a larger-than-normal volume. The work was rather stressful as well because many residents had difficulty understanding the quiz questions and even greater difficulty finding the answers to them and so were completely reliant on our help to successfully complete the quiz. I found my patience really stretched towards the end of my shift because there were just so many people clamouring for my help, asking me for stationery, asking me for food coupons and health screening coupons, for the location of the Lucky Draw box and so on. And all at the same time, in a neverending stream! Some could speak in English but there were many who could not.

Very quickly, I realized the frustration ran both ways. I was trying my very best to understand them and they were trying their very best to understand me. One man looked so visibly upset after multiple unsuccessful attempts at getting me to understand his question. Through lots of gesturing and trial-and-error, we finally came to a point of breakthrough: he wanted a box of condoms (they were being distributed for free) and wanted me to hand one to him (they were next to me at the AIDS booth and out of his reach).

I passed the condoms to him and he disappeared very quickly into the crowd. I don't know if he was more upset at me for failing to understand him, or just in general upset at encountering communication difficulties with so many people who didn't speak his language.

Another incident was particularly memorable: there was a man flipping through the AIDS brochures (printed in comic-book style, in several different languages). He lingered at the desk for only a moment, flipping the leaves of the pages in the hope of finding something he could understand. Upon realizing that the comics were printed in Thai, Mandarin and English only, he lost hope. Gave up. Cast them aside in what almost seemed like a gesture of disgust.

'This one Chinese I no understand.'

He left the table after expressing his disappointment to me.

A final fuzzy image of one of the men I spoke to: He was from Bangladesh and had worked in Singapore for 11 years. What struck me most about him was his poor command of English, despite him having lived in Singapore for such a long period - he could barely read, let alone write in English. I let him see the answers to the quiz questions, but even then he had difficulty copying them out.

In all, the entire experience got me thinking and wondering (in no particular order):

1. How Jesus must have felt pressed on all sides by the crowd of people that followed him wherever he went. Like the residents at the carnival clamouring for freebies and assorted 'goodies', the crowd that followed Jesus must have consisted of people clamouring for miracles, healing, deliverance and so on. They saw that some really good stuff was being freely given away and so they sought to take as much as they could, receive as much as they could. Unlike Jesus though (who had such compassion on the people, unlimited patience, amazing grace), I got cranky just 3 hours into my service. The limits of my (already very limited) patience were stretched. What a big difference between my Lord's service and mine! Such is the extent to which I must ask God for more of His love, more of His compassion, more of His patience, more of His grace to fill me and flow out from me to the people He gives me to serve.

2. How communication barriers due to language and cultural differences may be overcome. There are no two ways about it. If we are truly serious about being able to better understand the other party, we will learn their language and get acquainted with their culture. In the meantime, we must bear with one another in love, and be very very patient in trying to communicate with one another. We must be sincerely interested in what the other person is saying and inexhaustibly persistent in trying to understand him/ her.

3. Why there aren't any Tamil/ Hindi/ Bangla translations of the AIDS education brochures, given that no small number of foreign workers that come to Singapore speak these languages.

4. More importantly, do we only bother talking to people who speak our language? While it does make sense for us to concentrate on helping people with whom we can more readily communicate with, this seems to come at the expense of us neglecting those who speak a language that we don't speak. As it stands, most Christians in this country have never talked to (let alone struck up friendships with) workers who come from a different language, cultural and socioeconomic background from them. This is perfectly natural. But if we count ourselves as Christ's disciples, we must ask ourselves if what is is what should be.

“I am no man’s slave, but I have made myself a slave to all, in order to win the more for
Christ. To the Jews I have made myself as a Jew, in order to win Jews; to those who live
under the law I have come as one under the law, in order to win those who are under the
law — not that I myself am under the law. To those who live without the law I have come
as one without the law, in order to win those who are without the law — not that I am
really under no law in relation to God, for I am bound by the law of Christ. To those who
are weak I have made myself weak, so as to win the weak; in fact, I have become all things
to all people, in order that, one way or another, I may rescue some of them. But I do it all
for the sake of the gospel, so that I may share its blessings with others” (1 Cor. 9:19-23,
Bruce, Expanded Paraphrase).

5. Given that Singaporeans by and large do not naturally encounter and speak to foreign workers in their circles, it naturally follows that many of these workers are poorly integrated into Singapore society. Society wants to keep it that way, but at whose expense? In the end, it is invariably the foreign worker who gets the shorter end of the stick. He depends wholely on his employer for his livelihood the entire period that he stays in this country. He is vulnerable to exploitation, because there is such great opportunity cost if he chooses to terminate his contract and return home prematurely. Just getting the documentation to work here and flying here incurs him a large debt, before he even starts work. He is forced to work to pay off the debt, and to remain in employment for even longer if he wants to make a decent enough sum to send home. He works long hours, overtime, even on weekends, for a minimal wage. He has little time and little strength after work for recreation, let alone self-improvement.

It is clear in scripture that God desires for the rights of the marginalized in society (the alien, the fatherless and the widow) to be defended: "You shall not wrong a stranger or oppress him, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt (Exodus 22:21)."

Many generations later, through the prophet Jeremiah, God rebuked a very prosperous Israel for doing just that: "Among my people are wicked men who lie in wait like men who snare birds and like those who set traps to catch men. Like cages full of birds, their houses are full of deceit; they have become rich and powerful and have grown fat and sleek. Their evil deeds have no limit; they do not plead the case of the fatherless to win it, they do not defend the rights of the poor (Jer 5: 26-28)."

The passage above really hit home because in it I was reminded of some of the workers' testimonies concerning their (bad) experiences here. Are we as a society 'defending the rights of the poor'? Or have we been quick to do the very opposite?

I think there is more that we can do as a church - the Body of Christ in our society - to make a stand against these and more injustices. May God's righteousness so burn in us to compel us to stand firm for what is right and against what is wrong.

planted @ 8:00 PM