Soup Kitchen Day #3

I went to AOHD again today, with my actual group mate. I actually woke up damn late lols. supposed to be there by 9am, i woke up at 930! like watafak right? I reached at like 1030.

So by the time i reach there, everything was practically done (the Korean volunteers cut them all on thursday already). So Hui Munn and I went to thr Clinic instead.

The Clinic is normally open every Friday from 9am till noon. There will be usually a volunteer doctor, a nun and a few other volunteers to help. Today, Dr. Uli was the volunteer and she’s from Germany. She is not residing in Malaysia. She goes all around Malaysia and even to Sabah to volunteer. A few other retired aunties were also there to help out.Only the doctor can prescribe though. Usually there will also be a nun there for counselling, but today she did not come as she came on wednesday.

One by one they came to see Dr. Uli.

One guy had rashes because of bathing in dirty water. He said he is very itchy everywhere because he took a bath under the jambatan(bridge).He said the water is very dirty, but he had no choice.

Another uncle (the one I talked to) came and said that he has rashes on his head. He was tellig us how last time he would see a skin specialist, but now since he’s homeless, he can’t even afford to eat, so he cannot go to the hospital. He also mentioned that he was bankrupt thats why he lost all his money and does not have a place to stay now…

A few others came with leg pain and joints pain because of old age.

This old uncle was also bitten by a stray dog. Luckily he went to see the doctor to get a jab. He came to the clinic to get some treatment cream so that it will heal faster.

One regular patient was this fella who always comes in with headache. He says he is thinking too much about his problems in life that he gets headache all the time. He too was bankrupt and does not have a place to stay now. How sad… So doc gave him panadols and some other medicine for his other pain. He said he needs to see a psychologist because of his problems as he cannot take it anymore. So the Aunties joked that we could see and counsel him since we’re psychologists. -_-

Doc says that they can only treat  the symptoms but not the root causes. So sometimes they will still have to refer them to the hospital to get medication.

Food served today: Dhal wit a huge piece of fried Fish!

Mr. Carl, the feeding program manager gave them a small talk on the house rules of the feeding program before they started to eat today as he saw a lot of new faces there. He also mentioned that someone actually went to the kitchen (restricted area for volunteers only) and stole someone’s money! So he reminded them that they cannot go in there.

Everyone ate slower today. I guess it was because of the boney fish. Many came for seconds and some even packed some rice home today.

One of the auntie was saying how sometimes they cannot help it that they are homeless. Some people just fall into the black hole and can never bring themselves back up. I agree with her because, they may look healthy and able to take on a job, but most of them has experienced some kind of mental trauma in their lives that was probably the cause of their homelessness. With no support and probably no resources to work (I don’t think anyone would hire someone who does not have a home address, do you need an address to work?) on, they will be having so much problem building their lives back. After all, they’re all loners and alone in this big bad world as no one probably cared about them. Or their family does not want to be associated with them.

There are so many causes that I can come up with that could explain why they’re homeless (I took abnormal psych and we did the omg, bio,psycho, socio, causes thing! lols), but of course, as psychologist students, we usually can’t pin point ONE cause to address the problem as everything is multi-causal thing and everything intertwines with one another. personal problems, social factors, it all plays a part in making them who they are today. It is a sad thing, but it happens, not only to homelessness but also to all other major problems in the world.

I learnt not to judge homeless people today. Maybe even beggers. As they are homeless too, no?

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