The People We Don't See

The last update had been more than a week ago, but not without reason of course. I had sent my Adeline (my lappy) off to get her battery changed last Thursday and I only just got it back around yesterday. Minus the battery, since they say they'd need to contact the HQ in Taiwan... I don't quite like using the desktop at home to update so I had to wait till I could get my grubby hands on the lappy again. So here's a post that's LONG WAY LONG overdue :D


First and foremost, thank God for the journey mercies during our awesome trip to Bethany Home in Teluk Intan :)

It was like a whirlwind, what had been going on for the last few weeks. I thought I had all the time in the world to bum around, and the whole of June and July to slowly burn my way through. Instead, without so much as to realise it right now I only have roughly one month left to play around with....scary.

Where to begin, where to begin....hurm, actually I can't quite remember in detail what took place over past couple of weeks, but somehow someway the days went by and all I could recall was that I did a lot of things. Oh well.

The highlight though, was definitely the visit to Bethany Home. Bethany Home is simply, 'A School and Training Centre for disabled children and adults', to quote from their website. As far as I know, Bethany Home is the best of its kind in the country and I was really genuinely impressed when Mr. Jayasingh the director said that their aim is to provide a place for the disabled 'from cradle to grave' which, if you ask me, is no small task. If you had read Sim's blog then you'd know that me, him, See Huang and David decided to visit there for 3 days. We had to brave a series near-misses on our way there, narrowly avoiding having to go back home prematurely.

Our stay there was short to say the least, since the other two volunteers we met there signed on for way longer. We reached the centre at around 6 in the evening and the place was dead quiet with nary a soul around, and it was already too late to do anything other than to clean up and go for dinner. That night we ended up watching CSI on the Astro there xD The next morning was much more eventful, fortunately and we had the chance to get a closer look at the machineries behind this huge centre that they call Bethany Home.

It never occurred to me how life is like for those the society likes to label as 'istimewa'. When I really mulled about it, I was left with nothing more than an endless series of question marks. What do they do from day to day? How are they going to grow up and work for their own living? How do they live alone without their parents? What does the future hold for them?

Mr. Jayasingh had this to say: "God doesn't create 'rejects'. Each and every one of these people here might be disabled in terms of their physical condition and state of mind, but inside them their souls are no different from ours."

And a whole lot of sense that makes, I would say.