May 22nd, 2011
Days Left to Journey: 1 Day!
As part of our mission, we collected money to ‘adopt a case’ from a free clinic in Sunter named Klinik Anak Bangsa. Today we got to meet the patient. We received consent from the family to talk about him and share a photo wtih you all; yet we will give him an alias. His alias is Idham (just because one of my former students in PMI is named Idham). Idham is 11 years old and he has had a hernia since he was about 3 years old however, it’s reached a point where his hernia will gradually make his life more difficult. He is a quiet kid whose smile is hard to capture on camera. He only smiled a couple times during our meeting. High-fives sometimes drew out his smile. It’s odd, wherever I go in the world kids love high fives although it’s called ‘tos’ here. When I asked him, he said that he loved futsal; when Heather asked him, he said that he didn’t love futsal. He’s still a kid, so we hope he gets to enjoy his childhood more after the operation.
The clinic arranged our meeting point to be KFC in Bekasi. Some of you may know about my affinity for KFC in Indonesia – my secret vice. We had the most juicy chicken strip there; my mouth waters just thinking of it.
 |
| KFC is my Secret Vice in Indonesia - Sponsor BikeJava KFC! Hahaha. |
My friend Ganda, a biology teacher at my (former) school, drove all the way from Parung to help me with translation and cultural sensitivity; often, non-native speakers of a language can misunderstand customs or body language. We were there on a somewhat delicate mission; 2 foreigners wanting to meet a family out of the blue in a neutral (but not completely familiar) physical setting. At first they thought we were the doctors doing the operation. Then they were curious as to why we wanted to give money to help them: were we trying to convert them to Christianity or trying to get something else from them? None of the above; we just wanted to talk. Heather and I treated the kids to some ice cream and the family to some KFC chicken to take home. The neighborhood headman and Idham’s mom’s older sister came as well. I missed a lot of the conversation because I was in line to get food. I will tell you only what I know until Ganda can give me his notes on the meeting. The father is recently unemployed and used to be a rice salesman. The family cannot afford the operation for their son and has a letter of inaffordability from the community headman. I cannot say we had a moment of deep personal connection, but we did start warming up to one another. The little kids went to play on the KFC playground. We took some photos inside, then outside and I gave Idham an English learning book I bought along the way.
 |
| Idham and His Family! Ganda is in Gray. |
 |
| Be Strong Idham! |
No comments:
Post a Comment