2-dollars' worth
We held our very first Operation Homeworks for 2010 on the 16th of January 2010, at blocks of flats at North Bridge Road. Volunteers from my ex-company Apple Computer (the group is lovingly known as " Apple-Pie", all ex-Apple employees), schools and the Reformed Evangelical Church (Singapore) came together, and cleaned up 12 houses in total.
So you can imagine the wide range of people we had. From students to very successful professionals with very high monthly salary came together to sweat it out, and as usual, some of the homes were really in a terrible state.
I was asked by my staff to go help out at the home of Madam Lim, a 91 year-old elderly lady living alone. I was specifically requested to go there as Madam Lim spoke only Hainanese, and I am as Hainanese as you can get. When I entered her home, the volunteers were already hard at work, and she was talking in a loud voice, going on and on in Hainanese.
The volunteers asked me what she was saying, and I told them that she was simply talking about her past... In reality, she was actually reprimanding the volunteers in Hainanese, telling them to wet the cloth properly, clean this and that area (she has difficulties walking, so she just sat there pointing her finger at them), lamenting on how she could have done a better job herself! I tried to pacify her, but she was simply in a world of her world, going on and on about people in her life who did not listen to her advice...
All the while, volunteers worked at her house, cleaning the windows, washing the toilet, reaching places she could not. In other homes and other blocks, some of the volunteers encountered bed-bugs, and some had to scrap off brownish-looking stains on the floor (and not too excited about finding out what those were).
Back in my assigned home, the volunteers finally finished their work at around lunch-time. To my great surprise, Madam Lim asked me to tell them to stay behind. She then went to dig up some 1-dollar coins from various corners of the house, and told me that she wants to 'pay' the volunteers, 2-dollars a person!
The volunteers did not take her money of course; but she was quite insistent. I explained to her patiently that the volunteers did not do their work for money, and she had problem understanding me. In the end, she thanked the volunteers over and over again, and invited them to return to visit her. It was most ironical, as some of the volunteers we had make so much money that it does not make any economical sense for them to be cleaning toilets and scrapping floors. Their economic and time-worth were certainly far beyond 2 one-dollar coins.
But of course it was not about money... Habitat for Humanity's volunteers come together around the world to demonstrate love in action, and in so doing, become very much a part of humanity indeed. It is not something that can be explained so easily, certainly not to Madam Lim or the casual observer. You just got to do it to understand it.
So come on! 2010 has started! Join us, not for 2-dollars, but for something more precious than money. I cannot explain it adequately; you just got to come experience it for yourself!
Blessings.
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