30-hour famine - I Survived! - Part 2
Continued from Part 1.
Fast forward to the next morning.
We were told to wake up at 6.30am and get prepared for exercise at 7.15am.
But OH BOY GIRL, women/girls in the sleeping area woke up before 6am. And kept on walk in and out, the door kept on open and close. So noisy. Urgghhhh… that’s frustrated. (This is what we learned also - Frustration.)
Without any choices, we woke up at about 6.30am and went prepared ourselves.
Everyone gathered around at the main hall as usual to receive further instructions. We were then told to go downstairs to exercise. What kind of exercise?
Yea, Tai Chi. The master of Tai Chi told us, this exercise will recharge our ‘baterry’.
After the exercise, we have a ‘Refugee Race‘. This race was interesting.
Everyone of us were refugees. Each of us was given a piece of paper listed the family name, age and role. After everyone got it, we gotto find our family and gathered around with at least 7 members before we moved on to the next task. At the end of the day, winner will be announced depends the most money, most vacinations and most food that they got during the race.
Things got crazy when the leader said “GO”. Everyone began to shout for family name , hoping to get family members gathered ASAP and went for next task.
Everyone was busy finding own family members
I finally got all of my family members (10 person) within 10mins, we were now ready to go for next task - applying job and earned money. As you can imagine, there were about 470++ of us rushing to the same place to apply job, the place was damn crowded and very long queue.
Everyone not queue up for jobs intereview.
Some of us went for interviews, some of us went to look for vacinations and food. There were counters around where people queue up for free vacination and food. The camp leader will suddenly announce which counter got free food and vacinations, and there, people will just rush to the particular counter. That’s how refugees run for free food. Else, you will have to earn money and buy vacinations and food.
I experienced frustration, scare and helpless. I cant get a job, I queue up for food, but they announced the free food was over and you need money to buy food. All of sudden, i was told by the leader (they randomly pick up), I’ve infected HIV +, need to go to ‘hospital’ and suspended for 10mins.
It was almost timed and i still haven got any food, jobs, money and vacinations. My other family members has got some money, free food and vacinations. Everything added up still cant make us the winner. I heard other families has got over 100 bucks, whereas we only have 30 bucks. And now i felt disappointed also.
Basically this race wanted us to feel how the refugees felt. The frustration, the helpless condition when you infected HIV+, the urge to get a job and earn money. There was once in the middle of the race, someone shouted “who wanted to be prostitute?”, and there were actually people answered “I want!! I want!!.”
The whole scene off coz was not even close to how the refugee live, but it gave us a rough idea of how hard they gotto work and earn their living.
After the race, we were brought back to the main hall and arranged to the next talks. Yea, talks again.
Topic on Differently-abled Children. How do they climb stairs..
One of the group member was blind-folded, he/she will have to listen to our instructions and walked thru the field that full with land-mines.
We were told that a lot of post-war countries were still full of land-mines. To plant land-mines was easy, but to remove them, it cost a bomb. Therefore, children at those countries were in great danger as no one know where exactly the landmines were located.
But they still need to earn some living, therefore, those straws were represented as bamboo sticks, children (blind-folded) will go and collect the bamboo sticks and sell them at the market. They will listen to the instructions of other group members on how they were suppose to walk, collect the straws and keep away from land-mines.
After those talks, we were gathered again at main hall for break time. This time, we decided to play something.
Chor Tai Di
Break time ended 1 hour later. Continue with reflection time. Everyone in the group was telling us how they felt, what have they learned from the whole camp.
Basically, they learned a lot. Those kids in my group were all below 20. They havent seen things like this before. They didn’t even know there were street children. This camp was absolutely benefits them. As for me, generally i knew almost everything, i mean what’s happening with the kids, like child prostitue, street children, child labour etc etc , what i dont know was the statistic. But right now, i’ve seen much more and experienced the life.
Closing ceremony was simple.
William announced all the winners for the groups with highest scores (we got scores during Q & A session during the talks) and the winners for Refugee Race. Winners got special meal - Domino’s Pizza at the end of the day !
30 minutes before 6pm, organizer started to distribute muffins and soya milk to all the groups.
It was pretty tempting to see food infront of us and we couldn’t touch it.
After every group got the muffins, we were asked to take group picture and did a short video, which will be used as a promo video for next year’s 30-hour famine.
Click here to download the ‘promo video’ (we did mexican wave! :p)
File size: 859kb
File Format: 3gp
When everyone was trying to position themselves, i saw this guy with his cute little socks.
It was like the ‘dont worry, be happy’ kind of socks. Cute hor !?
Now everyone was exciting about the minute of breaking the fast!
We got little countdown session. Glad that things were over!
For now, as a repay for everyone who read my long and boring entry till this moment, i present to you, our leng lui group leader. She was a volunteer.
She is studying in HELP now. Leng lui hor?
After eating the muffins, me and Wan Shen plan to leave the camp.
But before that, we took a picture with William. Good looking, right? But i look super duper tired and ugly! Was hoping so much to get something to cover my face.
I wanna say thank you to
1. My mom, my aunt, my cousin, Robin (my Colleague) and syen for donating money.
2. Wan Shen for telling me this 30-hour famine, bringing me the sleeping bag and donating money.
3. Ah Moi for lending me the sleeping bag.
4. All my friends who read this.
If you noticed, i was just telling you what activities they had for the camp. The information i got from the talks was too long and so much that i could not elaborate here. I was worried that i give wrong information. So, i rather not to give any. But if you joined this camp, you definitely learned something.
In case you are interested for the upcoming 30-hour famine, you could register yourself the mailling list at World Vision Website.
Once again, thank you for reading.
