Daily Reflections by Ryan & Yifei

8th December 2010

Today, we woke up to a surprisingly cold morning! Everyone was huddled up in their hoodies and windbreakers as they shivered while brushing their teeth. Nevertheless, we looked forward to a delicious breakfast of tuna bread and milo, lovingly prepared by our welfare team (Ashley, Ryan, Jim, Siyu) who woke up half an hour earlier than the rest.

The English team woke up to 6 hours straight of lessons. Thankfully, there was an enthusiastic and children-loving group (Anu, Vanessa, Shengwei, Luvina) who volunteered to take over 2 hours of lessons from the poor group with 6 hours of English lessons in a row.

The hygiene did not have it any better, also having 4 hours of lessons in total. Setting off in the morning for lessons at 9, they worked hard, including a short cultural exchange rehearsal right after lunch before rushing off for their lesson at 1pm.

We checked out the stage that the school has very kindly set up and decorated nicely for us for the cultural exchange which is happening tomorrow. However, it was a precarious experience as Lin Feng accidentally took a step too hard and made a hole in the wooden floorboard! From that moment onwards, everyone was very hesitant and very wary of the steps they took and sort of moved very slowly which was quite amusing.

At the same time, our building group visited a primary school in a commune that we were not able to work with on this trip. The purpose of this trip was to document and find out more about the school and how we would be able to partner them in the subsequent years. This group interviewed the principal who gladly set aside some time for the interview despite having a class to teach. After learning more about the school environment, we came to realize how fortunate we are to be able to have such abundant resources that we take for granted back in Singapore. This is because this primary school only has 3 teachers to teach 200 students. The building team also spoke to a commune leader who shared about her vision of achieving gender equality in her commune. The group also made a trip down to 1 of the 11 households for whom we were unable to provide a jumbo jar. The family shared many heart-wrenching stories which provided the group some food for thought.

The teams were greeted by a pleasant surprise in the form of lunch! For the first time in days, we had fish!!! Coupled with pumpkin rice, peanuts and a cabbage dish, the team had a sumptuous lunch which recharged our energy to continue our work for the day.
Making full use of every free timeslot that we had, we packed the donated clothes that we brought over from Singapore which we intend to distribute to the 12 families with the jumbo jars. Being the usual efficient him, Ahmed, who was in charge of coordinating the packing of the clothes, managed to finish organizing and sorting out the clothes according to the families with the help of the team.

Dinner was once again something worth looking forward to, as the welfare team worked hard to ensure that the fried rice, potatoes with green pepper, seasoned cucumbers and fried onions turned out awesome as a reward for the team for working hard today.

Concluding the day, we had a debrief session where the different groups shared their experiences today. We ended off with a practice of the songs we’ll be performing during the cultural exchange the following day. The dim lighting definitely set the right ambience as the team huddled together while singing our very own batch song.

Being the second last day in the village, some of us felt sad as we realised that the trip would be drawing to an end very soon and many of us have grown to become accustomed to life in the village. This was despite us having many doubts and uncertainties at the beginning whether we could survive 2 weeks of supposed “hardship”. We will definitely miss the memorable times we spent together in the village. At the same time, this is a reminder for us to put in our all for our hygiene fair and cultural exchange tomorrow (: We will continue to work hard!