By Jessica Lee
When I first started participating in Moving Days late last year, my focus began with sorting through donations. The task seemed simple enough, separating men clothes, from female clothing and putting them into piles. Children’s clothes are again separated into little boys and little girls. And again with baby clothes, though they were a tad easier to identify as they generally came in pink or blue, and they seldom needed folding since they were tiny.
The task set my focus to ensure that the appropriate donations went to houses, which had specific needs listed. So my first moving day and following one brought my attention to ensuring the rights things went to right houses. The spreadsheet said so. I was unfortunately slightly detached from my environment having focused on carrying out my designated task for the day. I couldn’t remember a single name of the refugees I had met for the day, despite my initial elation for being able to help where I could.
The next moving day, I promised I would engage the people we were going to meet. For surely, a person is much more important than the material things we had to provide. I dwelled on how I might engage strangers from different nationalities, language barriers and different cultures. So, I made it a point this trip to write all their names down, and so I did. I met Mohamad, his wife Ely, and 2 beautiful sons, Armin and Ramtin. They were an Iranian family whom were featured in our Christmas cheer visits just before FORM took a break for the xmas holidays. We ended our trip meeting a sad soul named Mehdi who carried signs of depression all around him. These were people, people with feelings and needs like everyone I knew, except they seemed more vulnerable and sometimes even a little angry. When some of them did wear a cheerful front, my heart only felt admiration that these souls were so strong. Strong enough to rise above their lost of control in making choices in their lives and that they could do nothing but wait. They wait on faceless people and a system that held their fates, and still they smiled and welcomed us into their homes. I was humbled by the experience (still am), and yet feeling very blessed to have seen all I saw. I thought to myself, they have so little to give and yet I keep gaining and growing from my encounters with these people I meet. How does that work really? I usually get a headache trying to comprehend God’s work. Who doesn’t honestly? It’s possibly why people around me tell me “He works in mysterious ways”, to discourage my attempt to give myself a headache. Sensible people.
So, a few Moving Days later, I shared my excitement with everyone on engaging the refugees we meet and help on Moving Days. I even start Googling their names in advance just to start guessing which country they are from and what languages they might speak. I’m still mixing the languages and I’m glad to have stopped embarrassing myself with bad guesswork on “which country do we think they are from”.
I was even starting to feel a little good about myself…and then I noticed flurry of activities around me and my seemingly tireless driver for the entire day. By Moving day 7, I noticed everyone seemed to know everyone, except me. True, I didn’t attend STAY where most of the volunteers were from but was that really an excuse not to remember their names? A little voice said no.
By providence, Jack assigned the task of looking after the volunteers to me and Karla this Moving Day. It reinforced Fr Peter’s wise words in one of our FORM meetings not long back to ensure we looked after our volunteers as well as we looked after our refugees. The relationship works both ways. “Just like my relationship with God!” I had been thinking- it works both ways. I knew I shouldn’t just keep asking without giving, because that’s pretty selfish. As a child, I learnt how to remember the trait selfish by “sell fish – smelly fish”, which to my child-mind meant not very pleasant. No offence to any fishermans out there, but wet markets in South East Asia can be quite pungent. Funny things we do to remember things. So, I embarked on engaging our volunteers this week as best as I could. Karla who was also assigned to the same task, to me seemed a natural at this. She engages people like she breathes. So, it was easy to take a few leafs from her book. I decided we needed to have name tags. Jack’s list indicated 30 over volunteers this Moving day. I personally have a photographic memory, so seeing a name registers better in my head than someone telling me their names. The only way I knew how to make someone feel welcomed was by recalling their names, and to do this meant I needed to tag them. Sweet Nicole who kindly asked how she could help was only too enthusiastic to carry out my request of tagging everyone. And she did a terrific job. When she ran out of stickers, she resorted to masking tapes. I couldn’t help but laugh inside wondering if the masking tapes would be difficult to remove from the volunteer’s shirts. Hopefully a little water will do the trick. While the trucks were running behind schedule and donors were ringing with their concerns on delays and pick up times, I couldn’t help but notice the sorting volunteers were calming and cheerfully carrying out their task. Everyone was talking and engaging each other, new friendships were forming and smiles were genuine. Our cars started filtering back with more goods and more volunteers joined us. The tasklist and car lists were all printed beforehand so that no one felt lost or unconsidered. Everyone who chose to be present at St Augustine’s on their Sunday should feel a sense of purpose to be in that hall. My task was to help them find that purpose. I prayed our preparations also gave them a sense of belonging. As their purpose was to help, my hope was that we gave everyone an opportunity to help in any way they could. For I now know that in helping others that I help myself. Though it’s never my intention to gain from these endeavours, I am always hopelessly lost as to why and how I do gain from them.
I fell sleep remembering names, the list was also a tad longer this time around so that I might ask God to bless each name I recalled on Sunday.
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