Update on Sofie's family

The last time I went to visit Sofie, I didn't bring along any groceries for the family. I went to fetch her kids to bring them along with me during my trip to Kedah.

With money from donors rather consistently coming in, I'd better make sure I use the money to help the poor families consistently too. So after lunch on Sunday, off I went, first to buy some groceries, then after calling Sofie to make sure they were home, I also bought some ready to eat foodstuff for the kids.

Sofie was outside her house when I arrived. I was happy to note that her condition seemed to have improved a whole lot especially if compared to the first few times I visited her. Now she can at least pay more attention to the children instead of the children having to pay more attention to her.

Anyway, only Saiful and Ika were home when I visited on Sunday. The two older boys were out. Saiful and Ika got excited when I passed to them an envelope containing their pictures taken during the trip to Kedah. They were excitedly telling their mother... "Ha, ni masa Acik panjat rumah atas pokok tu".... "Hahaha! Ada gambar masa Angah kejar itik".... "Ni ha ada gambar adik berenang!"

I bet when their brothers came home, there was a repeat of all the excitement... :)

Both Saiful's and Ika's year-end school exams were over, although their results were not all out yet. But Ika had already gotten back a few of her exam papers and she willingly showed me the papers - even her Mandarin paper (yes, she's taking Mandarin as one of the lessons in school) which she got wrong for most of the questions! Her other papers were not too bad, although she had problems for English and Maths. In fact, for her Maths paper, the only reason she couldn't score better was her poor English.

You see, since she has to take up Maths in English, due to her poor command of the language, she couldn't understand some of the questions in her Maths paper. I saw her exam papers. It was quite obvious that while she could answer the questions which came in the form of numbers alone; the ones where the questions came in the form of English sentences, she couldn't answer correctly as she didn't even understand the question.

She complained that the teacher spoke fully in English when teaching, making it difficult for her to understand. The interesting thing was according to her, at the end of each lesson, the teacher would ask, "Are you understand?" and all the kids would say, "YES!"

I then asked Ika, "Cikgu kata are you understand ke cikgu kata do you understand?"

"Kalau cikgu dulu tanya do you understand, cikgu sekarang ni tanya are you understand," she said.

Duh! Cikgu pun tak betul rupanya...

"Makcik tau ke cakap Bahasa Inggeris?" Ika then asked me. Eh, see the leg lah...

On another note, Sofie plans to get Saiful circumcised during the school holidays. When her sister heard about it, she too wanted her 12 year old son to get circumcised together and even wanted to hold a kenduri for that purpose. Sofie was reluctant, saying that she couldn't afford to hold a kenduri, but her sister said not to worry, just join her kenduri. The sister went to the extent of taking a RM1K loan from the kampong cooperative just to have the kenduri!! Although Sofie was still rather reluctant, she didn't bother to object either.

That was until Ika came home from her aunt's house one day and told her what she heard. Apparently, upon hearing that the mother (Sofie's sister) would hold the kenduri for both her son and Saiful, the eldest son (Sofie's nephew, the same mulut laser one who had prompted Sofie to move out of her sister's house in the first place), said out loud, "Sibuk je si *Saiful nak tumpang kenduri kita!"

The moment Sofie heard about it, she decided to just quietly arrange for Saiful's circumcision to be done at he hospital without informing her sister. No need kenduri-kenduri! Even families who can afford to hold kenduris without borrowing money are no longer doing kenduri bersunat.

Saiful has yet to go to Ipoh GH to set an appointment with the eye specialist. Sofie intends to bring him during the first week of the coming school holidays. Coincidentally she too needs to come and get her supply of medication then, so might as well come in one trip.

I told Sofie I'd probably come again some time in early December to bring her children shopping for next year's schooling needs. If I were to leave it to Sofie to buy first and claim later, she'd end up buying cheap poor quality uniforms/shoes as she wouldn't dare buy the average priced ones (which are already too expensive for her). Within less than a month, you'd hear the children complaining about koyak here, koyak there... lubang here, lubang there... but they'd still wear the uniforms/shoes anyway.

Just as I was about to leave, Sofie asked about an HIV positive person I had been enquiring about earlier. You see, I had asked her on the whereabouts of a particular kampong in the same town. Sofie asked if the person I was talking about was a maknyah. There were news being passed around about an HIV+ maknyah who was already in very critical condition.

Nope, the person I had enquired about earlier was a married lady, not a maknyah.

But speaking of maknyah, remember the call from the maknyah in my earlier posting here? This must be the person Sofie was talking about - the earlier caller came from the same kampong. Early yesterday morning, a text message came in from the earlier caller to inform us that the friend had already been hospitalised. I just hope it's not too late to help.