2009 – A recap

Pic stolen from photobucket.com

Wow! It’s already the last day of 2009. Before we move on to 2010, here’s a recap of happenings in 2009 for me…

Oh well, maybe nothing much when it came to my office activities – just the normal routine work day to day. We didn’t have any Company trips this year as our staff wanted to save money for a more exciting trip next year (insyaAllah, we’ll be going to Kuching, Sarawak for our 2010 Company trip), but we did bring our staff (on paksa-rela basis… hehe) for the Grand Tour of the nearby Gua Tempurung. And since I do love adventure, I loved that exciting tour.

Things were more “happening” in my voluntary work. In addition to the usual clinic duties and house visits to the homes of PLHIVs, there were quite a number of other activities.

Talks & awareness programmes

In March, I gave a talk to a group of foreign workers in a factory near Ipoh. With an all-female audience, my talk concentrated more on HIV & Women.

Then in July, I gave another talk to a group of students from a private college in Ipoh. And since the audience consisted of youths, my talk was on HIV & Youth.

Then there was the exhibition at the Meru Golf & Country Club…

…followed by the awareness programme at the Orang Asli Village in Kg Sg Genting, Chenderiang. For this talk, I had to re-do the slides to make it as simple as possible for the OAs. Usually, for youth or women, I’d just use the powerpoint presentations prepared by Malaysian AIDS Council.

Fellowship activities

In June this year, Buddies had our retreat at Cameron Highlands. With free accommodation courtesy of our patron, petrol and food fully sponsored by Buddies Centre, if at all the volunteers needed to fork out their own money, that would only be to buy whatever souvenirs from Cameron Highlands. Only 9 volunteers attended, but it was quite a fruitful retreat.

Then there was our annual Family Day on the first Sunday of August. This year we went to the National Stud Farm in Tg. Rambutan. This one involved not only the volunteers, but also the PLHIVs and their families.

We also had the Annual Anniversary lunch (anniversary of the opening of our centre) on 31st August. I didn’t attend that one because it was during Ramadhan.

And recently in December we had our 1-Malaysia Night where the theme was fancy headgears.

Workshops/Conferences

Other then the International Conference on AIDS in Asia & the Pacific (ICAAP) held in Bali, which I blogged about in 3 parts here, here and here…

…the only other workshop (non office work related) I attended was the half day Media Sensitisation Workshop organised by the Malaysian AIDS Council. Oh, I forgot, I did attend another workshop on “Hak Wanita Dalam Perundangan Islam” organised by the Perak Women for Women Association (PWW) together with Sisters In Islam (SIS). That was where I met Kak Ana, who runs a shelter home in Perak.

Support for PLHIVS

Of course, the bulk of my postings were more on the PLHIVs and their families. My clinic duties, my house visits, my hospital visits, my shopping for the children’s schooling needs, etc. But this year there were a few record-breaking cases (for me personally lah).

Top on the list is of course the case of Sharifah and my little Cek Mek. Never before in my life did I ever have to send someone to the hospital at 2.40 am to deliver a baby! And I had a record-breaking 21 blog postings in June this year alone, most of which were on Sharifah and Cek Mek. With a series of “Young, Single and …” parts 1, 2, 3, 4 beginning in May, then continued with the birth and adventures of My Little Cek Mek in June.

Then there’s Anita, whom I helped to escape from her evil sister’s house in August after I came back from attending ICAAP in Bali. Not only that, Anita didn’t have an IC even though she’s already 24 years of age, and because of that, she had not registered for her son’s birth cert although the boy is already 1 year plus. We’re in the process of solving that problem.

I sent both Sharifah and Anita and their babies to Kak Ana’s shelter home. Only difference is, Sharifah has gone back to her hometown to work and will only come back for Cek Mek once she is financially stable, while Anita and her baby boy is very likely to continue staying at the shelter home for some time to come.

I also had a few other new cases referred to me this year. As always, since I already have a long list of HIV clients under my care, my colleagues at the HIV clinic would only refer new cases to me if these are problematic cases. Maybe Rosnah was not in too much trouble as compared to the rest, but she was the one who kept calling me to consult on whatever problems she faced, as she didn’t feel too comfortable talking to anybody else.

The other 2 new cases I’ve been assigned to were cases of poor families. When Murni’s case was referred to me, my colleagues thought hers was a hard core poor case. Well yes she was from a poor family. But after SN herself referred Sofie’s case to me, I knew Sofie’s case was even worse. Indeed, Sofie was not only poor, she was also too weak to work, she didn’t have any source of income at all. Sofie and her family had to depend totally on others to survive. Alhamdulillah, a few of my blog readers helped her financially, and the family is doing a lot better now.

Amongst the other families, the biggest happening must have been little hole-in-heart Baby K's surgery. Ah yes, I remember how Mrs K got me confused for a while trying to figure out her SMS which mentioned that the doctors did the "ekor jantung" on the little girl. That was supposed to be ECHO jantung... :-)

Deaths? There was one recent case. Actually another colleague of mine was assigned to AJ, but since the family needed financial help for the children's schooling needs, I stepped in as it was AJ's wife, Yati, that I had to liaise with for that matter. AJ passed away on Christmas day, not long after his case was referred to us.

All in all, 2009 was quite an eventful year for me, don’t you think?

To all my blog readers, here's wishing all of you a HAPPY, BLESSED & PROSPEROUS NEW YEAR 2010!