Back-to-school shopping begins…

My back-to-school shopping for this year began today with Fuzi’s family.

Initially I wanted to bring a few families to go shopping together. Well yes, I am still planning to do that this coming Thursday, Friday and Saturday, but since Fuzi had called me earlier last week to tell me about her son’s schooling problem, I decided to visit them today and take them out shopping while at it. Besides, her 2 youngest kids were the ones who got themselves “lost” during our Family Day at Lost World of Tambun 2 years ago. Taking them together with other kids, they may end up getting themselves lost at the shopping complex!! True enough, today when I took them shopping, the 2 boys freely wandered about and were out of sight quite a number of times.

Anyway, Fuzi’s eldest, Wina, who tagged along today, just came to help choose uniforms, shoes etc for her younger siblings. She will be sitting for her last SPM paper this Thursday (although SPM is over for most SPM candidates, Wina still has a Econs paper to sit for).

Fuzi’s youngest, Iwan, is due to go to standard one next year. But there is one major problem…

Those who had followed Fuzi’s story may remember that Fuzi, an Indonesian lady, had married a Malaysian guy in southern Thailand. Fuzi, being uneducated, and naive, had all the while believed that her marriage had been registered and that there’d be no problems whatsoever.

All her problems came much later… after her husband passed away. Somebody broke into her house and raped her, resulting in Fuzi getting pregnant. It was during this pregnancy that Fuzi was diagnosed HIV+ and Fuzi innocently thought she must have been infected by the rapist. Precautions were taken to avoid transmission from mother to child, and so the youngest boy, Iwan, was spared from infection.

Then when all her children were tested, her 4th son (her son with her late husband) was found to be HIV+. So Fuzi did not get HIV from the rapist but from her late husband! It was only then Fuzi mentioned that her late husband used to visit southern Thailand quite frequently. Sigh!

Problematic enough? Not quite. Later when her eldest daughter Wina, needed to do her MyKad after reaching 12 years of age, they ran into more problems. With their father no longer around and Fuzi herself still an Indonesian without PR status, the authorities needed proof that these children did indeed have a Malaysian father. Although their birth cert indicated so, Fuzi had to come out with a legitimate marriage cert. It was only then that Fuzi knew her marriage cert was illegitimate (issued in Thailand and never registered in Malaysia). Fuzi would have to get her marriage cert legalised before any of her children could be issued with a Malaysian identity card. That wasn’t an easy task… getting to legalise a marriage cert issued in Thailand when the Malaysian partner was no longer around.

It was a long process Fuzi had to go through with the help of a woman activist who sympathised. I couldn’t help her then as I didn’t have any contacts in the related agencies, neither did I know the correct procedures. Once her marriage cert was legalised, her children (by then her second child had also reached 12 years of age) had no problem getting their MyKad done.

So, no more problems for Fuzi? No way. Remember her youngest son Iwan was born out-of-wedlock? The boy was not fathered by the same Malaysian father of his other 4 siblings. Even Fuzi doesn’t know the identity of the guy who raped her. As such, Iwan’s citizenship will have to follow his mother’s… Indonesian.

Now the boy is 6, going on 7. Off Fuzi went to register Iwan for school next year. She was aware that Iwan, being a non-citizen, may have to pay additional fees if she wanted to put him in a Malaysian government school. I already have a donor willing to sponsor the boy’s schooling expenses.

But just last week she got the reply from the Education Department saying that her application to register the boy as a non-citizen student at a government school was rejected. Reason given… “dokumen meragukan”.

I am not sure what documents were submitted by Fuzi when she submitted the application earlier to the Education Dept. I think there shouldn’t be too much of a problem if she has PR status. But even her application for PR status is facing problems at the Immigrations Dept because her husband is no longer around.

Adoii… pusing-pusing problem balik…

Any readers out there with any suggestions as to how to solve this problem?