Milk for Free!

Deborah and Mike have been mentioning Sister Joan’s big venture before, but only after a month I met her.

Trust me, you will be impressed the moment you see her in her big pick up truck. She is 75 and she is still driving around the slums with big bags of Milk powder behind.

7.30 am, the parking lot of Rong Mo Slums was filled with a long line, waiting for Sister Joan. The new born babies were comfortably sleeping on their mother’s arm. She gives away milk every two weeks for many years now, and not a day without a new born baby.

It was depressing for me to see very young mothers, some of the age of 14 and 15. Everyone has their own story, heartbreaking sometimes. Imagine the load of drama sister Joan receive every fortnight, when they fail to present the birth certs, or Father’s ID. Some fail to show who the Mom is!

Behind this Milk Powder giving, it is the unknown destiny of the child, a generation yet another generation of uneducated young mothers, possibilities of human trafficking, raping cases, taking and selling the free products. There is a whole lot of way to take advantage of Sister Joan’s big heart. That is why they have a card system, where they stamp the card whenever one takes the opened milk powder( prevent them from reselling) and support each child for only 12 months. Also they have to show both real copies of the parent’s ID cards, and the baby’s birth cert. One ridiculous case of the day was when a mother claimed that the hospital would not issue a birth cert to the baby because the fees were not paid!

After a long day of giving out cards, stamping, registering, and playing with the babies, I went to shop with Sister Joan for stocks. She has an explicit humor to deal with the problems; everything seems so easy for her! I couldn’t help but only to respect what she is doing! She knows she can’t do anything about her short term memory now so she has her way to tease herself! We came back and forth to her house twice to get her keys, car keys and lastly we arrived Carrefour without her mobile phone!:P

When I asked about the situation in the slum, “Education,” She blurted out. The truth is well known. The people need to be educated, but how? Education as we learnt in economics is a long term process, and people are unlikely to see the effect right away. People have to fill their stomach EVERYDAY, and also feed their children. The fastest way what more than to steal or selling themselves, or even the children? That is why someone has to come in to support a little, push them a little bit, and hopefully one day they will realize that it is not the way to live.

Why the young mothers? Besides the criminal cases, actually it is the grandmothers who want their daughter to have child! When you see the word grandmother, are you thinking of grey hair, aged, old women? You see, these grandmothers are only in their mid 30s and early 40s, they have not been taking care of their daughter because in a similar pattern, the daughter has to go out and work for the baby, leaving the babies to their aunt or grandma.
So when they are mature enough, they wanted a baby, to do it one more time, in a different way.

If I want it a different way, I will try to stop the cycle. It is the circle of life we are talking about. Hmmm…

Also, Petrol price inflation…price of one bottle of cooking oil has increased almost 40%, adding to people’s everyday problems. One shift of the Price in the Economics supply and demand chart, yupe, I am seeing the consequences here.

(pic4: the baby boy is two months old and still have not any clothes to wear, only wrapped in towels)