to learn a smile from someone special

Sunday, April 13, 2008

Our group went to orange valley nursing home. 3 of us for the second time and the first time as a whole group. Even though it was only our first time there, we found ourselves lost and wandering around despite being briefed about what to do last week when etheal entrusted some tasks to us. Only now do I realise the true meaning of having no one to give you advice when you need it, such as what we experienced yesterday.

When we reached Orange Valley, we procedded straight to the 5th storey with our newspaper article in hand, all prepared to share with the elderly our opinions and views on that particular topic that we have chosen. However, upon seeing the elderly at the dining area, I felt like backing out right away as the elderly were just staring at us blankly and we did not know where to start from or who to start with. However, we could not always stand there and wait for someone to introduce us as etheal was not around and we did not see any nurses around. Hence, each of us just went up to the elderly that we had been introduced briefly to during our first visit.

For me, the first elderly that I spoke to was Mr Richard Ma. From the description that we heard from etheal, he is a "handsome" old man who speaks fluently in chinese. No doubt about his fluency as even though Richard had slurred speech, his thoughts were coherant and he was eager to share his views about the diminishing of the olympic torch in Paris. For a fact, Richard is 98 years old this year. Even though he is old, he does not show it at all as he was reading the newspaper when we reached there. Therefore, it was quite simple for me to communicate with Richard as he was the one doing the talking most of the time. However, even though I managed to successfully share my article with Richard, it was not easy to find another elderly to share my article with as some of them were watching television and one of the elderly even thought that we wanted to spread religion. For this, I guess my mistake was that I began with asking them what they thought about the tibet-china situation going on now, with led them to thinking that I supported one side or another.

After talking to Richard, there was another elderly that lynette and I talked to. He is Mr Lee and he suffers from mild dementia. As such, he keeps repeating some sentences and even the nurses often have to ask him questions such as "how many children he has" etc. Mr Lee likes to emphasis that he is at ease at then nursing home as he is well-taken of there. THerefore, I realise that the elderly at the nursing home are there not because there is no one that wants to take care of them but more oftenly, their family members are too busy to look after them and it is best for them to be under the care of the nurses and doctors at the nursing home. Even though I did not share my newspaper article with Mr Lee, a lesson that I gathered from our conversation was that "A-levels are important" as the education system in singapore is now different. Mr Lee is only 80 year old this year.

THe last thing we did there was to give lunch to the elderly which was about 11.30a.m. However, most of the elderly were able to eat by themselves so we did not have to help them. As such, our group left about 12 after we had made sure that each elderly had their portion of lunch.

After this visit, I realised that it is not easy to communicate with the elderly as most of them spoke dialects. As such, only HuiEn and Melissa were able to communicate with one of the grandma who spoke Cantonese and Yimin could talk to one who spoke Hokkien. Furthermore, I decided that I shall look for articlest that do not involve religion or family matters so as not to let the elderly think that we are spreading religion.

In conclusion, this visit was a memorable one as there were first tries - in making beds- as well as some memorable events that happened.

Isabel

somewhere over the rainbow ,
5:57 AM