Week 5: The End

Five weeks of field work has ended. On this last day, our conversation with our sahabat went deeper. Family issues. She is disappointed with her daughters. As she talked, her eyes went watery. Seeing her, my heartache. I promise to myself that I will never ever let my mom to go through this.

When I was younger, I read something that talk about the relationship between parents and children. If not mistaken, it categorized the relationship into four types and I just remembered two. One says that children are parents’ debtors. Another says that children are here to repay the debts the owe to their parents. Not long ago, I saw something similar that says everyone around us is our debtors. So, if these were to be applied to my sahabat’s case, it seems that the children are her debtors. Whenever I see someone having a good life or a bad one, it makes me thinking what they have done in their past life or current one.

For her.

As I was discussing with my group mate, Joy about what our sahabat’s family issues, a Chinese saying came to my mind, “慈母多败儿”. The direct translate of it will be: a kind mother has a failed son. Our sahabat did scold her daughters but to what extend? Obviously she is not stern enough with her daughters. To some people, who do not know how to be grateful and appreciate what they have, some heavy punishment should be given to them. It may look mean to that person but that’s the way to make a person grow.

Since this is the last week of this project, I printed a photo that we took with our sahabat during our first meet up, framed it and gave to her as a memory. Everything comes to an end but memory lasts.

Hope that this will not be our last photo with her.

 

After these five weeks, I realised how lucky I am. I have a lot of things to be grateful for and I shall just list out five.

 I am grateful for:
- being born to a financially stable family
- having a great parents who fulfilled all my needs.
- the guidance Ms Kelly and Mr Sam provided to us throughout these whole module.
- my allergies being taken into account.
- a bunch of group mates who are super cooperative and helpful.

Week 4: The Discovery

4th September 2014, Tuesday. The day we finally got to see what's the actual situation of our sahabat, Pn. Salamiah. A few days before the visit, we decided to get her a fruit basket.

We left Taylor's around 12.30pm and reached our destination roughly 30 minutes later. The place Pn. Salamiah lives is a government-built low cost flat located on a hill which consists of four blocks, each at a height of 16 levels. The nearby area is more concentrated with other flats and houses. Pn. Salamiah carries out her food stall business at the ground floor’s corridor outside a local kindergarten where the local community’s children attend. At the ground floor of each block, there are shop lots such as restaurants, mini markets, barber shop, tailor shop, clothes shop, cyber café and beauty treatment center which are all run by the local community. After surveying around, our conclusion is that her business can barely survive. The pictures below are part of the housing area.

There are 4 flats facing each other, each with roughly 16 floors.

Mini market? It looks more like a mini wholesaler to me.

I wanted to suggest Pn Salamiah to sell snacks since her stall is next to a kindergarten but looking at this, no.

A whole row of restaurants. There are roughly 5 or 6 shop lots selling food.

After looking around, again, we are clueless. To change her situation, she must change her business location. To change, transportation is needed and she has none. She has a RM6000 loan with AIM and she said she spent them on buying containers and other business related stuff. Come to think of it, having a marketing plan may not really help her. What she needs is being taught the concept of money and how to use money wisely. I'm not saying that I'm very good in it but looking at her way of spending money, that's not right. She mentioned that she bought a set of facial product costs hundred over for her daughter. I smelled something fishy there. It could be either she has no idea of money managing or she did not revealed her actual income.

Another thought is that she mentioned she has a teacher, whom I believed is a representative from AIM. According to Pn Salamiah, what the teacher does is collecting money, the payment for the loan and gives the same speech every time they meet. She did asked for help from her teacher, but no help is given. I have no idea what's the actual situation. If what Pn. Salamiah said is true, something needs to be done. To me, it is pointless to lend funds to people without helping them to build up the business. The fund will end up wrongly spent.

Next week will be the last week of this project. And I doubt the positive impact I've made to her life. And again, I strongly believe that no matter how well a marketing plan is, it will still be pointless if the person's concept of money isn't right and doesn't know how to manage the money well.

If you ask me now, is this karma? It could be, but 50%. 

It is really important to spend according to one's ability.