Orang Pinggiran - People on the Outskirt
By accident I saw an episode of this program on telly about a 9 year old kid named Herman who lives with his grandmother as his mom left him and both of his father and grandfather are already passed away. He only managed to go to school for two years due to financial hardship.
By financial hardship I mean he has to work to help his grandmother collecting pine tree chips that he sold for IDR 2000 a sack of 5 kilo. His grandmother only earn about IDR 3000 a day. They still have a bamboo house which was renovated a while back with the help of his neighbors. The boy was very small for his age due to malnutrition but he was tenacious, willing to work, and eager to go back to school.
Mom was very distraught upon seeing the program and wanted to take him into our home so that he could go to school. I was more concern that we are not separating the duo.
We tried calling the number shown in the end of the program but no body picked up the phone. That was almost two weeks ago. Tonight by accident I found a contact person for him on Facebook. I called her up, and was told that an orphanage in Slawi is taking him and his grandmother in and already register him for the next school year. They are ready to move to Slawi any day now.
Somehow when I heard that news, my gut feeling is telling me to keep in touch with the contact person to monitor. I hope I'll be proven wrong and Herman & his grandmother will be alright in the new place.
2 comments:
Heartbreaking story. And, knowing there are thousands, hundreds of thousands others of them who are in dire circumstances, one has to cope was emotions of empathy which are n being overwhelmed by emotions of helplessness.
Unfortunately I'm afraid I also would have experienced a similar gut feeling like you had, after hearing the relatively comforting information by the contact person.
yes.. it makes you both grateful for your life no matter what, and yet painful to see their struggles.
Like you said, there are plenty of such stories.. we could only help out a bit. We might not be able to change the world.. but for those we touched, we could've changed their world.
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