night street walk

last saturday (3 may), i joined in one of the penang office of human development (POHD) project, ‘street night walk’.

this project is a regular project  of ‘the lighthouse’, a ministry of POHD, a drop-in centre that, apart from providing daily meals, also provides a place for them to bathe, relax with music and tv. once a week, there is also a volunteer doctor on duty.

the lighthouse usually hold this project once a month. it started more than one year ago.

what is this project about? Briefly – feed the homeless (vagrants, beggars and so on) on the street.

firstly, the staff and volunteers gathered to cook a meal, mostly it is fried rice with two dishes (see first picture). the cooked food will then be packed in styrofoam box (with apology to the environment! see second picture). together with the food and bottles of mineral water, we packed them in boxes and big plastic bags. there were 11 of us that day – 7 in a van and 4 in a car. off we go into the streets, looking for beggars and homeless people.

we only started to hit the streets after 11.00pm, as that  will be the time when these homeless people can be seen on the pavements, sidewalks and bus stops.

that day we packed 75 packets of food. the areas we went to were the hawkers complex opposite the ferry terminal, jln mesjid kapitan keling near the goddess of mercy temple, penang road around hotel oriental, and the surrounding area of shopping complexes of komtar, prangin mall and gama.

some areas there were only 3 or 4 homeless people. most of them congregated around the shopping areas, especially at the komtar bus terminal, when the buses had stop operating – thus it was deserted. they slept on the long benches.

yes, a number of them were sleeping when we approached them, but they woke up when we went near them and called lightly to them. most of them did not eat the food at once but a few of them seemed hungry when they opened the pack of food at once and immediately ate the food.

oh, we finished giving away all the 75 packets! actually that’s not consider a lot as bele, the lighthouse manager told me they usually packed 100 packets and finished all the 100. as bele is a regular of the street walk, some of the street people knows him. one man lead bele and us to some hideouts where his friends were. bele told us that that during that night, consider not many homeless people were found. we found out the reason. one of the homeless people said that the DAP government had picked up several of them who were young and able-bodied and gave them jobs with a place to stay. don’t know how far true that is but it is a possibility that it could be true.

quite  a number of them thanked us! surprise? no, not to me because we were always taught not to look down on the poor and treat them as our equals although it was us who helped them. after all, in the bible, we were shown that "nothing belongs to you", thus what we give away comes from god, so all the more we should give what we have to our less fortunate sisters and brothers. also, in our society of st vincent de paul works, we were taught that it is us who should thank the poor, and not the other way round, since it was they who gave us the opportunity to put our faith in action and let them see jesus in us.

i’m glad i was involved in this project though i did not personally handed the food and/or water to them since i was there as a ‘reporter’ actually. i was busy taking photos as i want to write an article about this ‘street walk’ to our catholic paper, the herald. all my photos (more than 10) turned out to be very blur or out of focus as i took them in a hurry. bele, had cautioned me to be careful when taking photos as the street people might not like it. he said to take it from afar and made it quick. quick was what i did indeed, which made the photos turned out so ugly. oh not forgetting, it was dark of  course. oh well, never mind, hope in future when i do go again on the night street walk,  i will be able to take better photos (having learned my lesson what went wrong).