mollymeek (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} mollymeek) wrote,@ 2008-12-17 15:01:00 |
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The Return of the Singapore Spirit
There was a report in The New Paper about a young couple, Madam Juliana Saib and Mr. Mohamad Hider, who are broke, unemployed and living on welfare. And they have eight children. Naturally, many people would feel as though the couple are really irresponsible. Despite their financial situation, they actually continued having children; they refuse to work (according to how TNP puts it) and even spend money on cigarettes.
Being as irresponsible as the couple are, Molly has to say something positive about them. Molly thinks the family perfectly embody the Singapore spirit. There are at least six ways in which they epitomize the qualities we extol:
1. The couple got married young.
2. They have many children while they are still young. The husband is only 33, almost double of Molly's age, but is relatively young nevertheless. The wife is 32. Their oldest son is 16 (his mother was 16 when she gave birth to him!), so the couple could have been married since they were teenagers.
3. They are poor, but they don't seem to be whining and blaming the government. (At least TNP didn't mention that.) In fact, the couple's oldest son says: "Life hasn't been so bad. It's not like we've had no food to eat, or no new clothes to wear."
4. They are family-oriented. Madam Juliana rejected an offer to house her and her children at a shelter because the shelter was only for women and could not take in the husband as well. She did not want the family to be separated. Good to focus on the family.
5. The couple have a spirit of survivalism. Madam Juliana says: "It's not been easy moving from place to place, but so long as the family is together, we'll survive." That's right. Survive. That's what many Singaporeans are doing or trying to do. Only a few can go beyond mere survival because they are smart and talented or do a good job of pretending to be so.
6. They tried to upgrade themselves from a three-room flat to a four-room flat. Now the only "upgrading" they can afford is perhaps having cigarettes.
Molly doesn't understand why people are not complimenting the family for their resilience and for embodying the virtues of the Singapore spirit. Now, how many of you would honestly survive and be as optimistic as they are if you are put into the same situation?
Or perhaps the couple is aberrant as there's no way in which we can treat poverty with such insouciance. We embrace the modernity of private condominiums even if we cannot own one, so how could we tolerate a "nomadic" family in our midst that behaves as if affluence isn't a priority. Or they have to be an aberrance so that they can be a reassurance. We affirm our happiness with the fact that we are not them. . . . Maybe we all are them, one and the same, only victims standing on different sides of the same overcrowded silver modern coin that is the only currency we use and know.
There is a constant gaze on poverty. The NKF charity shows used to feed us with shots of sob stories of poor sick people. (The rich and sick would not need to be featured in an NKF sob story even if they are suffering from the same illness, would they? So watching an NKF sob story isn't smply seeing sick people suffer. It's seeing poor people suffer from sickness.) There are also similar shows with a similar format, allowing us to gaze at poverty and participate by parting with a bit of cash, though one might see the NKF shows as the best representative of these shows. But with the NKF scandal a few years back, perhaps these shows are simply not the same to us anymore.
Perhaps that's why Channel 8 now satisfies the masses with smaller variety programs (coming much more often than the old yearly NKF show) featuring poverty for us to watch, ranging from shows that attempt to salvage the failing business of hawkers to shows that attempt to warm our hearts by making a difference to the unfortunate ones. I must have watched a few episodes of those TV programs (though now the print media is fast catching up). Some hawker center or coffee shop stall would be collapsing from the lack of business. But it's certainly the fault of the hawkers who do not know how to cook. Once they work hard, get rid of their incompetence (whilst suffering a few deliberate verbal abuses on national TV) and learn to cook well, they will survive. Success. A story of poverty and progress through the endurance of shame, not unlike the grandpa story of third-to-first world development. The same narrative repeated ad infinitum (with or even without a difference). Let the repressed return and be suppressed. Aberrance and reassurance blended perfectly and served to us in a well-polished glass.
Last I heard, that salvaged hawker stall near my place isn't doing too well.
We do love our lives. Our imperfections are too much of a flaw if others are worse off.
Enslavement is surely preferred to homelessness . . . not that anyone is enslaved. We are sovereign beings even if our rationality has been prescribed for us.
We are not them. We can help them. They can help themselves. We can help ourselves.
Please help yourself.
..................................
TNP Article
There was a report in The New Paper about a young couple, Madam Juliana Saib and Mr. Mohamad Hider, who are broke, unemployed and living on welfare. And they have eight children. Naturally, many people would feel as though the couple are really irresponsible. Despite their financial situation, they actually continued having children; they refuse to work (according to how TNP puts it) and even spend money on cigarettes.
Being as irresponsible as the couple are, Molly has to say something positive about them. Molly thinks the family perfectly embody the Singapore spirit. There are at least six ways in which they epitomize the qualities we extol:
1. The couple got married young.
2. They have many children while they are still young. The husband is only 33, almost double of Molly's age, but is relatively young nevertheless. The wife is 32. Their oldest son is 16 (his mother was 16 when she gave birth to him!), so the couple could have been married since they were teenagers.
3. They are poor, but they don't seem to be whining and blaming the government. (At least TNP didn't mention that.) In fact, the couple's oldest son says: "Life hasn't been so bad. It's not like we've had no food to eat, or no new clothes to wear."
4. They are family-oriented. Madam Juliana rejected an offer to house her and her children at a shelter because the shelter was only for women and could not take in the husband as well. She did not want the family to be separated. Good to focus on the family.
5. The couple have a spirit of survivalism. Madam Juliana says: "It's not been easy moving from place to place, but so long as the family is together, we'll survive." That's right. Survive. That's what many Singaporeans are doing or trying to do. Only a few can go beyond mere survival because they are smart and talented or do a good job of pretending to be so.
6. They tried to upgrade themselves from a three-room flat to a four-room flat. Now the only "upgrading" they can afford is perhaps having cigarettes.
Molly doesn't understand why people are not complimenting the family for their resilience and for embodying the virtues of the Singapore spirit. Now, how many of you would honestly survive and be as optimistic as they are if you are put into the same situation?
Or perhaps the couple is aberrant as there's no way in which we can treat poverty with such insouciance. We embrace the modernity of private condominiums even if we cannot own one, so how could we tolerate a "nomadic" family in our midst that behaves as if affluence isn't a priority. Or they have to be an aberrance so that they can be a reassurance. We affirm our happiness with the fact that we are not them. . . . Maybe we all are them, one and the same, only victims standing on different sides of the same overcrowded silver modern coin that is the only currency we use and know.
There is a constant gaze on poverty. The NKF charity shows used to feed us with shots of sob stories of poor sick people. (The rich and sick would not need to be featured in an NKF sob story even if they are suffering from the same illness, would they? So watching an NKF sob story isn't smply seeing sick people suffer. It's seeing poor people suffer from sickness.) There are also similar shows with a similar format, allowing us to gaze at poverty and participate by parting with a bit of cash, though one might see the NKF shows as the best representative of these shows. But with the NKF scandal a few years back, perhaps these shows are simply not the same to us anymore.
Perhaps that's why Channel 8 now satisfies the masses with smaller variety programs (coming much more often than the old yearly NKF show) featuring poverty for us to watch, ranging from shows that attempt to salvage the failing business of hawkers to shows that attempt to warm our hearts by making a difference to the unfortunate ones. I must have watched a few episodes of those TV programs (though now the print media is fast catching up). Some hawker center or coffee shop stall would be collapsing from the lack of business. But it's certainly the fault of the hawkers who do not know how to cook. Once they work hard, get rid of their incompetence (whilst suffering a few deliberate verbal abuses on national TV) and learn to cook well, they will survive. Success. A story of poverty and progress through the endurance of shame, not unlike the grandpa story of third-to-first world development. The same narrative repeated ad infinitum (with or even without a difference). Let the repressed return and be suppressed. Aberrance and reassurance blended perfectly and served to us in a well-polished glass.
We do love our lives. Our imperfections are too much of a flaw if others are worse off.
Enslavement is surely preferred to homelessness . . . not that anyone is enslaved. We are sovereign beings even if our rationality has been prescribed for us.
We are not them. We can help them. They can help themselves. We can help ourselves.
Please help yourself.
..................................
TNP Article
| My Messy Life | |
| HOMELESS... Family with 8 kids moved 12 times in 2 years, even staying at beaches and parks HOPELESS? Broke parents won't find jobs, spending welfare money on cigarettes | |
| They're penniless but won't work, living on any help they can get. We start the first of a four-part series on troubled families | |
| FOR the past two years, they have been living like nomads - in Singapore. | |
| |
| 09 December 2008 | |
| FOR the past two years, they have been living like nomads - in Singapore. The family of 10 has lived with friends, relatives, in parks and on beaches. They wash in public toilets and live off charity. They ended up in a shelter for homeless families in June this year. But barely three months later, they were back on the streets after breaking the shelter's rules. Madam Juliana Saib, 32, her husband, Mr Mohamad Hider Abdul Kabis, 33, and their eight children aged between 16 and 1, live their lives one day at a time. When they outlast their welcome, the hunt for their next place to stay begins yet again. Said Madam Juliana: 'It's not been easy moving from place to place, but so long as the family is together, we'll survive.' The couple have five sons, aged 16, 15, 12, 11, and 3, and three daughters, aged 9, 6 and 1. Why have so many children when they have no home? Madam Juliana said it was 'God's will' and the children were 'a joy'. She was so adamant that the family stay together that she rejected an offer earlier this year to house the children and her at a shelter, without her husband. The couple also rejected several jobs recommended by social workers from various agencies, ranging from cleaning to delivery, citing reasons such as 'workplace too far', 'not suitable' or 'not convenient', said MrRavi Philemon, manager of the New Hope Shelter for Displaced Families. The family's problems started when they decided to upgrade from a three-room flat in Bedok to a four-room flat in Serangoon in late 2005. Mr Mohamad Hider was then taking home $1,600 as a warehouse assistant. When they bought their new flat in early 2006, they took a $32,000 bank loan. Around the same time, Mr Mohamad Hider quit his job as he wasn't happy at his workplace. He soon found another job, as a delivery man, but that brought in only half his previous salary - about $800 a month. Madam Juliana was not working then. By August 2006, the couple found they could no longer pay their loan instalments. They went to their Member of Parliament for help to get them another bank loan to downgrade to a three-room flat, but were advised not to do so. Instead, they were asked to consider renting a flat or living with relatives until their income improved. HDB did not repossess the couple's flat. Their Serangoon flat was subsequently sold in the resale market. The family moved in with Mr Mohamad Hider's 42-year-old brother at his three-room flat in Khatib. Madam Juliana was then seven months pregnant with their eighth child, and that was where she recovered after giving birth in January last year, and where the family stayed until June. But staying under the same roof soon resulted in misunderstandings and arguments, which forced them to move. It marked the start of the family's nomadic lifestyle. (See time chart on page 8.) Mr Mohamad Hider had quit his delivery job in the middle of last year to 'help take care of the children'. But in July, he started working as a cleaner, earning $700 a month. Madam Juliana had, since Febuary last year, been working part-time as a cashier, earning about $850 a month. In October, the family moved to East Coast Park, where they lived for a few days in a tent after outstaying their welcome at a friend's place. It was then that social workers from the Ministry of Community Development, Youth and Sports discovered them and referred them to the Singapore Children's Society's Yishun Family Service Centre (FSC). They then moved again, to another relative's place, where they stayed for six months. But a misunderstanding with the relative landed them back on the streets in May this year. This time, they spent a night at a void deck in Yishun. The next day, they moved to Sembawang park. Said Mr Mohamad Hider: 'The night we were thrown out, my 3-year-old boy was running a fever, and sleeping in the open was cold and uncomfortable. 'We had to give him some panadol. Luckily his fever went down.' Mr Mohamad Hider again quit his job to 'take care of his family'. In January this year, Madam Juliana, too, had left her cashier's job for the same reason. The family spent three weeks at Sembawang park, living in a tent, and surviving on instant noodles boiled over a portable gas stove. A social worker from Yishun FSC referred Madam Juliana to a shelter, where she could stay with her children. But she refused to go. She said: 'The shelter was only for women, so my husband would have to find his own way. I refused to accept because I didn't want the family to be separated.' The family was told it was illegal to camp at the park indefinitely. So they moved again, to Changi beach, where they stayed for two weeks in June this year. A social worker referred them to the New Hope Shelter on 20 Jun. They were housed in a three-room flat in Marsiling with two other homeless families. But during their time there, they flouted the rules - which include not allowing visitors at the unit after 10pm. When they moved to another unit in July, they continued to visit the tenants at their former unit without permission, though that too was against the rules. They were warned by the home's staff seven times, and had to leave the shelter on 15 Sep. They then moved in with their second son's classmate and his grandmother in Hougang, but were asked to leave late last month. It is understood the couple are now staying temporarily at Changi beach with their youngest daughter, while the other children live with various relatives. Both husband and wife are jobless and have no savings. The family has, since earlier this year, been surviving on welfare. They get $180 every month for four months from Muis, $60 worth of food vouchers a month for four months from a mosque, $590 a month for three months from the Northwest Community Development Council, $225 every month from the Straits Times Pocket Money Fund, and occasional food rations from the Yishun FSC and other welfare groups. Despite not having a home, Madam Juliana made sure the family had new clothes to wear during Hari Raya in October. She also spends on cigarettes. The couple's 9-year-old daughter is deaf. Their eldest, An-nafy Yusman, 16, stopped going to school and went to work at a fast food joint in May, earning $600 a month. But he returned to school in October, and is now staying with a friend. Said An-nafy: 'Life hasn't been so bad. It's not like we've had no food to eat, or no new clothes to wear. 'I don't feel there's been much change to my lifestyle at all.' |
