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An Unforgettable Home Visitation
One of the more impressionable visits in my mind while in Chongqing visiting the School For The Blind was not the school itself. Perhaps it was because I had prior visits to the School and knew about its condition. It was a visit to a studentˇ¦s home that really ached my heart. Their home is located in a condemned building where they have been living for the past 16 years with two daughters and a son (who now stays in the school boarding room). The one and only bed is shared
among the parents and the two daughters. The daughters go to
schools during the day and use the bed at night; while the parents sleep during day time and work through the early mornings making tofu
to be sold in the market.
In the cramp space of approximately 300 square feet, with the bed
in placed and a supporting beam in the middle of the room, there
is hardly room for anything else. All other possessions and
utilities are hanged or scattered along the four walls. With three of us visitors plus the father in the room, there was no place for the mother to stand except outside the
house, where she generously gathered what I perceived to be precious water bottles for us visitors.
Outside the home is a shared community bath/kitchen/toilet. The kitchen has water but are split among various pipes & tubing snaking over all residences of that block. The electricity are boxes with loose wiring for each home. Kitchen has coal burning structure, with no other stove/fridge in sight. I opted to pass at observing their community toilet. These parents struggle to make a living with a monthly income of RMB800 minus RMB300 rental expense yet providing for their three children.
The sad thing is not about them living in a condemned building, but rather, that the building is scheduled to be demolished, affecting the entire block of likely 200+ families. These families need to vacate in two weeks by the end of December. My heart ached as we bid farewell to the parents of the sponsored student. What will happen to them? In my heart I said a quiet prayer for the families in this block. There was no solution for this problem when we left their premises. This experience has caused me to think about how much we take for granted in North America, and has taught me
to be more sympathetic to the less fortunate.
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