The first time I volunteered at a soup kitchen, I didn't do it out of the overwhelming need to help people.
Let's just face it, I honestly did not give a shit about what happened to people outside of my worthwhile-caring-about zone. In retrospect, that zone included my family and less than a handful of people. Safe to say, if you're hungry, poor or just had life punch you in the face with a spiked mace and came to me for help, I'd probably pretend I was blind to avoid you. I also thought that volunteering might help me score some ass so there's that. Maybe even meet someone at the soup kitchen itself, like some bad romantic comedy that'll net a 5.5 rating on IMDB.
Cruel? Perhaps, but this little back story is important to fully understand my coming points.
So one day, my sister told me about this soup kitchen she heard through god knows what, located at god knows where. She asked me if I wanted to come along and my first reaction was predictably 'Fuck, no'. However, this was my sister and I was on holiday and well, how many times would I get to do something like this? So I agreed and that night, we went to Bangsar to look for the place.
After much hassle and confusion (Two people with a sense of direction that trailed in the negative zone) we got to the address, miraculously, I might add. My first impression? This place looks like house.
You see, my impression of a soup kitchen was this: A massive, warehouse-like infrastructure that's dirty and unsanitary. There'd be people dressed in rags lining up and all of them had a look of bitterness; bitter at their shitty luck, bitter at how the world treated them and bitter at how that cunt up front obviously got much more food than them. And then there'd be fights and people would get shanked in the eyes and in the far corner there'd be a few junkies listening to a sage dressed in equally horrendous rags. The cooks (Or volunteers or whatever, they all had the same clothes on) sighed as their eyes rested on the clock, counting the seconds till their shift ended.
If you had been observing closely, you might say that my imagination is Satan's playroom. Anyway, my point is that everything I thought about soup kitchens was wrong.
So there we were, standing in front of this house and not knowing how to exactly proceed. Had we taken a wrong turn somewhere? Were we still in KL even? Did we somehow tear the fabric of space and time and ended up in Kuala Perlis? Mother of God, please, anything but Kuala Perlis!
My sister, having slightly better social skills and understanding, decided to wing it and rang the bell. I must say that my memory of this incident is slightly blurry so the following account might be purely fabricated.
A woman opened the gates and eyed us; strangers meant bad tidings from the East.
"Yes?" she asked, her eyes still evaluating our worth.
"We would like an audience with the Lady of this castle," my sister said, taking off her gauntlets and helm. "We heard rumours of the Lady's charity and would like to participate."
"And him?" the woman asked, gesturing towards me as I lit my pipe.
"He is with me," my sister said. Lowering her voice, she continued. "You must excuse my brother, he is, for lack of a better term, fucking retarded."
Obviously, that wasn't historically accurate but I prefer to alter my memories to liven things up. That was how we first met Aunty Munirah, founder of the PERTIWI Soup Kitchen. First impression: She looks kind of stern and it unnerved me.
But hey, whatever, we're there to help and stuff so let's get to it. Turns out, the house itself wasn't where shit gets done. We were going to move around the city and distribute food from designated locations. So we waited for the rest of the volunteers to arrive and then things started to move forward in the most organised manner possible. I shit you not, it was as if I was watching goddamned Sun Tzu himself organising a military campaign. It was brilliant. One car was in charge of the medical team and supplies, one with the foodstuff et cetera. And then we set off. I found myself in the company of this guy, Ali, annoyingly friendly and chirpy.
This was the point where things began to surprise the fuck out of me.
We arrived at the first checkpoint... Somehow my mind has prevented me from recalling the exact place so I'm going to name it after the first thing that comes to mind. So we arrived at Magic Town. Ali parked the car in an alley nearby and we started walking. We must have taken a wrong turn somewhere because we stumbled into a full blown demonstration. This is coming from a guy who lives in front of Ibrahim Mosque, Alexandria, Egypt, also known as the bloody battleground during the Mubarak and Morsi period.
However, Ali just kept on walking directly towards the big crowd of people and my first thought was to bail and leave him to be torn to pieces by the mob. When I realised they weren't going after him, I was confused. Hey, people, pick up a stick and smack that guy so that I can start running already. Then I realised that the mob seem unnaturally docile for rioters. Which made me come to the next logical conclusion:
These were the poverty stricken, homeless, diseased, socially shunned, shit out of luck people. People that we were there to help. People I never knew existed before. There were so... many of them. Different colours, different characters, different circumstances but all there for the same reason: There were people who were willing to help.
Now, I am not going to pretend that at that moment, I realised how much of a bad person I was. I'm not going to pretend that I felt even the slightest need to pull off my clothes so that they can have them. I did not feel anything like that. I only had the iron gauntlets of truth slap me across the face.
I cannot stress this enough. There were so many of them. All crowded beside the street waiting for the food truck to arrive.
When it did, I was assigned to be one of the guys who made the roti kaya, probably because it was the job that I couldn't fuck up in a million years. Instructions were simple; try and conserve as much kaya as possible but don't act like a cunt and give them empty pieces of bread. So I did that and while doing so, I observed what was going on around me.
It was interesting to see the facial expressions of the people who lined up to receive their food. You have the ones who grinned from ear to ear, the ones whose faces were red in shame, the ones who looked purely bitter at their fate, the ones who mutter and garble their thank yous and the ones who yelled them. Young, old, clean, dirty, men, women, transsexuals, every variation of the term human. They were all there.
Perhaps the one thing I would remember forever was this guy who, after receiving his packet of food, did not bother to look for a quiet spot to sit down and eat. Nope, he just ripped the packet open, plopped down in the middle of the fucking sidewalk and went to town. Nowadays, whenever I thought of the term 'famished', that guy comes to mind.
It's not just the food. There was a medical team and a hair stylist and god knows what else. Indiscriminately working for these 'bums'. When everybody has got their portion, we'd go around asking if anybody needs a refill of sirap (Seriously, what is it called in English? Syrup? Red sugar water? Elixir of life?). Packed everything up, cleaned the whole area from rubbish (And yes, we left the place cleaner than before we arrived) and set forth to the next checkpoint; Kota Raya.
The whole routine starts again. I was no longer the kaya bread man, I was promoted to the sirap guy. Maybe it was a demotion. I wasn't sure about the hierarchy. Regardless, my new job meant that I had direct contact with the people and it was awesome. My ego was stroked by a few transsexuals who gleefully remarked that I should take their number in case I 'needed a lap to sleep on'. There was an elderly Chinese man who calmly instructed me on how to properly pour sirap into his bottle and left with a quite, wistful thank you. A man with Kelantanese accent who kept on telling me 'Abe, please la abe, sikit lagi' even when his bottle was full. Once again, pack up, clean up, final checkpoint: Masjid India.
Finally, when everything was over, I smoked a cigarette with a few of the volunteers. They introduced each other, cracked a few jokes and then we all went back to our lives.
I sit here in my room in Egypt and I can say with no doubt, that was one of the best nights of my fucking life. Not because I had some strange sort of sexual fulfillment but because it shed light on so many things that I previously did not know, one of it being the appreciation of what I have. It is a lot, considering how little these people have.
It's more than just the act of charity. The reality is so much more than what I initially perceived. By helping those in need, we unconsciously help ourselves. Take me for example. I went to help not out of some noble pursuit to be a better person. Shit, I went there because I was bored and truthfully, I was worried about my sister being stabbed in an alley by some homeless hobo.
However, at the end of the day, there were so many conflicts that arose from within the black abyss that used to house my heart. How was I unaware of their plight before? Don't they have a home to go back to? Do they still have a home? What circumstance drove them to sleep in the streets? Did that transsexual really want me or did she just want more sirap?
That's just one night's worth of self-reflection. There are regular volunteers, one of them being my sister, and God knows how much wisdom they've got by simply doling out food. I used to have a burning hatred for our society but as cheesy as it sounds, these volunteers have helped me realise that not all people are back-stabbing thundercunts. It's phenomenal.
Perhaps some of you have heard about the Federal Territories Minister Datuk Seri Tengku Adnan's announcement that no soup kitchen will be allowed to operate within a 2 kilometer radius of Lot 10.
Now, being born in Penang and raised in Melaka, I have no idea where or what Lot 10 is. I also think that the minister's name is a bit too long so I will be referring to him as 'Datuk Cunt' from here on. Regardless, banning an organisation whose aim is only to help leads me to believe a few things:
1) This is an elaborate plan to surprise the nation regarding the shift of April Fool's day celebration.
2) Tengku Adnan has been kidnapped by aliens/cyborgs/bunian and in his place, a doppelganger; Datuk Cunt, has been installed.
3) This is all a nightmare and I should be waking up right... about... now. Hm, no? Well, that leaves only...
4) None of the above is true and Datuk Cunt is aiming to win the 'Worst Human Being Alive' title.
This is the part where I stop joking.
I have tried to look at the situation from his eyes, tried to somehow make sense of his plan. So what if KL is a tourist destination? Does this mean that we need to scrub the streets clean of every beggar so as to project an illusion of Utopia to the tourist? What will that achieve? Will their happiness drastically change just because a beggar is not in sight? In the event that they do encounter a beggar, will they be so revolted to the point where they will blacklist Malaysia for good?
This is where the little back story I told you before comes into place. I am not a good person but even when I'm not, it seems a little fucking excessive to stop people from helping those in need. If a tourist hates the city because he or she saw a beggar or a homeless person, then I believe that it shows more flaw in character of the tourist rather than the city. We should thank our lucky stars if they decide to never return to KL. We don't need them.
I've also heard that the reason Datuk Cunt is doing this is because there are individuals or a group of individuals who scam the populace by acting like beggars. Word is that they rake in thousands in cash every month and live in hotels and so on.
Well, okay, let's try to use our logic here. I know it's going to be hard, Datuk, but please bear with me, just for a little while. So these bastards who pose as beggars, they make real good money. They stay in hotels and it would probably be logical to assume that they would have enough money to buy proper food. Soup kitchens are not exactly known to serve gourmet style dinners, or at least that's what I've observed. So why exactly would these scammers come all the way to the checkpoints to get food when they can buy it themselves using their ill gotten money?
Does that make sense? I hope it does because it's related to the next point. So if you ban soup kitchens from operating, what exactly will that achieve other than depriving the ones who really need help?
Imagine this situation; I'm hoping your imagination is still functioning. A tourist comes to the city. At night, said tourist decides to go for a walk. While randomly going into streets he stumbles upon an unusual sight. So many people are having a meal and drinking sirap. Upon observation, he notices a group of people distributing food and giving haircuts and medical checkups so, being curious, he approaches them and asks what they were doing. The group replies that they are helping the poor and homeless of KL. Said tourist, given that he has a heart, exclaims 'That's amazing'. He goes back to the hotel, writes a post on social media telling about what he just saw. People are happy. KL's reputation goes up, if only for a bit. Imagine that.
A suggestion, if I may, Datuk? Join a soup kitchen. Go out into the night and look at the state of the city's hidden populace. Talk to them. Make kaya sandwiches. Pour sirap. Perhaps you might find it to be one of the most beneficial movement in our country today. Perhaps you'd realise that this non-profit organisation helps not only those in need but our society as a whole. Perhaps.
See, I don't know Aunty Munirah as well as others. I don't know the regular volunteers. All I know is that there is no denying they are good people doing a damn good thing. Taking that away is fucking irresponsible. Taking that away is a step backwards. Taking that away makes KL a little more destitute than it already is.
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