Monday, March 26, 2012

A Better Week

This has been a much better week for me. With the extra rest and sleep, my health has improved considerably. I have gone to bed by 8 p.m. almost every night and slept all night, sometimes with an afternoon nap. Ronald’s apartment is quiet and comfortable. The cough and congestion has improved day-by-day. Tuesday, we went to Wesley’s House Christian Care Center. We took an 8:30 a.m. train and returned about 3:00 p.m. by bus. We arrived about an hour before the children returned from school for lunch. We ate lunch with them. We had rice, carrots and greens, cooked with a little pork. It was very tasty.

The children were very happy to see us. It was especially nice to see Lankui, the little girl that came to the U.S. for surgery on her jaw. She had surgery in Nashville almost two years ago. She lived with us for six weeks before going to Nashville for the surgery, so we got very close to her. She was delighted to see us and we had some good hugs. Several of the girls, along with Lankui, went to their rooms and designed some wonderful drawings for us. It is their way of giving us a gift. They had glued small objects, such a colorful feathers or beads on the drawings. The older girls, including Lankui, took the same bus back to school that took us downtown Pingguo to catch the main bus back to Nanning. Lankui got off to go to school at her stop and waved until we got out of sight.

On Saturday, we went to Ronald’s grocery store, several blocks away. We woke up the morning before with a strong wind and storm at 6 a.m. It cleared out the fog and smog so Saturday was a warm, nice day. Ronald’s market, not the open street market, is very nice. Although it takes time to find things with everything in Chinese, there is a large variety of nearly everything. The vegetables and fruits in China are especially good. The spring time brings many good things from the farms and the stores are overflowing with food. Things are very cheap compared to the U.S. A package of green peppers (about 6) costs about 90 cents, a large tray of shitake mushroom costs 50 cents and three large, beautiful carrots cost 50 cents. We got a large amount of vegetables for this week. I have cooked a variety of rice, noodles, dumplings and vegetable stir-fry dishes. Each of us fixes our own breakfast each morning. I have cooked most other meals and Ronald cleans up the kitchen. We have not been out to eat but will have some meals out when we get to Hong Kong this weekend.

Today is Sunday. We had our service at 9 a.m. with Max, Ronald’s assistant, with us. Max has only been working in this position a little over a month but he had given his notice to quit at the end of the month. Ronald gave him some computer work three weeks ago, asking him to enter into excel spreadsheets some of the orphanages’ expenses. Everything was given to him so all he had to do was type in numbers in the correct columns. He still had not done any of the work on Tuesday and said he had not done the work because his eyes had been hurting. There is no doubt he is capable of typing in some numbers in a master form but it apparently this job is not what he wanted to do.

On Friday, when he resigned, he stated that our standards are too high after hearing Ron’s evaluation of how things are going at Wesley’s House. We found areas that needed to be cleaned with trash piled up and dirty walls that could be cleaned with soap and a rag. The Chinese workers think we should accept things the way they are used to, but we have told them all along that we expect our orphanages to have a better standard. Workers sit around while the children are in school - doing nothing. At Wesley’s House, they have a huge storage room of stuff, including clothing, bedding, toys and supplies. There were boxes and boxes of things the director has not opened and has no idea what is inside. A lot of these things have been donated. They don’t even know if it is things they can use. They are not of any benefit to anyone stored away like this. When asked why workers are not sorting through things while children are in school, he said they only did this on Tuesdays.

I asked if the children were allowed to play with the many toys I saw in the storage room. The director said there were not enough for each child to have one so they just kept them locked up. I asked what is wrong with teaching children how to share toys. No comment was made to answer my question. So, if you have 25 hoopla hoops and 100 children, you don’t let them play with any of them? Their answer is to just lock them up in a storage room?

Ronald offered Max the opportunity to have a job at Wesley’s House to help them since there is no male worker there, other than the director. Max said he’d just take his chances of seeing what other kind job he can find. When we found Max to come work at John Connor Brown, he was washing dishes in a restaurant. When he resigned that position (without any explanation as to his reason), he went to work for an orphanage with handicapped children. He lasted about a month. He said that was not for him so he asked to work as Ronald’s assistant. But, now he doesn’t want to do this either or take another position at any orphanage. Max is a good guy, a faithful Christian with good English skills, but he lacks motivation to work. It seems that the average Chinese does not see any need to put forth much effort in a job. When we arrived in Nanning and he learned we were staying with Ronald, he said if we didn’t need him the next day he would just go somewhere to ride his bike. Ronald told him it was still a work day and he could do some of the work he gave him three weeks earlier. It just wasn’t what he wanted to do, unfortunately. He is a university graduate with good English skills but he’ll end up working again in a restaurant at low wages simply because he does not want to work hard.

Finding motivated workers has been our greatest challenge. They all want to do as little as possible. There is no pride in doing things the best that can be done. It isn’t that they are incapable; they just do not see any need to make things better, especially if it means they have to work hard.

The children deserve to have a better chance in life and it’s up to our workers to teach them. We have two American couples who have worked in China for several years teaching English in universities who are discussing the possibility of moving to one of the orphanages to work with the children. If this happens, the children will have English classes and help with their homework to improve their grades. We hope the American couples at the orphanages can motivate workers to improve the living conditions and raise the standards, but we never know whether Chinese workers will conform or simply quit, like Max, saying we expect too much.

Thanks again for your prayers for my health.

No comments: