Visit to Valley of Hope, Sungei Buloh.

Indian girls singing Mandarin songs? This was our challenge when we discovered that most of the recovered patients at the Valley of Hope's Leprosarium were Chinese and most of our girls were Indian. Oh ..oh......... A very interesting problem indeed. How did we solve it? Read on...!

3rd August 2013 was our 2nd enrichment activity for the North Soil and Chinese girls for the year. My girls were scheduled to visit the Valley of Hope and bring cheer to the residents through gifts and songs. The girls decided to give RM 700/- to purchase adult diapers, new  toiletries and Tupperware for the residents. I was much encouraged when some girls shared about this CSR visit to the Interact Club. It was then I realized my girls did not see the trip as a burden but saw it as an opportunity to bless. Soon Shubiny from the Interact Club approached me to see if the Interact Club could join this CSR trip. The Interactors gave another RM 300/- for the residents.  About 14 Interactors joined this trip.

CS girls with TOD youth at the Valley of Hope

Back to our Chinese songs dilemma - both for the Indian girls,  for the banana Chinese girls and also the banana school principal. The youth from Tabernacle of David, coordinated by Avis Ng printed for us the lyrics of several songs, complete with Chinese characters and Han Yi Pin Yin. We decided wisely to shortlist the song list to one famous popular Mandarin love song - Yue liang dai biao wo de xin ( the moon represents my heart ) and two English songs. We also went to the TOD Valley of Hope FB page and downloaded the YouTube movies. We practiced singing several songs using printed song scripts and everything ICT.

The song learning sessions turned out to be very interactive and fun and not as daunting as we thought it would be. Our girls were very open to cross cultural connections. Many questions about the words and pronunciation  were asked. Soon the Mandarin speaking girls decided they had to help us. Sor Wei Ning and Ng Jia En displayed their leadership in leading us to read the script properly. We read sentence by sentence to enunciate each character properly. Eventually we learnt the meaning of the characters, accompanied by much scribbling on the song scripts. Of course the famous wo ai ni ( I love you )was quickly identified and learnt.

Indian girls singing the Mandarin song from the song script
 while Shubiny enhances her script by writing down
what she hears and understand

The girls had fun learning through the songs. Even girls who were not going for the CSR trip came to learn the songs. The beauty of this learning session for me personally was that finally I learnt the whole song. I have always been an extreme banana Chinese and though I knew the tune of Yue liang dai biao wo de xin, I did not know the meaning of each character and had never been able to sing the song.  I now can sing this song from memory without referring to any script. I do hope this learning is permanent.

I heard my girls did Convent Sentul proud at the Valley of Hope. Several Interactors dressed in their Interact T shirt. I also heard they sang other songs - like Rasa Sayang upon the request of the residents. I also heard they met Indian residents and the Indian residents were very cheered to have conversation with my girls. The 1Malaysia spirit is well and alive in Convent Sentul!