Page 48 - 2023/24 Kaleidoscope Volume9

SM2 - Champion - Lee Jia Jie (5S Zhong)

It was a miracle. Everyone came around to help us.

My mother came frff om the rural parts of Malaysia, growing up in a fiff shing

village in Kelantan. She was admittedly not the nicest person in the world. She did
not know of the ways and manners of the urban-dwellers living in the capital city,
Kuala Lumpur. She was short-tempered and ill-mannered, oftff en going into

arguments with my neighbours. Her ‘kampung’ mindset just did not sit well with
the aristocrats of the city.

Despite all of the negative traits, my mother did have one thing she was good
at: being kind. Living in the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur,, my neighbours and I
oftff en had many issues with our housing, including power outages, flff oods and even

sewage problems. We were all in the same boat; we were in the “bottom layers of
society”, struggling to survive with little to no money to spare. With that in mind,

we had many problems regarding our fiff nances.

Whenever something unexpected happens, such as someone faff lling sick, I

remember my neighbours would request foff r aid in the foff rm of donations. We
lived at the faff rthest of the street, meaning our neighbours would have gone

through every single house on the street to reach ours. I waas always the one
answering the door. I remember every one of their disapppointed and anxious
fa f f ces. However, every single time I looked ddoownn aatt the donation box, it was

empty. no one helped them, no one was williiing to risk their very little sense of
fi f f nancial security to support someone in need, that is, except foff r my mother. She

always leftff large sums of money in those little boxes, oftff en in denominations of
100. As her hand reached over my shoulder to make the donation, she would
always say, “What goes around, comes around!”

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