a plate of sand, a bowl of dust

I've had been trained at Peninsula Hospital for three days as a catering assisstant. The chore is preparing the food for breakfast, dinner (we call this one as lunch), and supper (which is equivalent to our dinner). But, between those main meals, you need to serve tea and coffee which i myself already lost count. (Aiyah, did i already mention all of the chores in the other entry? nevermind, i won't bore you readers about the chores anymore heheh).

Take a look at this picture:

Food is a scarce thing at this place, and this boy is an orphan who strives each day just to find enough food to keep him alive. Even if it is scattered on the floor, mixed with sand and dust, he needs to force himself to swallow whatever his little fingers could gather. He doesn't have another choice anyway.

I first saw this picture on my friend's friendster profile, and couldn't resist from grabbing it the next second. I couldn't get rid of this picture, as it already printed a vivid image in my mind. A scene telling you that the most important point is "food for life" not "life for food".

Why did I mention about Peninsula, and the next thing I wrote is about that boy eating unhygenic food? Well, during the three days in training, I 'was forced' to throw away the leftover food. It gave me such a pain, as this picture kept on emerging in front of my eyes, as if the boy was looking intensely towards me. As if he was shouting out loud; "I'm here striving for a mouthful of food, and you there easily throw plates and plates of them away!"

It just not the right thing to do (there) if you keep all the extra food. On Saturday, there was a lot of extra food, and they were all sent into the disposal machine. I sighed every single time I needed to scrap the food off the plates into that machine, until my collegue gave me a weird look. It seems as if I'm a weirdo, experiencing and explaining all these things that happened in my head. But, it's a good reflection on my life.

Sometimes, we take things for granted. and of course, 'we don't miss the water until it's gone'. I went to Egypt, and kept on grumbling about being hungry. I forgot that other people in the journey were also had had not eaten since morning. They were all very patient; I wasn't. I kept on fixing my eyes to find a food stall or whatever equivalent to it; I forgot to fix my eyes on the hungry people who were so poor that they could not even afford a single plate of food.

Seeing all those good food went into the machine, I couldn't think of anthing else but that boy in the picture. I feel fortunate to live in this part of the world. I have clean water, and good food. And I don't have to wash my self with other creatures' waste water. Still, I haven't showed enough to God how grateful I should have been.