Donate To... The Longhouses!

I should have shared about this before CNY. Before the spring cleaning & before the sudden surge of generosity.
Drive by any recycling centre before CNY & you'll find it packed with stuff!
Drive by housing estates & you'll find the bins packed with stuff!
Drive by orphanages or donation collection locations & you'll find it packed with stuff!

Not everything can be recycled. Our landfills are brimming.
Our orphanages are already getting a lot of aid from YBs, NGOs & the public.
The Chinese have got so much STUFF that the usual places are overwhelmed!
Let me point you in the right direction... Give it to the longhouses!

I work in Song, Kapit, where there are countless longhouses lining the river.
Every few months, I'd hear that a longhouse was burnt down & some students have lost all their stuff.
Since the Chinese have got to much stuff...
Why don't you give it to those who have lost all their stuff?

Let me rant about my mother. I bet many Chinese families can relate.
She'll keep everything from your baby clothes to your teenage underwear as well as those of your father's, herself, your brothers' & your sisters'.
Imagine the amount of stuff accumulated over the years & hoarded into our cabinets, cupboards & every nook & cranny!
She says that maybe someone in our extended family will need those & yet she never takes them out because our extended family will never want to wear stuff that been kept for so long!

Thankfully, she adopted another extended family... The longhouse family.
When I came back from my CNY break, I brought with me, on my flight, 2 boxes (20kg) of stuff to give to 2 longhouses nearby that burnt down.
Yes, my Chinese family has really got so much STUFF!!
Don't just laugh at me... YOURS DO TOO!!

Many of you would have seen longhouses in cultural villages or pictures.
You think they are like long desirable chalets made out of wood, rattan & all things green.
But just like pictures of food in a menu, these mental pictures that you have of longhouses are far from what a majority of them are like in real life.

They may have started out small, quaint & traditional but over the years, as the population increases & new technology is introduced, extension after extension, modification after modification, repairs, patching et cetera, many have morphed into something caught in between two worlds & existing in neither. Not as romantic as you might think.
Not as fire safe neither. Many of the older longhouses are a tinderbox waiting for a stray match.

Here are pictures of 2 longhouses that have burnt down early this year.







Soon, these 2 longhouses will collect enough to begin the construction of more organised modern cement longhouses.
They will have piped water & an electricity generator.
Their ruai will be tiled & each room will have a toilet.
Life goes on.

But before that, they need help.
Even the smallest of things will make a big difference for these people who are entrenched in poverty & need a lot of help to bloom.
Send me an email if you've got something to give & we'll work something out.

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