Poverty

I watched a lovely feel good movie, The Yarn Princess, over the weekend.
The story revolves around a family of 8 with a mother who is “medium retarded” and married to a husband who is suffering from Schizophrenia.
The husband when lucid, is the bread winner of the family, working in a steel factory, whilst the wife takes care of the 6 school going age children.
The husband becomes violently ill at work and is laid off. He is required to be on medication. When he is on medication, he is very much confined to bed.
Things come to a halt when one of the children read an eviction notice to his mother that is rent is not paid, they will be evicted.
The medium retarded mother is smart enough to seek welfare assistance and thankfully is supported by a young social worker, who unfortunately has a couldn’t be bothered prejudiced supervisor.
The young social worker helps the medium retarded mother to learn how to cook proper meals of the different food groups.
The efforts put in by this person is tremendous as she overcomes all odds to try and keep her family together and fight against social services from removing the children under her care as she is deemed an “unfit mother”
A youngish law graduate fresh out of law school finds them a veteran lawyer to fight her case and with the state, they managed to find this family proper accommodation, funds to subsist on and for the breadwinner to recuperate.
In watching this movie, I realized that there are many of such cases out there. Not many will have had the opportunity to overcome as circumstances do not allow and they are “lost” in the system.
This movie has a feel good element to it as 2 of her children who were removed to foster care finally realized how much the medium retarded mother had in terms of love for them. Initially one of her sons asked social services to remove him from his mum’s care but soon realized that the foster mum has no warmth nor love for him, other than material things.
Life is indeed a challenge for people. I see it all around us. Not everyone is well off. Though you will not see any beggars or homeless people on the streets of Singapore, there are many who are poor and on welfare support by social groups.
I can imagine countries or continents which are many times larger than ours have a great uphill task tackling poverty.

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