It was Holy Week when I said my goodbye to Aminah (not her real name), one of the ladies who stayed with us at the shelter of the Hope Workers Center. It was easy to notice her excitements for she was all smiles when she said to me, “Finally, I’m going back home.” She was going back to her country, Indonesia. “I will write you an email,” she said. It was me who taught her to use the computer, surf the internet and write email. So, I said, “Good luck, and take care! I’m looking forward to hearing from you through email.” And we both laughed!
I remember the last email I received from her. She wrote it during one of our computer class exercises. “I’m going home soon. I hope I could use what I learned from our class when I get back to my country.” That soon has finally come.
The Hope Workers’ Center is one of the migrant workers’ centers in the Hsinchu Diocese here in Taiwan where the Columban missionaries are actively involved. Aminah was taken to the Hope Workers’ Center a few months before I started my work there. She was extremely reserved and very reluctant to talk to people especially to men. We didn’t even shake hands when we were introduced. The Directress of the center who is a Columban lay missionary told me that Aminah was found on the street by the local police suffering from a nervous breakdown and was taken to the hospital. Later when the authorities discovered that she was Indonesian, she was then moved to a migrant workers’ shelter run by Indonesian government. But that shelter didn’t have adequate facilities for her needs and so they asked the Hope worker’s Center if we could provide shelter for her. It was only when she was moved to our shelter that she got professional psychiatric help and her psychiatrist said that she was traumatized and that recovery would take time. When she started to stay with us, she often had tantrums but as time passed she showed signs of recovery and her life was slowly getting back to normal.
Most of the women sheltered by the Hope Workers’ Center were victims of human trafficking and the center provides them not only a place to stay but also a place of safety and hospitality where they could also develop or regain trust through establishing a personal relationship with the people they are living with and those who are working for them. The center also provides skills development training such as Chinese and English language lessons and computing. However, the most important dimension of this center’s work is developing group support with one another. I interact with them as much as possible not only during our classes but also outside class time through more informal and personal interaction, community activities like having a meal together, and playing indoor sports like badminton and table tennis. They are not only brave and courageous but very talented as well. I believe in their individual talents and capacity to do something and I think it is important for them to realize that the people around them in the shelter also believe in their capacity as human beings.
I’m happy that after a few months in the shelter, Aminah had slowly regained herself and her confidence back. Every day, she smiled a bit more, laughed a bit more and began to trust people around her a bit more. I know that her recovery would take longer but the fact that she has started the journey gives me hope that someday she would again live a normal life. It was during Holy Week when she was leaving the center to finally go back to Indonesia and her story has helped me appreciate the mystery of the holy week and what it is that makes it truly holy.
I remember, Dianne Bergant, my professor in scripture, reflecting on the Passion narrative that’s being read during Palm Sunday said that “it is not suffering, not even the suffering of Jesus that makes this week holy. Rather, it is holy because of the inexplicable and immeasurable love that prompted that suffering. Driven by love for all, Jesus willingly accepted the consequences of his messianic role.” And for us she says, “We will make it holy if we can begin to realize the depth of God’s magnanimous love. We will make it holy if we can bring unconditional love into the lives of those around us.”
Fr. Cireneo Matulac SSC works at the Hope Workers Center in Taiwan
