Do You Know How Lucky You Are?

The following post is based on real & true events but does not depict any one person specifically. The post contains coarse language and topics which may be disturbing to some readers.

Marnie is a 38 year old Marketing Manager for a software company. She was born in Australia but has travelled extensively overseas in her “youth”. She has two children – a daughter, Tia who is 7 and a son, Orlando who just recently turned 9. Marnie has been single for 2 years after her husband of 14 years left her for another (younger) woman – “Bastard!” Both of her parents are still living and visit their grandchildren regularly. 

Marnie works 30 hours per week in a flexible workplace arrangement which allows her to deliberately maintain a slightly less than average income in order to minimise her tax, maximize her family tax benefit, maximize her child support entitlements and avoid the need to pay back the government issued line of credit which allowed her to complete tertiary studies with a degree. Government funded child care benefit also pays for her children to attend after school care three afternoons a week with no out of pocket expense to her.

Marnie’s not a bad person, by any means; she’s an average Australian woman just trying to keep it together. Here’s her average day: 

Marnie slams down her hand on the obnoxious alarm clock at around 7. There’s a reason they make that snooze button so large. At 7.15 she succumbs to the clock’s persistence and drags herself out of bed to find her kids propped up on the couch watching pay TV.  She plonks herself in front of her computer, reads emails and “Twitters” until around 8.15 when Tia finally asks “are we eating breakfast today?” Marnie glances at the clock “Shit!” 

Much commotion ensues. Crumpled school uniforms are pulled straight from the dryer and thrown over heads in a random and uncoordinated, but obviously well rehearsed routine. Four minutes later Marnie pulls burnt toast through billowing smoke from the toaster “Shit!” Tia and Orlando smile at each other and snicker behind hands “Maccas, again!”

Our fearless trio piles into the family car and makes a b-line for the convenience of drive thru breakfast. Marnie orders breakfast for the children and an over-sized caffeine fix for herself.

“Enjoy your meal, have a nice day!” smiles a chirpy 19 year old with braces. Meals are passed to the backseat.

“Have a nice day” Marnie sarcastically mocks as she makes her way out of the drive way “See that?!” She projects to the back seat “That’s why you stay in school and listen to your mother… or you’ll end up serving other people coffee” She glances in the rearview mirror for confirmation. Tia has her iPod headphones in and Orlando is playing PSP one handed with a hashbrown in the other.

Marnie glances at the dashboard “Shit!” the ignored illuminated fuel light is now flashing. She pulls into the next service station. “A dollar fucking thirty??” she fills the car reluctantly and continues on her way.

Children are dropped off, Marnie arrives at work – phone calls, emails, meetings…coffee, Twitter. 

Around 3pm Marnie exits the office with a gift purchased by office contributions for a workmate who has just given birth. She wishes her colleagues a good weekend and drives to the public hospital to visit her workmate – the same hospital where she gave birth to her own children all those years before.

As she enters the hospital maternity ward the memories come flooding back. She shudders, speaks to someone at the nurses station momentarily and then makes her way to Room 3. Marnie’s workmate is 29, she’s just given birth to her first child. She shares a room now with 2 other new mothers. Their babies “room-in” and take turns at waking up the rest of the weary mothers throughout the night. The beds are uncomfortable and the midwives at times can take 20 minutes to respond! Thankfully it’s a short stay; she will head home in the morning and have a midwife visit her at home several times over the coming weeks to check on the health of both the baby and herself.

Should the baby need specialised care a neonatal intensive care unit offers world class facilities, much of which has been donated by kindhearted locals to make up for the shortfall of government funds being directed to our public hospitals.

Marnie heads off to pick up her kids from after school care. Exhausted, they arrive home and thankfully well planned grocery shopping the previous weekend means frozen lasagna waits.

~~~

Hasanah was born in Indonesia. She is also pregnant with her first child. She is 16 years old. The closest she has ever come to the inside of a hospital is the make-shift morgue where she identified the body of her mother after the 2004 Banda Aceh Tsunami. She was born at home and delivered by her aunt who just recently died from malaria. At the age of 6 she assisted her mother to deliver her brother, also at home.

She recalls the tsunami vividly. She held hands with her mother and clung to her younger brother as the waters rose around her. She was 11, her brother was five. She held him close to her body with her right hand, with her arm wrapped around the trunk of a tree. Her mothers hand was in her left hand and she watched the horror on her mothers face as she felt her fingertips slipping out of her hand. Her father who was in the home at the time of the tsunami was never found.

Hasanah considers that she has had a fortunate life, given that she had both parents and a home to live in until she was 11. After the tsunami Hasanah travelled with her brother on foot to many local institutions acting on word of mouth from local people, trying to find somewhere to stay. After many rejections from institutions they begged for food and raised enough money to travel to Jakarta where she was told the tourists would take some pity – and begging, although illegal, would be more fruitful there.

Hasanah joined the hundreds of other homeless children living and sleeping around the Jakarta railroads. She spends her days walking many kilometers each day, heavily pregnant and on bare feet making deliveries around Jakarta for the local shop keepers. Earlier this year she was attacked by “a tourist” while she slept and violently raped and bashed. Her younger brother – who she had once saved from drowning – tried to fight off her attacker and was killed in his attempt protect his older sister.

She is optimistic that she can find shelter before her baby is due so that she can break the cycle of poverty and provide a better life for her child. She receives no antenatal care for her pregnancy, and will probably deliver her child in an alley or public toilet. She prays several times daily for forgiveness for the death of her mother and brother for which she deems herself responsible.