On July 21 and 22, when Tzu Chi volunteers in Indonesia had planned to hold another free clinic, Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid was about to be impeached by the country's lawmakers. The impeachment proceedings could have brought revolts and chaos, and the volunteers in Indonesia were afraid they might have to cancel the clinic if the situation got out of control. But fortunately, the country remained peaceful and they still carried out the free clinic successfully.

This time, the free clinic was held in Bekasi, near Jakarta, with 176 medical experts from Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, and Australia and some 300 volunteers coming to help treat 3,300 patients.

Internal medicine was the most frequently visited department. People with colds, headaches, stomach flu, aching bones, skin conditions, or any other kinds of diseases all went to the internal medicine department. Volunteers helped to register the patients and took them to pick up their medicine afterwards. But equally important was that the doctors were friendly and kind to all of the patients from beginning to end.

Surgeons went to the operating rooms at seven in the morning, but they didn't leave until dusk. They were even willing to give up their meals so they could have more time to perform operations for even more needy patients.

Five local hospital superintendents with their staff and equipment also came to participate in this event. They transferred thirty-seven patients who had not received operations to their own hospitals.

Care is the best medicine

Joetsu, Niigata, Japan, about a four-hour drive from Tokyo, is surrounded by mountains and is famous for its hot springs and ski resorts. Tzu Chi volunteers from Gunma, Osaka and Tokyo went there to provide free clinics for the elderly on July 19 and 20.

Tzu Chi Brother Min-hsiung, a pharmacist from Joetsu, saw at first hand how lonely old folks in a small city couldn't go to large hospitals in major cities to seek help because they had difficulty walking or because they were too poor. They had to try over-the-counter medicine or painkillers. He thus decided to organize the free clinic.

The free clinic started at one in the afternoon, but there were already many people waiting in line for registration at eleven in the morning. Twenty volunteers and two traditional Chinese medicine doctors helped with the registration. Some volunteers performed to entertain the patients, and another shared her thoughts on her visits to schools that were being rebuilt under Tzu Chi's Project Hope.

Some volunteers even invited patients for lunch. Mrs. Yamamoto, a recipient of Tzu Chi care, was very happy to have her first meal in a restaurant in her life. It was a simple meal, but she still took each bite with relish.

Mr. Yamada, eighty-four, came from a nearby nursing home. A volunteer told him to wait patiently because there were many people. He replied with a smile, "Don't worry, I like waiting because when I see the smiles on your faces my sickness is already cured."

Ms. Furukawa had problems with the nerves on her face, and she couldn't speak well. After two days of treatments, she was able to speak better.

In two days, the free clinic helped sixty people. The volunteers were very happy to see the smiles on the faces of the patients when they left, and they believed they would do a good job next time in Gunma County.

Shih Yen-hsueh can understand the pain

The shining eyes of Dr. Shih Yen-hsueh, a doctor of traditional Chinese medicine, left a deep impression on other people at the free clinic in Joetsu, Niigata, Japan.

She came all the way from Osaka to help at the clinic because she herself had been a victim of the great Hanshin earthquake several years ago. After that disaster, she lived in a prefabricated house for three years, so she was able to understand the misery of the survivors of the 1999 earthquake in Taiwan. Thus, she and her family went back to Taiwan to provide free medical care to earthquake victims there.

At a Tzu Chi candlelight vigil in Taiwan she was touched to tears, so after she went back to Japan she became a Tzu Chi member. She came back to Taiwan to join the celebration of Tzu Chi’s thirty-fifth anniversary this year, and she wept as she heard the many touching stories. She decided to offer her skills and has now become a Tzu Chi commissioner.

US Tzu Chi volunteers raise money for typhoon victims

Typhoon Toraji hit Taiwan hard at the end of July, damaging property and killing many people. Tzu Chi volunteers in the United States hit the streets to raise money for typhoon victims.

The Tzu Chi New York branch office sent out 150 volunteers to various areas in the city to ask for donations from the public to help typhoon victims in Taiwan. One of the volunteers, Chang Mu-shun, said that many people were willing to give when they heard about the calamities caused by the typhoon and what Tzu Chi was doing to help.

Some one hundred volunteers from the Tzu Chi South California branch office raised money at sixteen locations. They also received much love and many donations from the public.

Relief to fire victims in the Philippines

In the afternoon of August 19, a fire broke out in a crowded district in Quezon City, near Manila. The area was full of illegally-built wood houses, so the fire spread quickly. It killed a fourteen-year-old boy, injured several people and made around one hundred families homeless.

On August 21, local Tzu Chi volunteers decided to distribute relief items and send the injured to a hospital for treatment.

At four in the afternoon, twenty-five volunteers and four Tzu Chi Youth members handed out comforters, slippers, clothing, oatmeal, and bags containing two cups, two dishes, and two forks.

The distribution was carried out on a small basketball court near the houses destroyed by fire. Some volunteers even folded their hands together as a sign of respect and informed the victims that they were grateful that the victims had given them a chance to do good deeds.

A congresswoman at the scene remarked that the government was also preparing to distribute relief goods to survivors the next day. However, their goods were not as abundant as those given out by Tzu Chi.

My turn to help others

The Indian province of Gujarat suffered a major earthquake of 7.9 on the Richter scale early this year. More than 20,000 lives were lost and more than 100,000 people became homeless. The Tzu Chi Malacca branch office in Malaysia is the closest to the disaster area, so volunteers there have been holding bazaars and raising money on the streets. A fund-raising performance on June 22 in Malacca attracted 1,600 people.

Mrs. Yen is a long-term recipient of Tzu Chi's care. Volunteers used to go to her home twice a week to clean up the place and bathe her. In order to give her better care and good company, they helped her move into a nursing home in July last year.

When Mrs. Yen heard about the fund-raising for the earthquake victims in India, she was touched by the great love shown by the volunteers, so she donated US$264 to help Indian refugees rebuild their homes.

We are family

On a day in March this year, a small fishing boat filled with illegal immigrants from Nepal and Pakistan sank for unknown reasons off the coast of Malaysia. The twenty-six passengers on board were mostly young or middle-aged persons who were leaving their homes to seek better jobs and a better life in Malaysia. When the boat sank in the middle of the Strait of Malacca, only fourteen bodies were recovered. Since it was impossible to identify them and notify their families, they lay unclaimed for two months. When three of the deceased were later recognized as Muslims, a Muslim group in Malaysia compassionately claimed their bodies. Two bodies were later identified as Buddhists, so the Malaysian government asked local Tzu Chi people if they could claim those bodies. Tzu Chi people willingly agreed.

It was only after they prepared to retrieve the two bodies that they discovered there were actually eleven bodies. Could Tzu Chi adopt the other nine bodies as well? The local government certainly hoped so. Tzu Chi people help others regardless of nationality, race, or religion. Treating them like their family members, Tzu Chi members retrieved the eleven bodies from five different hospitals and held a vigil throughout the night for them. On the following day, they acted as pallbearers and brought the coffins, with the bodies inside, to the crematory. Touched by the great love shown by the Tzu Chi members towards these strangers, the crematory staff gave them urns free of charge and places in the shrine where the urns could be kept.

When the bodies had been cremated, the volunteers placed the ashes in the urns. Traditionally, only family members do this for their deceased. But here, Tzu Chi people were just like the family of these immigrants. They not only stepped into this role willingly, but carried it out with great attentiveness, care and devotion. If the deceased could have seen these Tzu Chi people, surely they would have been deeply moved to know that a group of people would love, respect and care for them. This kind of love is difficult to find even between relatives, let alone strangers.

Food to the poor in South Africa

Tzu Chi volunteers in Cape Town and New Castle carried out winter relief programs for the poor on July 14 and 15. On July 14 in Cape Town, twenty-two volunteers went to Walisdiene Squatter Camp in Krafftfontein to distribute food to children in low-income families. The parents of these children all work elsewhere, so local churches help these children with their daily needs and food.

The distribution took four hours to complete. Each of the close to three hundred children received bread, fruit, corn flour and clothes. All these brought much warmth to the children.

Tzu Chi volunteers in New Castle carried out their distribution on July 15. Close to 600,000 blacks live in Madadeni, Osizwen and Blaauboshi. Since the residents in the last town were the poorest, New Castle Mayor Dlamini suggested to Tzu Chi volunteers that they should start their relief work there. Five city councilors picked out a thousand of the poorest families from the area to receive relief supplies. Each family was given 10 kilograms of corn flour, 2.5 kilograms of sugar, one kilogram of beans and two liters of cooking oil.