Model and Defect

washing dishes together

Some background info: the village I went to as a exchange student located at the southest end of Kagoshima, with a population of 8900 people. At 43%, it also has the highest ratio of aged 65+ residents among the different districts in Kagoshima prefecture. My host family has 4 members. The father is the head of a NPO farming facility which hires mainly people with mental disability. The mother also works in the facility, but not on a full-time basis. She also cooks very well. There are two kids, aged 8 and 4 respectively. The little girl is very cute but wants to have her way all the time, likes to follow me everywhere and pinches me to get my full attention. The boy likes to read manga, athletic, and is very kind to his lil sis. They are the model Japanese family in my opinion.

On the second day of my arrival,  I got a chance to tour around the farming facility. The site includes various plant fields (tea leaves, carrot, onions and such), a ham processing facility, a bakery, a small cow raising area as well as workers' dormitory and recreational area. My tour guide is a man with down's syndrome and he commutes to the facility everyday doing some light manual work. He talks clearly and has a better command of Japanese than I do. He told me that he had a big heart surgery when he was small; I later found out that this was common among down's syndrome patients. I had a very pleasant time walking around and talking with him. My host family later said he is the "spokesperson" of the farm and loves to talk to different people even though at times he makes up story in order to make the conversation flow. But I thought that was very nice of him. On my third and forth day, I worked in the plantation area alongside with workers of light degree of mental disability. Most of them have completely normal appearance. They were very diligent and did not seem to mind repeating manual and robotic work. I spent most time with an old lady above 70 and she was the cutest old lady I ever met, always cracking jokes and even took care of me when we were in the cafeteria. Both she and her daughter live in the dorms of the facility. We picked out tomatoes, cleaned and weighted them and put them into small plastic bags, all by hand. We also packed green onions together and there went the day. A lot of times I did not understand what the workers were saying to me but they always gave me a big smile and I felt like I was most welcomed.

These 2 days got me into deep thinking that the line of between role model and the rest is not that clear-cut after all. And in fact on site yesterday, I was mistaken to be one of the workers there by a staff and he later apologized to me. I thought that was funny and the movie "Shutter Island" popped up on my mind but really, we are not all that different from them. Here I am, in a perfect family who works for the bettering of people with innate disability and that to me, is true harmony.

Related links
花の木農場