Tents Again
Last Saturday involved an unusual flurry of social activity linked to the GAA All China Games (Irish Rules Football, to those who don’t know these things). It was enjoyable to be in the company of so many people from home, even though watching paint drying is, for this observer at least, more enjoyable than being a spectator at any team sport. I became ever more irritated with myself for my willingness to, ever so nonchalantly, drop my imminent departure for Chengdu into various conversations during the course of the evening. Without ever being so crass as to actually say so directly, my throw away reference to the disaster zone’s capital allowed an image of self-effacing, heroic action among the rubble to hover over the discussion of my day job, when in fact the reality is to date, far more prosaic. I was annoyed with my willingness to drop the “C” word into conversation, but enjoyed the admiration it evoked rather too much to actually stop.
Chengdu, in fact, is proving to be something different from my carefully constructed image of acts of mercy among the rubble. The city is without obvious signs of the disaster on its doorstep. No toppled buildings, no displaced people and, were one to judge only from the appearance of the people, one would imagine that the capital of Sichuan was nothing more than another city enjoying the opulent fruits of 30 years of “reform and opening up”. Wandering the aisles of Carrefour for the little luxuries that make life bearable here, (teabags and a milk jug actually) the contrast with the office conversations of shortage and loss is almost surreal. The low point came in front of a sports goods shop. There, artfully displayed, surrounded by the must-have items for a perfect night al fresco was a one person tent. I have been eating and sleeping tents for the last two weeks and they are ingrained on my mind as being the indispensable means of survival for millions of people. We have moved heaven and earth to transport them over thousands of miles and struggled with Byzantine bureaucracies to see that they get when they were most needed. To find one on sale so near the disaster zone as a rather expensive fashion statement was more than a little shocking. Nobody else seemed in the least put out by the bad taste of the display, so I suspect the problem was mine alone.
The field office itself is full of the bread and butter (rice and oil) questions. Having become used to the tensions of headquarters, I thought I was ready for the demands of field work. In fact the very different pressures here are challenging in an entirely unexpected way. Last night we sent two volunteers out on a 20 hour journey that should ordinarily take 2. I had assumed that announcements that all places were now accessible meant that all roads were now open. It doesn’t. The access routes are often tortuous in this very mountainous area and this makes the logistics involved in delivering food extremely complex. The ease with which our volunteers, Mr Di and Mr Deng, set out was quite moving. With aftershocks a constant anxiety, my mistake during mass (I pray for our martyrs instead of our volunteers) was a little too close to the bone to be merely funny. Theoretical concerns about the health and safety of staff and associates become a little more personal and worrying when you actually have waved these big hearted men off on a journey one would oneself have undertaken only with the greatest of reluctance.
Many of the Catholics in the effected areas have been asking the obvious questions about a God who would allow such things to happen; questions their pastors are struggling themselves to answer. For reasons I don’t entirely understand, such doubts don’t bother me. Instead, I continue to weave in and out amongst the contrasting worlds which stand cheek by jowl here and seem entirely certain that God who presides over the odd juxtaposition loves each and every person in it, name droppers and thoughtless window dressers included. Hardly a philosophical answer, but it is what I hold onto when shaken by a life lived in the jumbled world which is modern China.