Concerned

"We've been watching you. Many missionaries come to Hong Kong to help us poor people. They put us in sociological boxes and analyze us. Then they take our pictures to shock the Westerners by our living conditions. Some men get famous because they've been here. But inside the Walled City we usually get rid of them within six months. We find ways to discourage them until they have no heart to continue -- had you been a man we would have had you beaten long ago. We couldn't care less if you have big buildings or small ones. You can be offering free rice, free schools, judo classes or needlework to us. It doesn't matter if you have a daily programme or hymn singing once a week. These things don't touch us because the people who run them have nothing to do with us. What we want to know is if you are concerned with us. Now you have been with us four years we have decided that maybe you mean what you say."

-- Ah Ping to Jackie Pullinger in 'Chasing the Dragon'

Jackie Pullinger was twenty when she went to Hong Kong's Walled City to work with the lawless, the drug addicted and the prostitutes. She was not sent by an organization, a program, or a church. She simply felt conviction in her heart to go, put $100HKD in her pocket and set sail on a boat from England. She lived amongst the people and started a youth club by renting out a room with her own finances earned as a music teacher. I'm reading her book Chasing the Dragon and find it extremely inspiring. When I read the aforementioned quote, something stirred in my heart. As I went to bed, I said, 'Dear God, Let me always be known as someone who is concerned. Let me show the concern you have for others to them.'

My friend Israel from Togo came back from a trip home the night thereafter. We got into a conversation about race. Have you observed, he asked, that the Africans on the ship segregate themselves? We are afraid, he said. He went on to explain that especially the African men, they do not want to be seen as interacting with a First World person lest they think the others suspect them of wanting a green card, money or a passage to America, for example. Interracial couples have separated over the fear of what their families would say back in the first world country, he informed me.

I have several African friends on the ship and I have never felt that they wanted a green card, money or America. Although I did notice that the first few times I interacted with them, they were very cautious towards me. After a few times, they were not only warm towards me, but we engaged in real conversations, exchanges of the mind and heart. The African guys come off a bit tough, when they are in a group (but that's true of many men all around the world). But get them alone, and they are quite different in small groups or one to one. I will not forget my graveyard shift German lessons with Kingsford from Ghana. Or when Oscar finally smiled when I gave him, of all things, a chocolate bar. Or Eddie who was delighted to know that I knew him by name. Some may suspect that it is because I am female that they take to me. However, they have never once pursued anything with me, and I am cautious not to give them romantic signals just the same. Why this discrepancy with what Israel was saying then? I asked him and Israel told me, 'This is because they know you are concerned.'

What is concern when it is on our own terms? What about when it is not on my terms, but it just needs to be expressed. No matter what your creed or calling be, I believe that true concern and love comes out best when we allow others to walk into our lives and then we allow them to stay there. We do not forcefully diagnose what they need and then send them off. Instead, we listen, we attend to, and we bless them. In that process, you will find yourself on very even playing ground with another human. I have found myself incredibly surprised and humbled by people who I thought I was trying to help. (And what do they really need help with anyway?)

It is true that I am concerned for marginalized people. As much as I am an American who loves peanut butter and the Super Bowl, I am still a Chinese immigrant. I know what it feels like to not speak English when everyone else is, for example. And with that history, I know what it feels like to be marginalized. (And really, let's face it, I'm not the marginalized martyr here, but I'm just saying I identify with that emotion.)

When we are concerned towards the outcasts, we find in them the cry of anger and bitterness and suffering that is wide awake in this world. It can be anyone from the 'weirdo' in the next cubicle to the impoverished, displaced person in Liberia. If you tend to them, you will not only see something bloom, you will actually see a piece of yourself who feels exactly the same way.