Sam At Large

Word to the wise: don’t let someone die in front of your place of business.

As I arrived with a couple of new friends at the Lighthouse facility this morning, we noticed this crowd of people all looking at something on the sidewalk.  It turns out it was someone who died.  We think he was a road worker doing construction nearby and he just dropped dead of a heart attack or something.

Apparently this must be a common occurrence or something.  Within an hour someone had a whole block of firecrackers to light off to chase away the evil spirits.  I was wondering why I kept hearing firecrackers in the neighbourhood near my hotel.  It goes to show you how often people die all around you.

I don’t think I’m going to do a blog post for every single day. That would probably be a little crazy. But I thought I’d share a couple of hightlights from yesterday (Sunday) and a bit more about today.

I’ve been pretty impacted by this trip already. I knew that seeing kids who have been abandoned by their families would affect me at some level. And it has. Yesterday, I went out with the director of our China operations to a boys home and a girls home to do a little singing and stories. These are probably our more high functioning kids, but they all have forms of Cerebral Palsy or other type of physical and mental disabilities. I don’t think I expected them to be downright sad, but I did not expect them to be so happy. More the fool me.

These are kids whose families said, “I can’t afford to have you” or “You will not be able to be a good son/daughter” so they tossed them away. I’m sure many of the families had regrets doing so, but the fact remains that these children were destined to live and die unloved. But some people I work with came along and said, “No, your life has value and we’re going to show you love.” It brought tears to my eyes to see them so happy, singing and listening to the stories.

Today, I went around to most of the ICC projects (as our facilities are called) in Changsha. I started off with the Lighthouse where we do physical, speech and conductive therapies (among others). I walked around and settled down with these 2-4 year olds who have Cerebral Palsy and their therapist encourages them to move their muscles. It’s amazing how this early work means these kids have a chance at a real life down the road. I then sat holding this blind boy’s hand for the longest time.

I was then toured around many of the other facilities like our Community Outreach Program and the Vocational Training Centre. You can see the photos of the kids making simple jewelry and cards at the VTC. COP is where ICC reaches right out into the community to provide supports and services to families with disabled kids so that abandonment isn’t seen as the only solution.

I ended up at the local children’s welfare centre where ICC has a portion of the building. This is where many of our most disabled kids are. We have this little boy who’s 12 years old. He doesn’t look like he’s a day over four. I found out that he has spina bifida and has been close to death so many times. He’s a little fighter and easily a favourite among all the workers.

I’ll see more next week in Hengyang and Sanmenxia. But I now go into several days of meetings with a real sense of who I’m doing my work for in Vancouver.

Apparently it takes quite a few to change the tire on an Air China jet at the Beijing Airport. At one point, I counted at least eight workers standing around the front landing carriage. Two were actually crouched down using tools… the rest were on quality control duty.

I should point out that this did not count the further 10 baggage handlers that stood around waiting for the the tire guys to finish so they could load the plane for its next flight

I pretty much spent Day 1 in the air or at Beijing Airport, where all I saw were runways and smog.

All those news reports and pictures I have seen with all the smog… it’s true. There is no lie in it at all.  This girl sitting next to me in the plane had the window seat.  She looked out as we were descending then turned to me and told me it was cloudy.  I had a look… “That’s not cloud,” I said.  The look on her face was priceless.

The Beijing Airport is absolutely enormous.  The scale of everything was just bigger than any other airport I’ve ever been in.  Even the roadways around the airplanes was bigger than anywhere else I’ve been.  It has four lanes around the buildings rather than the two I normally see.  The gates to the plane are built on two levels rather than one.  The ceiling and the pillars in the international terminal must be 150 feet tall. That ceiling may probably be the most impressive architectural thing I’ve ever seen… and I didn’t get my camera out to take a picture.

I then had to wait for a connecting flight to Changsha.  The problem was that the plane couldn’t take off from where it was and we were delayed a further three hours.  By the time I got to Changsha, I’d been up for 24 hours and traveling for most of it.  I fell right asleep when I got to my hotel.

I leave for China on Friday. I’m super excited and I have no idea what to expect. I won’t have access to Facebook or Twitter while I’m there — thank you, Great Firewall of China — so this will probably be the best place for updates as I’m traveling for the next couple of weeks.