Maleeni art toyok.

“So what did you do there?”

has probably been the most common question I receive every time I return from a trip to a developing country. We urban people are as such. We want to know what was achieved, the number of people helped, the amount of sacrifice it all took… in short, what was done.

And I often smile, sometimes in insecurity, when I say, “I was with the people. That’s all. “

Is that too silly to say?

Because after going on some 10 humanitarian trips to developing countries, many by myself, some with teams, some with clearer agendas than others, I’ve become to see how crazy it is to think we can visit the poor and return to our lives of excess unchanged, to think we can take photos of a place to shock our friends with back home, and change the world in a week. I’ve come to appreciate the beauty of being with the people instead of doing for them, because the poor don’t necessarily need our help, even though we think they do, even though our culture and our friends crown us with haloes of altruism and paint our good-doing in shades of romantic nobility.

A friend shared this with me: Timothy Keller writes of urban people, “While they may give some of their time, they spend large amounts of money on entertainment, their appearance, electronics, and travel. For a great number, then, volunteering is part of their portfolio of life-enriching activities, but it is not a feature of a whole life shaped by a commitment to doing justice, including radical generosity with one’s finances.

Our culture gives us a mixed message. It says: make lots of money and spend it on yourself; get an identity by the kind of clothes you wear and the places you travel to and live. But also do some volunteer work, care about social justice, because you don’t want to be just a selfish pig.”

That pierced me.

Have volunteerism and humanitarian deeds become another means to brand ourselves, to fulfill a different sort of self-gratification? Can you live with going on a trip knowing that you have done “nothing”, or must you justify your time and money spent by making sure your time is spent BuildingMakingTeachingDoingImpartingExecuting some sort of project for a people you didn’t even bother to spend time with to learn their language? We feast on the hospitality of the locals, take a load of photos, carry with us a sense feel-good awe and return to our lives filled with designer handbags and facials and pedicures.

Jackie Pullinger was a missionary to Hong Kong who wrote a famous book called Chasing the Dragon. She wrote of a local person who shared his heart bravely with her, “You Westerners – you come here and tell us about God. You can stay for a year or two, and your conscience will feel good, and then you can go away. Your God will call you to other work back home. It’s true that some of you can raise a lot of money on behalf of us underprivileged people. But you’ll still be living in your nice houses with your refrigerators and servants, and we will still be living here. What you are doing really has nothing to do with us. You’ll go home anyhow, sooner or later… You can sing about love very nicely, but what do you know about us? You don’t touch us – you know nothing.

We couldn’t careless if you have big buildings or small ones. You can be offering free rice, free school, judo classes or needlework to us. It doesn’t matter if you have a daily program 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 here for four years, we have decided that maybe you mean what you say.”

And so I know it sounds ridiculous, but I want to return to Smokey. I want to return because when I was there, it felt so… right. It was ugly, it was dirty, the fumes from burning coal and the smell of trash was so noxious and the sight of children with skin and eye diseases so heartbreaking that I should have hated it. But it was where my heart was. It is where I want to return to. It has confirmed that God-willing, I should like to return to a developing country to serve them for a long time. I was looking forward to my graduation trip- hoping to perhaps finally visit a developed country and dreaming of going on a cycling tour round Europe. But I look forward even more to the smell of Smokey again.

The smell of Smokey– it is still with me. It is in my hair.

That day, when hoards of children came for the feeding programme in Smokey Mountain, and I, tired from dressing the wounds of yet another kid who had infected ones, asked the Pastor if I could spend 5 minutes talking to the kids.

“Maleeni art Toyok!” I said. Clean and dry. I was trying to get the kids to learn it as a jingle so they could take better care of themselves.

Who was I kidding? Who did I think I was, coming into their world for a few days and thinking I could earn their attention simply by being a foreigner.

I want to live with the poor, and I’m not sure if I can.

The day I returned home, my toes and feet were black because of the ash and mud of the place. Because of the sludge, it was impossible to wear covered shoes. Wearing slippers, however, meant one’s feet often slid into muddy glue, disturbing the colony of houseflies resting on it. A friend and I were talking that day about my inability to love myself at times and certain emotional issues I was grappling with because of my perpetual inability to love myself in certain ways. Upon seeing my tarry toenails, she was horrified, then challenged me to go for a pedicure. “It is your inability to love yourself that makes you harsh sometimes, both on yourself and others. It is something you need to deal with.”

I knew she was right, and as a symbolic act of humility to acknowledge and address my fears of loving myself, I went for a pedicure on the same day as I had returned from Smokey Mountain. How ironic, I thought. Yet, it was an emotional breakthrough on a different level and so I allowed it for a different reason.

Nonetheless, it got me thinking about how much I have yet to give up, how much I can and hope to.

That night, my dad, on seeing my photos with the children, expressed his fatherly concern that I might catch a disease by being so close to the kids. I didn’t say much, didn’t tell him that the kids rolled on piles of trash during playtime and that I hugged and kissed countless children without thought because touch, I’ve learnt, especially to the poor, is a powerful love language. It tells them you’re not afraid to be on their level. It tells them you see them as human beings, too.

But my life and theirs still does not match. I have a thousand-dollar worth of facials in an upper-class spa bought for me by a lady at church I hardly know because she said she just wanted to bless me, I have a two-thousand six hundred dollar roadbike which my friends and family bought for me, and even though I don’t do them often or regularly, I love pedicures.

What then? What now? God, deal with my inconsistency.

Because after all, if life is a journey of seeking of seeking balance amidst imbalance, and seeking reconciliation amidst conflict, then I am seeking for an equilibrium between my world and theirs. As far as God was concerned, He loved us so much that even heaven’s distance from our fleshly carnality did not stop Him from seeking us out and bringing us closer to His divine love.

I have a long way to go.

But I know one thing, that I will not forget those moments I played with 7-year old Ricky and loved him as if he were my son, nor forget the dream I have about living with and loving the poor, because as we sat by the pier that day overlooking the trash-filled sea, I realised that one of my most treasure moments was sitting close to Ricky and playing with our blackened, unpedicured feet and realising that being with the poor was joy in itself, that being close to them was a blessing in itself and that to truly impact the lives of the needy through healthcare or education or policy-making, I would need to live, love and be with them for a long time.

God did not see as us projects. He did not establish programmes to fix us. He simply came to live and be with us.

Maleeni art toyok. To change lives, requires more than a day. Sometimes, it requires a lifetime.

Smokey Mountain is calling.