Touch.

I remembered Heidi Baker, the lady who started Iris Ministries all over the world and her message of Love, of Stopping for the One, which transformed my life as I stopped for Grandpa Zhou 3 years ago. In her book Always Enough, she had written of a 10-year old she met on the roadside, “Her belly was big and bloated. Flies attracted to fluid crawled around her infected eyes. Open running sores twisted her face. Her feet were full of worms. Lice and scabies covered her. No one wanted to get near her anymore. She had been raped many times, and her mother was dead. Her father was an abusive alcoholic. He lived in a hut, so consumed with his own misery that he was oblivious to the suffering of his only child. Beatrice took refuge under trees, and she was losing her struggle for survival… …

“I got lice and scabies too, but that didn’t matter.”

Somehow, that line from the book which transformed my life 3 years ago stuck with me like glue. Because of her ministry of living in the slums and the poor, Heidi Baker also suffered from malaria and infections, amidst other things.

It reminded me, that love, and compassion are Powerful things.

Once, I remembered a young, new missionary who was finding it difficult to fit into the community there confiding in me, “Wai Jia, you know, I have so many grand plans for this place. I have programmes, I have ideas, I have public health plans in mind for this place- they’re so full of potential. But I don’t know why, they’re just not working out. You know, I didn’t quit my job and sell all my possessions in America to come here and hold babies. That’s just not me.”

And I finally understood.

Sometimes, God just wants us to hold a baby.

That is all.

It is that human touch, that kiss, that hug which has gone past scabies and lice and urine and dirt and grime and everything anal in me which wants to disinfect everything three times over with alcohol handrub and hand sanitizer to say, you are worthy and beautiful to be loved and held and kissed.

It is almost a look of shock on their faces when some of the children, especially those from the village, are touched and kissed, before it is replaced by an expression of pure, pure glee.

They just want to be touched.

I remember which day I wept the most. It was the day I went to visit the feeding programme up on the hill, which is organized by a group of local Mozambican youth. They give out rice and beans from Mondays to Fridays to some 700 children from the villages.

As soon as the biblical song and dance component of the children’s programme ended, the children squealed and ran in a line to wash their hands. After all, the rule is: no handwashing, no food. But after that, as soon as each child received their plate of rice and beans, all hell broke loose.

I have never seen so many children so hungry before. Never seen them so desperate.

This is my 12th mission trip to a developing country. I have seen the poor in Nepal, Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Philippines and India. But never have I seen children in such a frenzy to eat. They squatted on the floor in mass chaos and shoved fistfuls of food into their mouth continuously, sometimes snatching food from others and guarding their own jealously, and even though they were so hungry, most of them had brought plastic bags from home to pack a large portion back home for their families.

I later learnt, that could be their only meal of the day.

It was just rice and beans. Rice and beans. Every single day.

During my time there, God impressed upon my heart to eat as the people there did, rice and beans, every single day, so I would have a taste of their life. This meant rejecting being driven out with other missionary teams to nice restaurants further away, and eating only with the orphans. This mattered a great deal to me, because it helped me to understand how they could be so hungry.

But the children at the feeding programme weren’t from the orphanage. They were from the villages, which means they get served food only once, not three times a day. I squatted with them and watched them, before they came up to me. I hugged and kissed them.

Children squatted around plates of rice and fistfuls of rice went up in the air straight into open mouths in record time.

There was rice everywhere. Over cheeks and chins and shirts and dirt. All over the ground. In plastic bags. In metal tins.

It was a me-first-if-not-there’s-nothing-left-for-me mentality.

After the first round, when there were still leftovers, they pushed and shoved to get seconds. It was not merely that they were rude children with poor manners. It was hunger. You could see it and hear it. It was sheer desperation.

They were rowdy and angry and hungry. But when met with a touch, with a hug or a kiss, to say as if, hey someone cares, it’s okay, there’s enough, they would calm down immediately and their frenzied frazzled anxiety would fizzle into a calmed assurance.

They were hungry, physically, emotionally and spiritually.

And all they need, perhaps, is a touch. A healthy human adult needs at least 8 non-sexual meaningful touches in a day. I wish I had that, but I only get a weekly dose from Sunday School once a week.

What is it that we are really afraid of when it comes to touching the poor? Is it contracting a disease? Getting sick? Getting an infection? Having to wash your clothes twice over? You can’t get AIDS from hugging or kissing someone on the cheek. I kissed the HIV kid there many -extra- times every single time I saw him.

2 days ago when I touched down at dawn, I had to see 2 doctors immediately- one for my spreading skin infection (it’s called cellulitis) which had made my left leg red, hot, swollen and painful from knee-down, and my sports physician for my strained adductor which had made my left leg sore and painful from knee-up.

I learnt two things along the way.

One, God was asking me- if loving the poor and living there means getting dirty and risking getting ill and infected, would you be willing to love them that way still?

On my way back from seeing my sports physician, I saw a little old lady huddled by a dark, dank corner of a food centre. Being in Mozambique with the poor had heightened my senses, and suddenly, she and all the lonely forgotten marginalized people in our lovely Singaporean world became a thousand times starker and more real than they had been before I left.

“Auntie, ni chi le ma?” Have you eaten?

She smiled such a big smile. Yes, I have. I have bread and water. See? I am so full.

Then, her dirtiness jumped out at me. In it’s full glory I could see why and how people like me, how I would walk past her or ask a token question without touching her. At that moment, I suddenly saw how important touch is, and reached out to touch her shoulder and arm.

“Do you want a hot meal?”

And she smiled the loveliest, cutest toothless old-auntie smile.

Everybody needs a human touch.

Today is Good Friday. The story is that God’s son died on the cross for us because we are broken and imperfect in too many ways. He was personal. He was real. When He walked on earth, He touched and kissed and lived with people. In the same way, may we always remember that the poor, the hungry and the desperate need what we, too, are desperate for inside, whether we realize it or not.

Just a human touch.

So do something different this weekend. Hug somebody, hold somebody’s hand, or better still, stop by the road, buy someone lunch and touch his or her shoulder. Let them know you aren’t afraid to touch them or be touched by them because you think they are dirty or smelly or because they are beneath you.

We live in a hungry world.

Extend your meaningful touch today.

“Let us touch the dying, the poor, the lonely and the unwanted

according to the graces we have received

and let us not be ashamed or slow to do the humble work.”
-Mother Teresa

*Wai Jia is thankful for all your prayers and encouragement

during her time in Africa from 30 March to 20 April.

Her leg infection is slowly but surely resolving

and she is praying that it will fully resolve before work as a doctor starts.

Thank you for praying.