Jo-san!

This is how we Hong Kong locals address each other of a morning. It tends to
evoke varying responses when we say it, depending on who is on the receiving end
of a 'jo-san'. It's most fun to greet the senior citizens in the village thus,
since they are always delighted at the sound of Chinese emitting from the mouth
of a gweilo. When said to the old man who walks his small dog each morning, it
elicits a hearty 'JO-san, JO-san!' (always twice, for some reason) in reply.
Said to each other on team it elicits a humourous imitation of the same old man.
Said to the hunched old woman who lives with her vicious guard dog on the way to
our house, it transforms her face from a crotchety, wrinkled scowl to a bright
beam and a wave of her walking stick and an 'eh jo-san!' This is followed by
long strings of Cantonese at higher than our kindergarten level, whereupon we
give a hesitant smile and scamper on our way, leaving her no doubt to wonder why
we are constantly reluctant to discuss the weather!

AVIARY FUN
As some of you know, our grand plan of building an aviary on the balcony is
making progress. We spent a quiet Sunday drilling holes in the balcony ceiling
and attaching a large fishing net so that it encloses one half of the balcony.
We did get some very, very strange looks that day, firstly from the lady who
lives in the flat directly opposite (the apartment blocks are so close we
frequently see more than we would like inside that flat - she eats Just Right
for breakfast by the way) and then from various locals passing by below. We did
wave, but mostly they avoided the gaze of these 'chi-sing gweilos' (crazy
foreigners) and their wacky schemes. The finishing touches still need to be put
on the aviary before it will be a safe home for our two finches, but we'll
definitely post some pics once it's ready!

LIBERIAN LIBERTY
There have been lots of shipments going out the door lately. The list of
recipient countries is as long as a Chinese soup: Kazakhstan, Guinea, India,
Spain, Philippines, East Timor, Sri Lanka, Kenya, Yugoslavia. The most recent of
these, a 40 foot container to Guinea, was packed just this afternoon. Ad met and
spoke with a Liberian man, a representative from this group, and sat transfixed
(with a notebook and pencil of course) for a couple of hours listening to his
stories of life in the refugee camp where he works. After communing a while with
the atlas, she found that Liberia is a small country in West Africa near Sierra
Leone, Ivory Coast and Guinea.

This man spoke with impassioned fervour about the plight of his people, the
Liberian refugees, back in the camp in Guinea. "I wish you could come and visit,
to bring back the stories," he said, "if only you could see how my people are
dying". As this man waved his hands around, his two half-missing fingers led a
certain grim credibility to his passion. He himself fled Liberia as a child when
rebels shot his father in a violent coup. In the chaos his mother ran one way
and he with his brother ran the other, only meeting again years later. Now,
having come through the refugee system in Guinea, he has chosen to remain there
to work with the refugees who are still continually scrambling across the border
to escape being killed for having the wrong tribal heritage. He lost part of his
hand in an ambush when he tried to come back into Liberia at one point, also
carrying scars from some bullet wounds to his back.

He described the desperate hunger and material needs that face the refugees at
the moment. "They have fled their country to escape death, but then they come to
the camp and they meet death again." Hunger and hunger-related diseases are the
biggest killers in the camp. "Can you imagine," he said, "10 children sitting
around one bowl of rice, with one spoon. One takes a mouthful then passes the
spoon to the next one, who takes a small mouthful in turn until the bowl is
empty. I want to give them more food but there just isn't any. These children
are the future of my country and here they are just running around in the jungle
in refugee camps." Ad asked him whether his group runs counselling programs for
these people who have seen such horrific violence and lost family members back
in Liberia. "To be honest," he said, "they don't want to talk about it, they are
too hungry to be at the stage of discussing their problems. All they want is the
basics for survival, not counselling."

You can read the statistics and cold facts, but meeting someone face to face for
whom those statistics are the reality of their daily life is a sobering
experience.

So, it was fantastic to be able to help this group do their work caring for,
educating and training Liberian refugees by putting together a container of all
kinds of different goods that this man told us were to be useful in the camp -
beds, clothing, even a pallet of ironing boards! It was also great to see an
all-African team packing this container, bound for Guinea. They were guys who
knew the representative from the refugee camp and came in for the day to help
load, alongside our own Tanzanian team member, Joseph. It made for a
particularly special 'container day' and Ad the roving reporter enjoyed taking
the photos!

Thanks for your emails and thoughts – till next time!