Kendra and I woke up bright and early to catch a taxi to the airport with Liu, one of our co-workers who would serve as our translator and help with arrangements and information gathering. We started out by leaving Beijing and flying to Chengdu in Sichuan province and then we caught a connecting flight to Xichang. When we got off the plane, I could feel my head clearing. It’s amazing what three months of breathing polluted air does to your brain.
Xichang is absolutely beautiful, lush, and green. We met with Father Martin, a Korean Catholic missionary here in China and he connected us with the school we’d be going to help in the mountains. We had to wait until the next day to travel to the next destination, so he took us to lunch and showed us around Xichang. We went to Qiong Hai Lake and afterwards, he mentioned some Chinese boys he wanted us to meet. He didn’t really give us a choice, so we went with him to another park where we met with two Chinese college students.
Awkward!
They didn’t speak much English and Father Martin was
continuosly telling us how “cutie” the boys are. One of the boys asked us what we like to do
and Father Martin answered for Kendra saying she likes to ride bikes.
Which she doesn’t.
At all.
The next morning we met at the church to go up into the
mountains with two of the sister missionaries. We started out in a funny
looking van of sorts that took us on roughly paved roads full of pot holes for
almost 3 hours. We arrived at a place called Zhaojue where we bought some fruit
and such and then moved to another funny looking car. From here, we moved onto rough dirt
roads.
The driver drove fast.
He broke his car.
We changed cars.
Then we were off again. We followed a stream that was the color of caramel for most of the 5 hours we were in the car. The scenery got increasingly more beautiful as we went. The other driver drove too fast too, but by some stroke of luck, his car held up. It was cramped and it was too hard to talk because we were like rag dolls in a toy car flailing around. There were tons of people living in the mountains and along the road. It felt like we were in the middle of nowhere and then all the sudden, there would be a little village. It was a strange feeling.
We got to the boarding school and it was such a relief to get out of that car. Kendra got pretty car sick. It’s pretty much a miracle I didn’t. My body felt unaccustomed to the lack of movement after the car stopped and I wasn’t bouncing around and my head wasn’t hitting the side of the car. We got a quick glimpse of the kids before we were ushered into the sister’s living area for dinner. They were looking at us curiously though they were too afraid to approach us.
Following dinner, we had a meeting with the teachers of the school to get information from them. We had a lot of questions.
A lot.
How many kids, where do they come from, what’s the money
situation in their families, are their parents living, what supplies do they
need, and so on.
In the initial meeting, we learned that there were 68 kids
all from villages in the area. The school is paired with a sort of care home
for elderly mental patients. Although the government funds the school and hires
the teachers, they have difficulty hiring because there is a belief that the
patients are contagious. The government will pay for children to come to the
elementary school, but once they finish grade 6, the government removes any
funding and most, if not all the teenagers don’t go on to middle school,
instead they return to the mountains and their villages where they will most
likely live for the rest of their lives. We learned that the middle school is
in Zhaojue, almost five hours away. For one child to go to middle school for a
year, it costs approximately 5,000RMB (roughly $800).
At that, we asked the teachers to gather all the grade 6
kids. There were 15 total at the school. We began by taking their information:
name, age, gender, and family situation. Following that, we took each of their
pictures. Some kids parents had died and they live with grandparents or other
relatives when they aren’t at school. Many of the children come from large
families. The government doesn’t regulate the number of children people have in
the mountains villages so family sizes can go up to 8 kids in some families.
They need help on their farms with the livestock, so the more hands the better.
On a side note, as I counted to three to take their
pictures, each kids face went from pleasant to scared or uncomfortable. These
kids aren’t used to getting their pictures taken.
I went to bed that night on a bed with a board for a mattress with thoughts of the kids’ situations swimming in my mind. I didn’t know that the next day, things would only get worse.
That next afternoon, while the kids were on break, we toured the school. We started with the class rooms. There were 5 rooms with a blackboard and some desks and chairs. There were no pictures on the wall, no stimulation, no friendly colors. It was down to the very basic necessities.
My heart was sinking and I wasn't prepared for what we saw next. A stench that smelled like rotten milk mixed with dirty bodies reached my nose as we entered the kids dormitory. We walked through each room with two bunk beds or more each. The bedding was old, ripped and stained. I would bet my life that they had never been washed. Stuffed next to their pillows were the few very dirty other clothes they owned. Under the bedding were two thin mats that looked like they were made of leather. In between the mats it was crawling with bugs. My heart broke and tears filled my eyes. How could they be living like this? I slept in a bed that was clean, free of stains, rips, and bugs while just two buildings over they lived like this. These sister that live at the school should be helping these kids, but why aren't they? Why aren't the clothes and bedding being washed? Why?
Then we went to the next level up where the teachers sleep and the conditions weren't much better. It smelled better, but not by much. The teachers kitchen wasn't a kitchen at all. They cook on the floor and they don't have a fridge to keep their food fresh. They don't have any kind of desk or office to work in and the TV they have was paid for by one of the teachers with his own money. These men have such good hearts. The conditions are bad and they don't actually have to be there, but they are there for the kids. They are the best thing the kids have at that school. We asked them what they needed and Roundabout will do it's best to make things better for both the kids and the teachers.
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