Grieving for a Stranger
Magic Moments twenty-three
Padraig O'Maille |
One of the good things about working on the missions is the variety of situations and tasks one can encounter. Several years ago in Malawi I was asked if I would help a group of volunteers from Taiwan with their English. I was delighted to help: it involved two or three hours one evening a week. There were about eight of them, all men. They worked on a variety of development projects from growing rice to setting up fish farms and market gardening.
As soon as they heard that I had agreed, the man in charge drove to meet me to make detailed arrangements. He came bearing gifts: heads of cabbage that would adorn any vegetable market; outsize water melons; onions such as I had not seen since my mother’s garden. It was a promising start. I was able to share the largesse with all my neighbours.
The classes were less than successful: attendance was optional and I ended up some days with no more than three or four students. And most of them were less than enthusiastic about the project: they thought they had done well to have learned the local language and saw little practical use for English. But they were a delightful group to work with. Every week brought more gifts, and I was invited out to their compound for a meal. They had created a little bit of China in Malawi and were at great pains to introduce me to every detail of their truly beautiful compound. They paid me well: there was a fund for the purpose and after three or four months of rather desultory academic engagement we parted the best of friends.
A year or two later someone suggested to a group of Japanese volunteers that I might be interested in helping them in the same way. Their leader approached me: could I teach them for two hours twice a week? There were eight of them and they felt they needed to learn English for their work. There was no money for the task, but they would service my car in return. I agreed and classes started.
Working with them was totally different from working with the Chinese. They were zealous students. And there were no gifts. They worked as nurses, teachers, mechanics and seemed to be on a very tight budget. I had heard of Japanese tearooms, but this group seemed to know nothing of tea, until the very last day when we had a small feast of tea and Japanese pastries.
All of them already knew some English. Some of them were bright and made amazing progress in the five months I was with them. The course ended because I was going on leave, but we parted with mutual assurances that we would continue once I returned. They told me they were going on their own vacation to Kenya and Tanzania the next month and were really looking forward to it.
I couldn’t say that I got to know most of them: their only interest was in learning English, and I was amazed at how little interest they showed in anything else. I suppose I was a little disappointed that they didn’t show much interest in myself.
There was one exception. One of the girls worked as a nurse in the local hospital and we met there from time to time when I brought in a patient or went to visit one of my students who might be sick. We met now and then as she cycled to and from her work and waved to each other. She was the human face of the group.
When I returned from my vacation I waited for them to contact me but heard nothing. Eventually I saw the leader in town one day and approached him. He was visibly upset. Had I not heard? There had been a terrible tragedy. While on their vacation in Tanzania the group had been travelling together in a minibus and had an accident. All those in the minibus had been killed instantly. Five of them had been in my group, including the nurse, Miss Aoki. Mention of her aroused in me a strange reaction: I realised as if for the first time, and felt somehow deprived at the realisation, that I never knew her first name.
I sympathised as best I could and promised to pray for them and for their families. A month later I was invited to meet some of the parents who had come from Japan to see where their children had worked. Miss Aoki’s father was among them. I was introduced to him; the leader told him that I had known his daughter well. The grieving man knew no English. I did my best through the interpreter to convey my sorrow and sympathy. I have seldom felt so inadequate and I used the excuse of a waiting class to get away. But my grief, my tears, my anger bore witness to something far beyond my imagining. In the days and nights that followed I put together the following lines…
For Miss Aoki to whom I taught a little English
(killed in Tanzania, January 1989)
Once at lesson time
I laid an arm across your shoulder
And you smiled
A fragile gentleness
And vulnerable trust
Disarming courage
As you groped for words
To tell me daily things
And centuries of mystery
All I know now
Is that the road
Has claimed you
The sacrilege of
Screaming brakes
And mangled steel
And your last thoughts
As death bore down on you
A harsh or tender curiosity
Wanted to know
If death was kind
Or if the stalking scythe man
Marred your beauty
And when your father came
To take you home
I would have told him
Little things that
We had shared
Instead I muttered
Worn platitudes
And rushed to class
Where unbid tears
Reminded me... how
Once, at lesson time,
I laid an arm across your shoulder
And you smiled.
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