A Little Bit More.

The first time I ever went overseas for a community service project was when I was 17. I went with a school team, went- not knowing what to learn or expect. It was there that I met Somaly, there that I fell in love with kites and rice fields, and there that I grew to hate what begging did to people.

The first time I went to Nepal when I was 18, I was alone. I had little idea of what poverty, shortage and leading a meaningful life meant. During those five weeks at that little orphanage, my life changed. The people there helped me to see, to love, to understand. There were 2 bomb blasts ten minutes away from where we lived, a university student was shot, we were under a national curfew for weeks, and there were riots, demonstrations, power cuts, shortage of food and water… in a quaint building where children laughed and learnt and sang happy songs in the darkness lit ablaze with candles.

A year later, after Kitesong, I went to Uttar Pradesh, India alone to visit a missions hospital. I hated it. Hated that it was a hard, scheming, wicked place, that the people were too poor, too sick, too hostile, hated that it was a barren, ugly, wasted land. Most of all, I hated that I hated it, that it was so hard to serve, love the people there. It was very cold, I was at the abyss of my anorexic phase, I cried every night while I was there, I was lonely and very depressed. I saw a lot of surgery, met a newly wed couple who inspired me much with their sacrificial giving- what with coming from extremely wealthy backgrounds to a place that must have seemed like a shit-hole in comparison, loving each other with a tenderness I had never seen before, in the midst of terrible working conditions and odd night shifts.

I visited Nepal a second time alone this June to visit the children again. They thanked me for Kitesong and made me cry again. In those three weeks, I knew, with an increasing measure of certainty, that this was God’s plan for my life.

Every trip is different, every trip breaks me in some way I have never been broken before. In the lonely twilights of different places, the heart fractures in different ways.

Walking past a wholly disfigured man burnt from head to toe, with his wounds still red, swollen and very raw, walking by him and having to decide to walk past him because there were mobs of beggars around and one act of giving could endanger our team. Having to come back to Singapore and recount this to that journalist who asked me about one of the hardest moments I had to bear.

Bathing in the dead of winter with iced water. Listening to the story of how a little girl was gang-raped, dumped by her father and whose mother eventually became mentally unstable. Seeing how missionaries from well-to-do families bring themselves down to live in simple homes, struggling to home-school their kids and work at the same time. Falling ill in a foreign land alone, puking all over the toilet, drowsy with sickness, and having to scrub the entire toilet on your hands and knees while feeling you’re about to faint any moment.

These moments break you, tear you down, and build you up in places you wouldn’t imagine.

Out of everything I had said, I have no idea why that journalist chose to report my embarrassing recount of how that little girl at the orphanage made me cry because she wouldn’t let me wash a muddy toilet that the kids had messed up. It was my first time in Nepal then. I stood at that door of that muddy, muddy toilet and that little ten-year old saw me sigh. “Didi (big sister),” she said endearingly, “You don’t do. I’ll do,” with the biggest, most genuine smile I have ever seen. She insisted. I went to my room and cried after that. I couldn’t do a muddy toilet.

She touched me so much. Her name was Mamata.

During my second visit to Nepal, I had the grand privilege of experiencing the chance of puking all over a toilet. It was a gastronomical disaster, likely caused by the extremely high level of sanitation of the food served on a roadside restaurant there, and the robust immunity of my Singaporean stomach. I was a drunk merlion spewing gloriously onto every tile in my missionary friend’s toilet with the greatest measure of mechanical precision. Clutching a pained stomach and a woozy head, I then cleaned the entire toilet by myself. I was very ill.

But I was singing because I was so incredulously delighted and giddy with happiness, even though I was a physical wreck. Singing because I remembered Mamata. Happy because I had come full circle. You should have seen me. I was beyond myself. Puke. Pain. Laughter. And Victory encapsulated in a dirty rag cloth sodden with green and red puke. It was very, very funny.

I was by myself.

People always ask me why I travel alone. My answer used to be because no one wanted to come along. I often made impulsive, decisive decisions, and it was difficult for people to find time on their schedules which coincided with mine. I used to answer that it was hard to find a traveling partner. Female with a similar vision and time to kill.

But after thinking it through, I think I know the real reason now. After all, if one was really bent on finding a travel partner, a group to travel with, one would surely be able to do so.

At the heart of the matter, I think I just want some time to myself, away from everything.

Away from Everything here. The cars, the streetlamps, ZARA and MANGO, the work, the clean pavements, efficient people, their Stories, and mine. I just want some time to myself, away from Everything.

I suffocate in this place. It is too clean, too efficient, too… predictable. And I like it that I get to learn about what life means outside of my life. Like it that out there, everything is an adventure and a misadventure. Sometimes, don’t you want to get slightly lost, too? Don’t you want to just close your eyes, take a wrong turn, and be surprised? I know I do. I always do.

I want the great outdoors. Woman was made in a garden, a garden. Not a lecture theatre.

Just want some time to think about things, some time to talk to God and myself, without having to constantly entertain banter.

But it comes with a price, and sometimes the lonliness wears you down. But it is good, also. It is like training- they say those who really know God never get lonely.

I'm not a saint. What I do in these places hardly makes any overnight life-changing, long-sustaining impact on the lives of the people there. It’s just a good break for me, something I need, and a calling I hope to fulfill someday. I go to these places to learn mainly, to see what serving the poor there is like, to learn from the missionaries, to prepare my heart and my spirit for that kind of life later on. There is nothing noble about what I do. It’s just the way things are.

People mustn’t think humanitarian trips like these change the lives of people overnight. Long-term missionaries will tell you that they appreciate people coming over short-term to build toilets, paint houses, but more than that, they long for people to come and learn, come with an open heart to be inspired to come serve in the same field. That’s where the long-lasting impact lies. That’s where the challenge is. And that’s where it breaks me the most.

Can I?

For all my talk about missionary work, I’m still praying, still finding out, still learning… because by myself Ill never be up to it.

By myself, I'll never make it there, or back.

Only God’s heart is big enough for that kind of suffering.

So that’s why I keep going to these places. And why I write my life on this space. I go, I keep going, keep writing, hoping that the embers in my heart will keep burning, keep glowing till the day I can finally go with the peace of God in my heart, live in a white, bright house in a shit-hole of a place and find Puke, Pain, Laughter and Victory all in the same breath while serving the poor, and lonely.

So I go, just to learn a little bit more.