Seeking the gate of heavenly peace

I nearly brought home an asylum seeker. You've already got preconceived notions about who I might be talking about...someone with no real status anymore, someone who can't work, , you might have an image forming in your mind...what does he look like?

There was a young man, twenty-three years old in the reception of my office today. I wanted to bring him home, give him my bed to sleep in with it's clean crisp sheets and teddy bears to hug. I wondered if he'd slept in a brass bed before -I would take the couch. I wanted to take him to Chinatown and buy him the best meal he'd ever had. Dim sum perhaps, watch him chew on chicken feet in black bean sauce if that's what he wanted to eat. Get him a beer, would he want Tsing-Dao or would a Stella suffice? He was Chinese, spoke good English...had heard of the Congo. Was a very sweet, unassuming man trying hard not to let despair rise up through his throat and end up as tears in his eyes. All he wanted was a place to sleep at night...to be considered a human being.

I have a massive amount of respect for my colleagues who work day in, day out with people who are like the man I met today, they often meet people who are probably in worse situations. I do not know how they deal with the constant tales of human suffering. I'm sure I would not be able to do what they do, I'd want to bring them all home and cook them dinner.

I came home feeling very rich and also wretched in some ways. I often lament that I haven't had a holiday in a year, that I don't have this or that but I know how well off I am. I've never gone hungry, I overeat. I eat enough to feed myself and the homeless man. I have never had to beg to have a place to sleep. Or ask strangers for help because I've no friends or family to turn to. I found out during Refugee Week that China is in the top ten countries where refugees come from. I was shocked...the land of my ancestors. Surely not. The young man today was totally alone, there doesn't seem to be any network available locally for Chinese asylum seekers or refugees. A lot of the other refugees and asylum seekers seem to be able to at least communicate with each other, sign post, refer and advise in their own languages, at the very least that is something.

My eight months of Chinese language study did not come in very handy, I could understand him when he spoke and knew he had repeated (to my Chinese friend on the phone) what he had told us in English. But I could not speak back to him. I was mute. I was impotent.