Train Travels

Train travels

I am currently sitting on a train to Harbin as Josh (my partner in crime if you will) and I are traveling to a conference for the weekend. Unfortunately, as this weekend is the dragon boat festival and thus a peak time for travel, we were unable to buy tickets to get us to the conference before it started, so we’ll be arriving midday and will only get to experience one full day of the event. Regardless, however, I am sure it will be a useful experience which I hope to write more about after it is over (perhaps on my 8 hour trainride back!)

I actually love traveling by train through China, (if only I could learn how to block out the noisy humanity around me, cell phones and coughing and spitting and snoring, one never realizes the peace and quiet having money and living in America can buy, oh well, one lesson at I time). I relish peering out the window, seeing the world creep by. Today is nesteld into a deep fog which makes even the closest hills mere smuges on the canvas. It’s mainly fields, as most of China is, despite what the bustling metropolitan images show you, dotted every now and then with lone figures working over them. It’s Saturday so there are child figures with their parents and lone motorcycles on the dirt paths between crops. The uniformity amazes me even now when the Chinese experience has become more normalized in my mind, rigid rows of cabbage and trees, meticulously covering every bit of workable land. I think of how many plants grew into my mushroom and green vegetable dinner last night.

I just finished “Mountains Beyond Mountains” about, as the jacket describes, “The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, A Man Who Would Cure the World.” I have a feeling that the protagonist may not like the way that sentence describes him and, even if it’s correct, it’s not what I got from this beautiful moving book. If anything, it’s about, as the doctor himself calls it, “a long defeat.” He says the following:

“You know, people from our background – like you, like most PIH-ers like me – we’re used to being on a victory team, and actually what we’re really trying to do in PIH (Partners in Health, the org he founded) is to make common cause with the losers. Those are two very different things. We want to be on the winning team, but at the risk of turning our backs on the losers, no, it’s not worth it. So you fight the long defeat”

The books is inspiring not only because of its topic, fighting disease in the poor around the world, or its hero, the ringleader of the long defeat himself, but because it brings warmth and comfort and love and hope for everyone else engaged in a fight. Not saying that my work with undocumented immigrant kids, with children fighting disease, with those caught up in the criminal system, is the same as saving lives in Haiti, but I don’t think I had noticed the parallels that run between the age old professions of doctors and lawyers before reading this book. And for every encounter with a suited man, laughing at your client’s inability to go to school, for every fellow student asking why you don’t take the money and life awaiting just an interview away, for every person whose eyes turn down, who pat you on the head and who say in a condescending voice, “oh that’s so good of you,” it’s nice to know there are Paul Farmers in the world who understand you and inspire you to move forwards.

I just realized this may sound like I am comparing myself to this incredible man which I am not attempting to do (even I’m not that self-important) but I do think there are similar and interconnected struggles involved in working with disadvantaged people regardless of the context and the book was especially inspiring and enlightening in this regard. Especially as I consider in my life what I want to use it for and I am constantly curious as to why people make the choices that they do (or do not.)

It’s also the first book in a long time, possibly the first in years, that made me think in that wonderful question what you thought you knew sort of way.

Here are some more thoughts and choice quotes that I found exceedingly refreshing/ thought provoking/ insightful:

Paul Farmer : “If you’re making sacrifices, unless you’re automatically following some rule, it stands to reason that you’re trying to lessen some psychic discomfort. So, for example, if I took steps to be a doctor for those who don’t have medical care, it could be regarded as a sacrifice but it could also be regarded as a way to deal with ambivalence. I feel ambivalent about selling my services in a world where some can’t buy them. You can feel ambivalent about that because you should feel ambivalent.”

Tracy Kidder, author, after teasing Farmer for being moved by a banner reading “the only real nation is humanity.” “ Among a coward’s weaponds, cynicism is the nastiest of all.”

“In his mind, he was fighting all poverty all the time, an endeavor full of difficulties and inevitable failures. For him, the reward was inward clarity, and the price perpetual anger or, at best, discomfort with the world, not always on the surface but always there.”

Paul Farmer. “Look, I’m very proud to be American. I have many opportunities because I’m American. I can travel freely throughout the world, I can start projects, but that’s called privilege, not democracy.”

Jim, a colleague of Paul’s, on people saying they want to be like Paul. “Paul is a model of what should be done. Let’s celebrate him. Let’s make sure people are inspired by him. But we can’t say anybody should or could be just like him. Because if the poor have to wait for a lot of people like Paul to come along before they get good health care, they are totally fucked.”

For all those actually curious about China out there, (if there is anyone reading this, if not it’s a lovely way for me to cataloge my thoughts) I apologize this blog has focused on my own thoughts while I am here rather than the being here itself. Don’t worry, later commentaries are sure to come. J

Thanks for tuning in, read Mountains Beyond Mountains, and I’ll talk again soon! And please, if you’d like to engage in a conversation about this, I would love it. Blogging is wonderful but also forms a lonely, one sided conversation.