Howard's Questions

AGAIN ANOTHER LONG POST BUT ALSO WORTH IT
READ ONE BEFORE IF YOU HAVEN'T
Last post, when I was talking about the King of Artificial Pig Insemination, I said there was another experience I had with him which disturbed me quite a bit. This is that.
The day we visited the Miao villages, we returned to Jianshui. The night was made weird enough for me by suddenly finding myself in perfect comfort with more than enough food, a comfortable bed, even air-conditioning, while I still knew that the villagers were in the same situation as I saw them earlier in the day. Made it really hard to eat dinner, but being the courageous person I am, I didn't find it too difficult to polish off a dish or two. Think about that one next time you plan on buying me a birthday present.
However dinner was not all a loss. I ended up sitting at Howard's table (our group had around 16 people so we needed two or three tables). At first Howard was polite and only made small talk, but it didn't talk long (or too many beers) for him to begin a train of thought which is mostly responsible for this writing. I thought there was something a little odd going on when I saw him stop a waitress and ask her for a beer before we were even seated. He began by asking us (the three students sitting near him) what our thoughts were on the day. We all gave him our slightly academic and carefully inert answers.
"It's really sad to see their situation, but I think your school is going to help."
"You are giving them a reason to go out and work in the fields everyday. You are giving them hope."
"While it was a little weird, I think it was all worth it because I am so inspired right now."
These sorts of answers were pretty easy to summon up. But we were not giving Howard's intelligence enough credit (something I have a feeling cocky college students are apt to do to anyone who has the accent or appearance of Howard). He began working the conversation around (with the help of much more beer on his side) to a harder question. More and more there would be an awkward silence after one of his questions, simply because none of us had anything near the answer, and were to ashamed to BS one. He started asking us if we thought what he was doing was right. He worried that instead of helping, he was actually destroying these people's lives, or worse, dooming them to their lives forever.
He knows better than I do, that the situation of those Miao villages, if nothing changes, is not sustainable. They are not going to make it--in a hundred years, there will either be no one alive in that valley, or there will have been some sort of miracle. And this is what Howard was worrying about. He's almost finished this new school which is to be the pride and joy of these people, which is to give them something to live for, and where does that leave them? Is it nothing more than a chain by which he has bound these people to the area forever? For now that this school is there, the government is surely not going to abandon the area and move the people out, instead it's going to be more of the same. They are going to have to stay where they are until the last drop of water has been turned to unusable sludge and the last person has dropped dead from some simple malady.
As Howard began expressing his worries to us, he also began to appear more and more drunk. By this point he had had five or six beers (not much in the States) but the Chinese beer bottle is something which makes us look like Barbie-worshiping little pansies. The Chinese beer bottle is at least three times the size of the normal American beer bottle. Most of you know my thoughts about drunkenness, but that's not the point here. Howard was still lucid enough to express (though slurred and shouting) that he was being torn up inside.
If ever there was a person who I thought was not to be this way, it would have been Howard. After all, he had given up his life in the States, he was selflessly giving away large sums of money, seeing tangible results, and here he was--almost on the verge of explosion--telling us that he wasn't sure if he was one of the worst people in the world.
Not only was he worried that he was binding these villagers to a future which was more like doom, but he was also worrying that he was wrecking more than this. The thing is, while he can build schools, he cannot say what is taught in them. Every school he builds becomes a new point of Han majority Communist indoctrination. So while he may be giving these kids an opportunity to escape a life which is horrific, he's wiping out their culture, history, and in some cases personality. I know this is a weird feeling for an American, since our culture changes by the moment and we don't feel especially sad if any part of it suddenly up and walks away (I can name quite a few parts that at this moment would be making me hysterically happy if they were to up and leave), but in those cultures which have been around for a few thousand years, it means a bit more I think.
Howard is genuinely confused about this subject. He doesn't know whether he is doing something good or something bad. He is not sure whether he will be looked back on by history as one of the great destroyers or builders. I don't know what religion Howard prescribes to (he was raised Mormon but abandoned that quite early at the expense of an ongoing relationship with his family--they cut him off, literally), but it was clear that it wasn't giving him any guidance.
In a dark sort of way, it was humorous to watch some of the students at the table argue with him. All the altruism, all the high-minded certainty of a college education does NOT stand up against experience.
Somebody got wise and thought they could cheer him up (a feeling which in my mind is almost as patronizing as they claimed giving the candy to kids in the villages was) by asking Howard if he thought the villagers' situation was better than it had been 15 years ago. Howard, again with his disarming reality, said he didn't have a clue. He'd only been here for three years and didn't know anything about the situation before that. Next logical question was, of course, has their situation improved in these three years that Howard has been so selflessly helping them. Howard's answer, laced with a fair bit of profanity (which he was using well by this time) was "Not a bit."

I don't think anyone is immune to the sort of questions that plagued Howard. But, and this is where I figured it worth telling you, he at least is still doing something. While he has been torn apart by worries that he may be doing more harm than good, he at least has chosen a path and is following it. If you want to think about this sort of stuff, it is inevitable that you can walk yourself in wonderful little circles that successfully keep you from doing anything useful. The trick is to recognize the questions, but not get caught up in asking them. Even though Howard has seen no improvement in the lifestyle of the people he is trying to help, even though the only proof he has that he has been helping is that there are these new buildings with kids going to school in them, he's still going on. I cannot imagine how tough this must be.
He obviously cares enough about these people to be personally vested in them, and yet for all his efforts (which are not small) he has not been given any results, not been given any pat on the back even in the most simply of manners.
My question is this: when is Howard going to tire? When is he going to be fed up with the seeming uselessness of everything he is doing? And what then?
My only consolation at this moment comes from something my former roommate here said: "God did not call us to save the world, only to live a holy life." Whether we see results which make us feel like we are saving the masses from their horrible fate, or whether we think we are simply throwing our money down a chute which resembles a trash can, doesn't much matter. I'm hoping to meet up with Howard again at some point in the future to talk with him a bit more, perhaps he can shed some light on his own predicament.
Phil.