Crossing the Line - part 26
The house at Tai Tam was an old colonial relic. It was built as a small family house for the manager of the reservoir system which dominates that area of
Hong Kong Island – a series of dam walls, reservoirs and catchment channels
which provided water for the island before the population explosion after the
Second World War. The house was
beautifully situated by the sea with its own small shingle beach. On the other sides it was surrounded by
semi-jungle on steep banks which led up from the shoreline towards the main
road to Stanley.
By the 1980s it was well past its former colonial glory and
the Hong Kong Government offered it to Jackie on a peppercorn rent, as a First
Stage House for heroin addicts.
Downstairs there was a lounge which acted as our meeting
room, a dining room, small kitchen, and a tiny office. Upstairs, all the internal doors had been
removed along with some of the stud walls to cram in as many bunk beds as
possible forming a dormitory. It was
here that all the men at Tai Tam slept, recent ex-addicts and helpers
alike. Each of us had a top or bottom
bunk bed, a small cupboard for clothes, and fan to keep us cool at night. There was no air-conditioning, except in the
office downstairs (and that was rarely used) and we slept with the windows open
every night – even in winter!
There were also some outbuildings, which provided a small
dormitory for our female helpers, along with a shower & toilet block and
our ‘new boy room’. This was where new
brothers spent their first 10 days with us, withdrawing from heroin, methadone,
opium, and whatever else they were addicted to.
When I arrived from Walled City it was late in the
evening and everyone was already asleep apart from the single figure on night
duty, sat at the top of the stairs. I
was told to leave anything valuable in the office and shown to the first empty
bed upstairs to get some sleep. I
remember lying there thinking that I was sleeping in a room with around 15
ex-triads who had probably committed more violent crimes that I could imagine,
but I was so tired that I soon went to sleep anyway.
Then it was breakfast.
It would be fair to say that this never became my favourite meal of the
day. Overall, I loved the food
there. We lived as any Chinese family
did. Fresh food for the day was bought cheaply
from the open market in Chai Wan early every morning and we ate rice three
times a day. Lunch and dinner were fine with
freshly boiled rice and a variety of meat & vegetable dishes to tuck into. But breakfast was usually congee which I
never became accustomed to. For those
who don’t know, congee is yesterday’s left over rice left in a slow cooker
overnight until it turns into a kind of glutinous white soup. There would be a small amount of finely
chopped meat (a little like spam) sprinkled onto it and a super-hot chilli
sauce available for the brave to take the taste away, but I hated it! Occasionally, if there wasn’t enough left
over rice from the day before, we would get fried noodles instead and these
were red letter days in my book to be enjoyed to the full!
After breakfast, there would be some free time to chat
and ‘drink tea’ (yam-cha) before work at 9:30 which consisted of household
chores, painting & decorating, general maintenance, and keeping the grounds
around the house clean and tidy. For
many of our brothers, this was the first ‘work’ they had done in years and was
not universally popular. For most
addicts in the Triads, work used to be dealing or transporting drugs, beating
up your opposition, or standing guard at the entrance to some illicit
premises. Picking up a paint brush, a
rake or a vacuum cleaner was a whole new experience.
Then there was lunch which I always enjoyed. That is, I always enjoyed it once I knew how
to recognise the dishes I liked and the dishes I didn’t. There was always a whole fish or two which
was good as long as you managed to avoid the honour of eating the eyes or the
challenge of eating the head! Things I
was less keen on included deep fried chicken feet which were both cheap and
plentiful; cow’s stomach which was so rubbery that it often had to be swallowed
whole; and cubes of congealed blood, which (even though I love black pudding in
England) never quite managed to win me over.
Alongside these delicacies however, there was always food I loved. Prawns and spring onions, beef or pork in
oyster sauce, pak choy and nuts were just a few.
I quickly learned the art of eating quickly with
chopsticks. While in polite company you
leave your rice bowl on the table and delicately lift the chopsticks to your
mouth, in a family setting you pick up your bowl and put it to your mouth to
shovel in the rice at speed! Essential
knowledge if you didn’t want the food to disappear in front of you.
The afternoon would be spent getting lots of fresh air
and exercise. In the cooler months, that
meant walking the trails around the reservoirs, up into the mountains. In the summer, we would swim each day from
our little beach or go kayaking in the inlet.
After our evening meal, we would meet for worship and
ministry. For an hour or so each evening, we
would sing songs of worship, share something from the Bible, and pray &
minister to each other with gentle words of prophecy, healing and care. These were often wonderful times with songs
being sung with heart and soul, God tangibly present and tears of joy from
hardened men whose hearts were being melted by the love of God.
Then after some more free time for showers, yam-cha and
relaxing, we would all gather for brief Night Prayers in the dormitory before
lights out and sleep at 9:45pm.
All of this sounds idyllic, and many aspects of being at
Tai Tam were, but that is only half the story.
The other side of our day to day life was extremely
challenging. Anyone who has lived in
close community with others will know just how challenging that can be. Different people, with different norms,
different priorities, different likes and dislikes, different cultures and assumptions
can be a powder keg even among people who choose to live together in
community. At Tai Tam we were a
community of very recent ex-heroin addicts, triad members, older brothers and
western helpers. In one sense, helping
them physically withdraw from heroin was the easy part. It was learning to live a new life together which
was the real challenge.
Many had been on drugs since they were 10 or 11 years
old. They had never experienced
adolescence. Now, free from a drug
induced haze for the first time, we would see and experience middle aged men
going through the tantrums of adolescence for the first time, having to come to
terms with raw emotions and how to live with them.
Almost all of our brothers had spent time in prison and many
of them had bounced in and out of prison for years. They were skilled in the tools of
manipulation to get their way from those in authority.
When we were out walking, we had to be vigilant for what
was being picked up from the pathways. In coming to a First Stage House, it
wasn’t just heroin which our brothers were expected to give up. It was everything addictive, including
alcohol, cigarettes, and coffee. This
was going ‘cold turkey’ on a grand scale and while the physical withdrawal
through prayer was often miraculous, old habits die hard. Scanning the public pathways
for discarded half smoked cigarettes, or cans of beer with a little left in the
bottom were common place for our eagle-eyed brothers. If they found something, it wasn’t the
quantity which was important, it was the temptation to stray from the new life
they were trying to commit to, and temptation always starts small. If we give into it, it then grows and grows
until even the occasional shot of heroin would be ok, wouldn’t it?
In the office we had a Garfield postcard pinned up on the
noticeboard. It read “One day I will
look back on all this and laugh!” At times we all drew inspiration from that
postcard. Each helper got one day off
(24 hours) each week with an overnight stay back at Hang Fook Camp if we wanted
it. We also attended the weekly helpers meeting each Thursday morning and went
to the Church service every other Sunday, but apart from that we were there at
Tai Tam 24/7. It was very demanding and
led most helpers to conclude that a month in a first stage house is like a year
anywhere else!
This was the part of being in a First Stage House which
terrified me. I had visions of starting
my first 4 hour shift with our new brother happy and pain free, only to find
that by half way through he was writhing around in agony! After all, I had never done this before. I didn’t know how. Why would God answer my prayers? I was no expert.
It was on my second day at Tai Tam that I had to face my
fear. I went to the new brother room to
start my 4 hour shift. The new brother I
was going to spend the next four hours with was the same person we had brought
back from Walled City when I arrived. He
spoke very little English and I spoke very little Cantonese. I tried not to look too nervous. He was in
good spirits, 48 hours into his withdrawal. For the next 4 hours, I sat with him while he
slept and prayed with him every 15 minutes when he was awake. I walked with him around the house and garden
when he was bored and he showed me how to make Chinese tea. Despite all my misgivings, he didn’t
deteriorate into a sweaty, clammy, gibbering wreck and I discovered something
vitally important.
It wasn’t all about me.
My fears were all about me. I was frightened that my prayers wouldn’t be
good enough; that my faith wasn’t strong enough; that I wasn’t up the task
before me. It was all me, me, me!
It wasn’t about me – it was about him and God.
During my time at Tai Tam, I had to remind myself that we
were witnessing a miracle almost every day in praying for addicts as they got
clean. Not everyone came off without
symptoms of withdrawal. Generally, most
new brothers (around 8/10) did have a little discomfort coming off their drugs,
but nothing like the aches, pangs and cravings which they had experienced
before, when they had tried to do it on their own. 1 in 10 suffered nothing at all, bouncing
with energy and eating normally, and 1 in 10 did go through the pangs of
withdrawal. I never came to any
conclusions about why that was, although it did remind us of what we could
expect to experience without the blessings of answered prayer!
Not everyone made it through and on to Hang Fook Camp, of
course. We had people who ran away as
new brothers, or later on when we bumped into some area of their life which they
were not willing to open to God. But
most made it through, and for those who didn’t, there was always another chance
when they were ready to take it.
I had made it through my first few days at Tai Tam. Apart from discovering what an egotist I can
be, I had come through unscathed. As I
became accustomed to the routine and got to know our brothers and other
helpers, Tai Tam became my home. It
would remain so throughout my time in Hong Kong.
God is bigger than that.
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