Seeing and Preparing

It is always her eyes that I remember. I was on a mission trip to India with members of my church, we were climbing onto the chartered bus to go home after a long day of ministry activities. My friend Jamie and I were the last of our group to get on the bus, our translator Shibu was waiting next to the door for all of us to board before he did. Then we heard her. We turned to see a woman crying in Tamil, offering us her baby. Even in the dim twilight you could tell that her already dark skin was covered in dirt and grime from living on the street. She stood there pleading with us to take her baby with us. I was eighteen, Jamie sixteen we had no idea how to handle this situation. Thankfully Shibu was there, he spoke with her, gave her something, and sent her on her way. The whole encounter took a minute and yet it sticks with me to this day. When I think of it, it is always her eyes, bright white in contrast to her skin, glimmering with tears that I remember first.

It is possible I could have prepared myself better for that moment if I had gone to the library and read up on India, maybe look at a National Geographic edition on India. In the pre-internet days doing research on a place was difficult for the non-academic. I of course did not prepare for my trip the way I should have, but one could argue that the lack of preparation allowed me to have this very visceral experience. When I contrast it with our recent trip to Hong Kong it amazes me how much some preparation can do for a cross cultural experience.

In addition to having read Pullinger and large portions of Tsang, I was able to watch the whole series on Hong Kong that Vox produced, I watched the episode of The Layover that Anthony Bourdain did at least twice, if not three times, and read numerous posting on what to expect and do in Hong Kong. This all resulted in a relative comfort with the place when I arrived. It was definitely different, no amount of preparation can prepare you for the experience of being in a place, but there was a level of comfort with what I was seeing that I did not feel completely out of place.

Pink points toward an academic approach to visual ethnography, which is no doubt important, but I wonder if the existence of popular visual ethnography is doing more for western culture. By popular ethnography I mean the existence of travel blogs, television shows, books, and documentaries. The documentation is not a rigorous as needed for academic research, but at the same time it is more accessible to the average person. At least I want to hope that the existence of popular ethnography is helping western culture. The hoards screaming unconscionable things about immigrants and refugees seem to indicate that popular ethnography has not done as much as I would like. Perhaps the real value of ethnography, both academic and popular, is in helping a single person to see a place or people with empathy and care. Then that person sharing that empathy with another person who has not yet had that experience. In this way both of my experiences, in India and Hong Kong, can help to bring more compassion and care into a world that feels like it is trying to tear itself apart.