Life in Hac Sa lacks even the basic comforts we had in the city.
Here, like it does for our neighbors, our electricity arrives through a few exposed wires connected to other wires illegally connected to one of the city’s fuse boxes on electric poles lining the main road a few miles away. Without grounding or electric-current regulation, it is a touchy affair. At night, when everyone in the village is using the trickle of electricity, the orange glow of our single 20-watt bulb flickers so dimly my parents can barely see to read the Bible or Mo Letters to us, but in the morning, the electricity surges and explodes the bulb. With daily blackouts, a refrigerator is pointless, as is anything else that needs electricity other than a few lights and a fan.
We eat simply: meat, vegetables, and rice twice a day, with oatmeal and sometimes eggs for breakfast. Since we don’t have refrigeration, we buy our fresh food every day as part of our daily walk. A mile up the road just over the hill from the beach is our fresh meat supplier. He raises Dobermans, and we bought our dogs, Sheba and Rex, from him a year earlier. He goes early every morning into the big wet market in Macau to buy meat and vegetables, and some of the other villagers, like ourselves, buy from him. Everything else we buy in bulk from the market in Coloane—rice, oats, and powdered milk come in forty-pound sacks.
Air conditioning is out of the question. The trickle of electricity is so low, we use a broom handle to turn the ceiling fan just to get it going, then hope it will spin long enough for us to fall asleep. The stuffy summer heat inside the house is so oppressive we do almost everything we can outside, where we can get a breeze, including cooking, studying, and bathing. The shower is a metal pipe fastened inside the roof of the dark outhouse that drips on our heads as we go to the bathroom. When we want to take a shower, we lay a wooden board over the smelly toilet hole and stand on it. I’m afraid the board will slip or break and I’ll fall into all the disgusting poop below.
In the tropical summer, each day is hotter than the last, so we cool off as best we can. Our parents let us wear our bathing suits all day, so they can spray us off with the outside hose to stay cool.
At the end of our first week, our father excitedly calls my siblings and me to the living room. Still sweaty from our morning of chores, we stare in delight as he rolls in a big wooden barrel that he has found washed up at the beach. It’s wide enough for all seven of us if we squash in. He uses our green rubber hose to fill it up, adds a bit of soap, then shouts, “Jump in!” All of us fight to be the first to leap into the cool water of our makeshift bathtub. Relief! Splashing and making soap bubbles, we forget the unforgiving tropical sun.
We have a big job to do, and now that we have a lay of the land, we are ready to begin. Our father hands out tall rubber boots. “For the snakes,” he tells us. “There are lots of snakes out here, black snakes, pythons, but the ones you need to really watch out for are the king cobras, because their bite is deadly. If you disturb a snake in the grass or the garbage pile, it will curl up and strike. Usually only as high as your ankle or leg. The boots should stop its teeth.”
“What if it bites above the boot?” I ask with a nervous glance at my feet. My legs and boots are shorter than everyone else’s.
“Just be careful.”
We are each handed a large black plastic garbage bag and a two-foot-long sharp metal stick with a wooden handle. I stare at it, confused.
“This is a barbecue skewer.” Our father marches us down to the big pile of rubbish at the edge of the village and explains to us, “We can’t just tell people about Jesus. We must be examples of good Christians. Remember, cleanliness is Godliness. We are going to clean up this garbage dump.”
I’m grateful for my stick when, as I stab an old piece of cardboard, I see maggots and worms wriggling in the dirt under it. “Gross!” I jump back in horror. I never had to deal with these slimy worms in the city.
I fall in line behind my brothers as my father leads us into the village to do what becomes our daily afternoon cleanup. For at least two hours a day, we pick up garbage around the village. I help my father and brothers fill truck after truck with trash; then I sweep, rake, shovel, and pull weeds until my hands blister. The villagers look at us with suspicion and curiosity, not sure what to make of the crazy family of gweilos, Cantonese for “foreigner” or “white devil,” in wide-brimmed hats stomping around their houses and the vacant field at the edge of the village. I see them staring at us as they walk slowly past where we are picking up garbage. “Wave, kids!” our father instructs. “Smile and say hi.” Obediently, we shout, “Jo san!” A couple smile and wave back.
While I’m nervous to talk to our neighbors, who smell like pungent herbs and sweat, my father bounces around the village, happily chattering away to the locals and our Chinese worker in simple Cantonese. According to my parents, he was shot when he swam to Macau to escape communist China. An old, childless lady in the village took care of him until he got better. We have gotten to know her through him and have adopted her as our Chinese grandmother. We bring her food and blankets. Like the Good Samaritan, we are here to help.
Seeing our interactions with a Chinese grandma helps some of the villagers feel more comfortable. A few approach us to say a few words. The braver ones reach out to touch the strands of our hair that poke out from beneath our hats. Most of them take a “wait and see” approach. However, there are a couple who are angry about the intrusion, like the one who takes to throwing rocks. We never catch the assailant, but instead of feeling angry, my father only doubles down on his efforts to win over the attacker (if he could just find him). My father is convinced that we will be accepted by our suspicious neighbors into this closed community, and his optimism never falters.
A few weeks after our arrival in Hac Sa, our village garbage cleanup is finished, and I get a big surprise. We are all sitting around the table for our lunch of stir-fried meat and carrots with rice when I hear our white Dodge van crunching over the gravel. We run outside to see who has arrived. My father gets out of the driver’s seat as the van’s sliding door opens and out jumps my best friend, Patrick, followed by his parents, Daniel and Grace, who is holding baby Colum.