Airports are existential places. They funnel the most eclectic and diverse people from around the world into one building, only to wait impatiently, sit awkwardly together for a few hours, mixed like a humanity cocktail. Then, just as randomly as they came, they are herded into airplanes like lemmings, and shot out to equally exotic places, to live our unimaginably disparate lives, never to interact again. On one hand, we are so minute, another face in a crowd of different shades. But the stories and lives behind the faces screams Imago Dei, and stands as a bulwark against dehumanization.
On the bus ride from the new Beijing airport (which is quite impressive, by the way) to Tianjin, I sat next to a man from Sierra Leone who worked for his country's Department of Transportation and Infrastructure, here to participate in a development seminar. He shared about the rebuilding of his country and African politics, and we lamented people like President Mugabe and histories like colonialism. I couldn't get diamonds, wars and child soldiers off my mind.
Unlike me, who squirmed for a mere 14 hours, it took him 3 days to get to China. He was so other to me, black as the night and wide-eyed in a city that was twice his country's population. And yet there we were, hamming it up, with him as a Brother as well.
Today, I will walk out onto the street and fill my lungs with pollution, order an egg inside a biscuit for breakfast, hug familiar friends at Fellowship, massage away the economy class aches, and find myself greeting the lamb-kabob chefs with an "Assalamu Alilkum," only to sit alone and continue entertaining the thoughts I had for 14 hours by myself in the sky.
Hello, Tianjin. It's good to be back.
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