Page 69 - moondani kyema
P. 69
ndani kyema, My Story - Ray Moore 69
I found myself feeling confused by the fact that, although the Communists had
liberated the country, we were leaving so that we could live in Australia, a liberated
country. Five years previously at the end of the summer of 1945, I had been liberated
from a Japanese Concentration camp, but then I had been overwhelmed with the
excitement of the occasion and revelled in the feeling of at last experiencing life in a
country liberated from the Japanese control. I could roam outside the camp walls
that had enclosed us and restricted our movements for the past two or three years.
What was I being liberated from this time? It felt more like I was being expelled
rather than liberated.
As I thought about this I could see another 'liberation' that I was experiencing. Yes I
had been liberated from the Japanese, and now I was being liberated from the
Communists, but I was also being liberated from boarding school life. In Australia, I
would be living with my parents and then in independent living when they went back
to their missionary work. I would never be living in a boarding school again.
One of the reasons that I did not do my time in Concentration Camp very hard, was
because it was really not a lot different to living in a boarding school. You got up
when the bell went. You had meals at the same time every day. You listened for
whistles and other means of telling you where you should be at various times of the
day. Your movements were controlled. In boarding school you could not leave the
compound without permission. In concentration camp you could not leave the
compound at all. So my whole remembered life had been a kind of benevolent
prison. And now I was on my way to freedom.
Freedom is a funny thing. It seems that when you are told you are free, you don’t
always feel free. And yet at other times when you don’t seem to be free at all, you
feel free. I had developed a means of finding freedom during those years of
boarding school life when there was very little of my life that was private. I used to
withdraw behind my wall. This was a place where I could be me, without the
influence or expectations of the people around me. This was a good place – a safe
place. It was a place where I felt good about myself. It was a place where I was
isolated,
Later, when I got back to Australia, I became aware that, even in this free country,
there were prisons of a different kind that I found myself in. They were prisons of
circumstance, relationships or personal failure. Real freedom, when I found it, did not
depend on what was happening outside, but came from significant and sometimes
painful changes from within.
But right now, this train was taking me from Jiujiang to Guangzhou or Canton as we
knew it then. Jiujiang was the town on the Yangzi River which was at the base of the
Lushan Mountain where the village of Guling, and our school was situated. We three
Moore boys were travelling with the three Grant children, in the care of Mr and Mrs
Eaton, heading for Hong Kong.
The train eventually pulled in to the border crossing between China and Hong Kong..
Hong Kong was then British territory and we got off the train, lugging our few
precious belongings behind us and walked to the bridge that spanned the river that
separated China from Hong Kong. As we walked towards the bridge we were
I found myself feeling confused by the fact that, although the Communists had
liberated the country, we were leaving so that we could live in Australia, a liberated
country. Five years previously at the end of the summer of 1945, I had been liberated
from a Japanese Concentration camp, but then I had been overwhelmed with the
excitement of the occasion and revelled in the feeling of at last experiencing life in a
country liberated from the Japanese control. I could roam outside the camp walls
that had enclosed us and restricted our movements for the past two or three years.
What was I being liberated from this time? It felt more like I was being expelled
rather than liberated.
As I thought about this I could see another 'liberation' that I was experiencing. Yes I
had been liberated from the Japanese, and now I was being liberated from the
Communists, but I was also being liberated from boarding school life. In Australia, I
would be living with my parents and then in independent living when they went back
to their missionary work. I would never be living in a boarding school again.
One of the reasons that I did not do my time in Concentration Camp very hard, was
because it was really not a lot different to living in a boarding school. You got up
when the bell went. You had meals at the same time every day. You listened for
whistles and other means of telling you where you should be at various times of the
day. Your movements were controlled. In boarding school you could not leave the
compound without permission. In concentration camp you could not leave the
compound at all. So my whole remembered life had been a kind of benevolent
prison. And now I was on my way to freedom.
Freedom is a funny thing. It seems that when you are told you are free, you don’t
always feel free. And yet at other times when you don’t seem to be free at all, you
feel free. I had developed a means of finding freedom during those years of
boarding school life when there was very little of my life that was private. I used to
withdraw behind my wall. This was a place where I could be me, without the
influence or expectations of the people around me. This was a good place – a safe
place. It was a place where I felt good about myself. It was a place where I was
isolated,
Later, when I got back to Australia, I became aware that, even in this free country,
there were prisons of a different kind that I found myself in. They were prisons of
circumstance, relationships or personal failure. Real freedom, when I found it, did not
depend on what was happening outside, but came from significant and sometimes
painful changes from within.
But right now, this train was taking me from Jiujiang to Guangzhou or Canton as we
knew it then. Jiujiang was the town on the Yangzi River which was at the base of the
Lushan Mountain where the village of Guling, and our school was situated. We three
Moore boys were travelling with the three Grant children, in the care of Mr and Mrs
Eaton, heading for Hong Kong.
The train eventually pulled in to the border crossing between China and Hong Kong..
Hong Kong was then British territory and we got off the train, lugging our few
precious belongings behind us and walked to the bridge that spanned the river that
separated China from Hong Kong. As we walked towards the bridge we were
