Working at a Christian company, there are plenty of compulsory company-wide events and activities that make the good half of me feel, “oh how lovely, what a great opportunity to take a break from work to serve and worship God together,” while the other half of me is, “UGH WHY. I just wanna get my work done and go home, OKAY?”
Last week, the day before one of our deadlines, we were required to participate in an all-staff outreach. It was advertised with this poster:
The event was called, “Sharing Briquettes of Love.” I looked at this poster of cute, smiling people happily passing briquettes up a line in a small, colorful neighborhood and I thought, “This looks kinda fun!” I envisioned us walking door to door, pulling a cart full of briquettes, and handing a few to each resident, who I imagined to be adorable elderly people who would be so full of gratitude that they would even invite us in for tea or coffee. We would politely decline and end each delivery with a “God bless you!” and maybe even a hug.
In fact, the perceived ease and satisfaction that comes with literally spreading warmth to a poor community started to make me a little suspicious of the activity. Was this just one of those things Christians did so they could feel good about themselves and post photos on Facebook showing them doing something praiseworthy? Do the residents have stockpiles of briquettes taking up space in their homes? Do they roll their eyes and swear under their breaths when they see these do-gooders coming around to perform a service they don’t really need?
These suspicions were heightened when I arrived at the meeting point and saw a massive banner that had been designed and displayed just to commemorate the event. Our company had donated 35,000 briquettes to the “Briquette Bank” ministry that co-ordinated these outreaches, and our CEO handed the the Briquette Bank pastor an over-sized certificate symbolizing the donation and they both posed for a photo.
Me, being so clever, thought, “Oh I see what this is. It’s a transaction. We pay the organisation 35,000 briquettes and in return, the company gets some great PR and the employees all get to feel the warm-fuzzies of ‘doing something good for the community'”
The fact that, up until this point, I didn’t even know fully what a briquette was, what they were used for, and why people needed them, gives a hint to how accurate my intuition was.
The image that the poster had planted into my head was torn in two as our team was led to a pile of 1,500 briquettes and a cart full of, what looked like, single wooden shelves, each with two straps nailed onto it.
I looked at these and felt sorry for the men who’d be using them to deliver the briquettes.
Nek minnit, I’m hiking up stairs with 7kg of briquette on my back thinking, “Whoever designed that poster SHOULD BE FIRED.”
So, a few facts (I have now learnt) about briquettes.
Briquettes (or “yeontan” in Korean) are made of coal dust and gluing agent, and weigh around 3.5kg each. Yeontan are quite unique to Korea and were used to fuel heat in most households after the Korean War. Yeontan is Korea’s firewood – it was the most cost-effective way to keep houses warm before more advanced systems were introduced. Now, the yeontan has almost been made redundant by infrastructure that is much more efficient than these humble little briquettes. Almost redundant.
Around 1% of the population still rely on yeontan for heat. These people live in dilapidated housing that does not have access to proper infrastructure. The government gas lines do not reach them. These neighbourhoods exist all over the city, but the most well-known ones sit on steep, hilly, undeveloped areas at the foot of the mountains. Their altitude earns them the name “Moon Neighbourhood.” It’s the kind of place where it would be extremely inconvenient and difficult to carry the hundreds of yeontan you need each winter (each house burns around four per day on average) up uneven cement stairs to your house at the top of the hill.
That’s where we come in… eager, unsuspecting Christians lured by the proposition of a pleasant afternoon of fresh air and getting our hands just slightly dirty, now sweating and grunting up and down stairs with heavy loads on our backs like ancient Egyptian slaves.
Okay I’m being dramatic, but this is nothing compared to the cries and complaints that came unfiltered from the mouths of my female, middle aged colleagues.
“This is impossible. How can you expect me to do this? Why aren’t more men carrying the yeontan up and down this hill?? What are you doing just standing there giving directions? God I’m hungry, I barely ate anything for lunch!! Where are the snacks I WAS TOLD THERE’D BE SNACKS!”
It was really embarrassing. But I couldn’t really blame them. The climb was hard enough for me and my relatively youthful body… I couldn’t even imagine how hard it would be for someone twenty years older. We first had to deliver 150 yeontan to the house at the top of the hill… With around 15 women going at a rate of two yeontan at a time.. It would take us each 4-5 laps just to finish the delivery.
I channeled my heart’s complaints into a fiery resolve to just get the job done. I tried to maintain a “this isn’t so bad!” expression but as always, my face betrayed me. This was probably the fourth time in twelve months that I’d pushed my heart beyond its resting rate and so, being morbidly unfit, I was purple-faced and sweaty like a sixty-year-old obese man mid-cardiac arrest. This really concerned people and they kept asking me, “Are you okay? Maybe you should rest” to which I was like, “I’m totally fine!” and I could see from their faces they were thinking, “Oh Lord this girl is a liability.”
But after a few laps of this hill I was not totally fine. I was struggling hard and my legs started to shake. And in that moment I really understood why voluntary yeontan delivery was a valuable service … because it’s bloody hard work. It’s one of those menial yet difficult tasks that, given the choice between doing it yourself and having someone else do it for you, you would always choose the latter.
Once we were finished with the first house it became a lot easier and we started to work even harder knowing that the worst was over. It actually ended up being a lot of fun… There was something so joyful in the simplicity of just using the strength of my back and legs to deliver essential household items to people, and I felt glad that I was relieving someone else from this arduous task.
There is nothing spectacular at all about delivering yeontan. We weren’t feeding the hungry or healing the sick. We didn’t fix or build anything. If we didn’t do it, the residents would somehow manage to buy and transport the yeontan themselves. We simply did this neighborhood a small favor – lightened their load a little and made their lives just marginally easier by carrying out a necessary but time-consuming, labor-intensive task on their behalf.
These kinds of acts don’t change the world, or even someone’s life, but they are worth our time and energy because they achieve something small and significant that we just don’t do enough these days – they express love. I feel like, if I spent more time delivering yeontan and less time agonizing over how I’m going to achieve something extraordinary and make my life count, both I and the world would be better off.
Hey, lady 