It is difficult to tell how many people were stuffed in this dimly lit tuna can, but there were many. When she descended the metal stairs she could smell the human beings before she saw them, before she became one of them. It was the smell of fatigue, as if this were the end of the journey and not the beginning. There was a lot of talking too, but she couldn't focus on words; she was too busy descending into the belly of this mid size ship carrying a lot of other valuable goods besides humans from Macau to Hong Kong. It was not the most difficult decision to make to try to cross the narrow strait between the two colonies. It was in fact very natural. She couldn't find work in Macau and she was running out of funds to stay long enough to get a residency permit in Macau that would have allowed her to cross to Hong Kong without resorting to this atrocious method.
But it is only atrocious for those who never had to suffer for food. She felt she had suffered to much more before that being inside a boat with a whole lot of other people for just a few hours was worth it, was worth the remaining 100 Hong Kong dollars that she had given to the snakehead.
When she has reached the pit, she saw in the dim light four rows of people, or whatever she could make out. First thing, however, wasn't to survey the grimness of the situation, but to find a seat fast. All the benches were taken, and so she just sat on the floor with her little bag of the few items of clothes she had to prop her up. Other people who followed her down did the same. By the time the door closed and the screaming sound was heard, the whole place was barely walkable. She had someone behind her and in front of her. She could hear children from some distance. She wondered about her own children. She wipes the sweat from her forehead and sat still while the the sound of the engine starting drowned out temporarily the raucous chatting that had filled the stagnant air already saturated with human sweat.
She looked up at the people sitting on the benches that flanked her sides. Some had more luggage than others. There seem to be a couple leaning against each other, speaking at times in a dialect she couldn't understand. There was a young man dozing off and constantly falling onto the shoulders of what must have been a stranger because he, or she, was very annoyed with him. A match is lit to review the face of a man as he uses it to light up a hand rolled cigarette. His face was full of grime, his eyes so lacking in any words as if all his thoughts and feelings had been erased, and the reflection of the match flame in his eyes bounced off as if it were lit in front of a piece of glass. And the last image of his face was one of blowing off the flame from the match, the only sign of expression of a human being she saw from this man. He wasn't the only one smoking this cheap tobacco. Very soon the entire tuna can was filled with bad smoke.
But that stink mixed with human sweat in this sweltering stagnant air wasn't the worst to come. Soon the ship was heaving up and down. It was a slow ship, but its vertical motions felt at times like the roller coaster ride. Things started shifting and some people had to scramble to hold down the little property they had. She was just afraid people or things would fall onto her. Then the stink of vomit starts to get intense. And soon the woman next to the smoking man dipped her head low and made a very violent sound with her insides. She was used to people vomiting but the smell that couldn't find an outlet in this tuna can was quickly becoming unbearable. She almost wish everyone were smoking so that the cheap cigarette smell could overpower the stink of human stomachs that could easily induce you to release yours. She didn't have a watch, but she knew they it hadn't been an hour yet and this olfactory torture would continue for hours.
She wondered where the toilets were. Not because she had to go. She had eaten little and drunk little before hand just to be prepared. But she wondered if others were also clueless about it. She didn't want more stink to be added to this soup of thick air she was already drowning in. The air was now bitter. They say that your nose gets used to a smell in a closed room so eventually you don't even smell it. But people were still vomiting and she was trying her very best not to follow suit, even if her stomach had very little to offer the tuna can. There were agonized complaints, there were children screaming, but she knew that all would pass. Eventually the senses would get tired of being stimulated and people would get numbed and fall asleep. She then thought about herself. What a life. Was she born to be a traveler? She was born a peasant girl. She was born to avoid school. Whatever was written in her destiny, she was wandering all the time. Even if it was just within her village and that her only mode of transportation was her legs, she wandered. Now she had wandered out of the country and going between the two territories her country had lost to the world. And in this confining space of human dreams mixed with human stink, she saw herself not wandering but just sitting with a handkerchief soaked with her sweat covering over her nose and mouth. And like this she dozes off a little while. There was no space for dreams. Her conscious awareness was bobbing between the gates of dreams and the reality of the belly of this beast of cargo. At some point the humming engine stopped and that silence woke up her. She opened her eyes and saw the calm around her. And by instinct, the instinct of a wanderer, she stood up, the first time since sitting down, and she could feel the pain in the joints of her legs. She stretches a little and very carefully because the ship was still heaving up and down. And when the engineer started humming again, she felt a breeze somewhere close. She looked to her right and saw that above the man who was smoking but now sleeping was a vent she hadn't noticed before. She carefully walked over there, avoiding the bags and possibly human beings in her way, and with her meager but strong arms clinging on the bars hanging just below the vent, she hoisted herself up and stepped in the little space between the two sleeping passengers below the vent. There's a faint light at the end of the vent. But more importantly, there's wind coming down. The vent was really just a tube connected to the outside. She could smell the sea. She closed her eyes and imagined the faint blue light getting brighter and stronger, and suddenly it became a joyful light, it brought her a smile, the first one since descending into this belly full of human agony. The light drew pictures of her village, of her children, of the schools she had helped to build, that made a difference in many of her compatriots' lives. The light gave her hopes that these people she had left behind would be fine, would be taken care of, and that it towards a brighter light that her wandering was taking her.
When she reopened her eyes, the image of the light remained in her, the bright blue sky was still in her mind as she walked back to her little bag with a tiny space she had wedged in before. She sat down, and still with the sea air in her mind and the blue sky in her soul, she fell asleep this time, only to wake up later when the screaming horn of the ship signed their impending arrival in Hong Kong harbor.
