Connections

On our last long trip we spent most of our time in developing African and Southeast Asian countries around people who didn't have a lot of material things.  The infrastructure was deteriorated and the traffic and crowds of people occasionally suffocating.  SuperK and I talked mostly to the locals.  This, in my opinion, is the reason to go to another country.  To see how they do things and to get their point of view on life in the 21st Century.  Why would I want to talk to some retired oil    executive from Dallas who owns a summer home somewhere . . . or maybe two summer homes.           

We were curious as why so many people we talked to wanted our phone numbers.  Curious and suspicious.  Friendship, the cachet of having the contact info of a Big, Bad American, and the possibility of putting the touch on someone who could probably afford it down the road.  The ship personnel would have the additional motivation of scoring a tip of some kind at the end of the trip.  I didn't really care.  Some of the staff were genuinely nice because they were nice and I'm sure some were nice because it's their job to be nice.  If some young woman from a developing country is hoping for a tip after working for six months with no days off, averaging ten hours of work each and every day she should get a tip.  The small amount of money won't make a difference to me but goes a long way once she gets home.

Here's a sampling . . .

We had a guide on a rainforest hike in The Gambia that we talked to quite a bit.  We exchanged numbers and texted a few times, pleasantly enough.  He had a bit of a salesman/player vibe coming off of him so I wasn't surprised when he said that he had bought a car that would help him in his role as a guide and asked for $500 so he could buy an engine for it.  He dutifully sent a picture of his car - a car anyway - without an engine.  Personally, I would have thought the engine was the most important part of the car but I'm not much of a mechanical guy.  I pondered, politely declined, and he graciously accepted.  Have not heard from him since.

On the same excursion the tour operator provided a small coffee and tea stand at the start of the hike, manned by two extremely polite young men, who served up Nescafe and tea out of a thermos.  I sidled up and talked to one of the guys for a while, a gentle soul named Bax.  I thorougly enjoyed talking with this kid, a respectful Muslim struggling to get by.  We exchanged numbers and texted a few times with one of the main themes being that he now considered SuperK and I members of his "family," calling us Auntie and Uncle.  Part of this I could chalk up to the high regard Africans hold for elders in their orbit.  Part of me watched warily.  Phone calls started coming in which I parried with texts.  He insisted that he needed to talk about something but never left a message and wouldn't explain by text what he needed to talk about.  Finally, a long voice mail where he explained that the family was very poor and unable to afford tuition for his sister so that she could train to be a teacher.  He quoted a number: $275.  I found the online school and chatted with a representative who indicated a lower price for the course load she would be taking.  I had decided I could chip in and help the family, but one semester at a time and stipulating that I would pay the school directly, asking that he send along the application and bill for the first semester.  Couldn't do anything over the weekend.  Then, his sister didn't apply because she wasn't feeling well.  Then . . . well, that's where it stands now, on a Wednesday, five days later.  We shall see.  We shall see.  We shall see.

Now Thursday.  Radio Silence.

Friday.  Nothing further.

Tuesday: Status Quo

(I almost feel like sending Bax a note wondering if he would feel better about himself if he just told the truth and, ironically, more likely to receive money from me.  Nobody likes to feel they're being hustled.)

Two weeks later:  His sister has decided not to attend school but his other sister has just graduated from school and they need money to attend her graduation ceremonies.

At the end of a different rainforest hike we were funneled into a small area of outdoor shops where a kid who looked like Eddie Murphy herded us into his shop.  He was another gentle soul, more interested in talking to us than selling us anything, so naturally we bought a couple of things.  He quoted a price on one thing.  I added another thing and asked for a discount (I would have paid the quoted price but I was starting to feel like I was traveling from country to country insulting our hosts by not dickering at least a little bit) since I was buying two things.  He started to go over to his older cousin who was obviously the Major Domo of the shop.  That dude waved an OK without looking up from his phone.  As we were leaving he told me that his father died when he was young so he was appointing me as his American father.  O brother.  Off we went.  A minute or two later he scurried up with a small handmade friendship bracelet which he presented to SuperK, not asking for money (see what I mean about my dickering skills?).  Exchanged numbers with Ibrahim but haven't heard from him at this point.

In Sri Lanka we stopped in a jewelry shop because both of us love the experience of buying something that reminds us a little bit of the countries we've visited.

The ship, of course, full of youngsters from developing countries, was a fertile harvest for new friends.  They were clearly instructed not to ask for tips or money or contact information so as to not make any of the guests feel pressured or uncomfortable.  This cruise line has a policy of "no tipping required" although they do cleverly add a big tip onto your bill that goes into a pool for the whole crew.  They're happy to remove or reduce it but you have to ask.  I'm sure a goodly number of people just leave the tip on rather than go through the bother.  I leave some of the tip in place while giving money directly to the crew members who we interact with most frequently and I felt like kind of a dick doing so, like they were going "Yeah, yeah, sure you're giving money to specific crew members."  There were so many great people.  A young guy from Zimbabwe who - when I called myself an old guy at one point, apparently, although I cannot recollect this - began calling out "Young man!  Young man!" every time I saw him.  An Indonesian dude who was the pasta chef expressed outrage that I hugged the women and not him so the hugging began in earnest - I had to go around to the back of the station, hallowed and forbidden ground in my mind's eye, looking out at bewildered and bemused guests looking back in at me.  I felt like taking orders.  "You.  Beat it.  Fuck out of here, I don't feel like making you shit." that kind of exchange which I would have enjoyed immensely and would have cemented me as a legend in the crew quarters.  There was a Chilean woman behind the ice cream bar, a Filipino girl about the size of my big toe assisting at the sushi station, a woman from Kyrgyzstan who absolutely worshipped SuperK, abandoning her waitress station to chase us down and chat until she got the evil eye from one of the head waiters, a kind evil eye (he was Honduran, worked for the ship for 17 years - can you imagine? - leaving your wife and kids for six months at a time so that they'd have a better life on the wages you earned) along the lines of "C'mon, dear, you got work to do," the list goes on and on.  All I did, really, was express joy upon seeing them and taking a minute to find out a little, tiny, teeny bit about who they really were.  You could see these young people absolutely melt with pleasure that you were paying them any attention at all.  We talked to one woman who went out by herself and rented a tuk-tuk taxi by herself in Sri Lanka and got absolutely shafted by the driver, paying twice what she should have paid.  Later that day we gave he in cash what she was overcharged, letting her know we admired her adventurous spirit and hoped that this one experience with a cunning taxi driver (who was himself probably struggling to feed his family - I mean it wasn't Jeff Bezos, for chrissake, who didn't need the money) wasn't going to dampen her enthusiasm for new experiences.  On and on the list goes.  The joy and self-worth I feel from this simple acts of kindness . . . I don't know how else I could glean this pleasure from the world.