出会った：サドバリーの道で

The bus arrived 4 hours earlier than I expected.
Great.
I gather up my way-too-many bags and find lockers in the back of the bus station to store them.
No money.
ATM -> coffee -> $2 change.
I have unintentionally left a $20 bill in the cash dispenser of the machine but don't realize. A man, who I likely never would have approached based on his dark,ripped, jeans, t-shirt and long greasy hair, approaches me with a $20 bill at the end of his outstretched arm.
“You left this in the machine.”
“Wow, thank you so much.” I am blown away by his honesty and am grateful for this opportunity to shine more light on my own unfair prejudices. He walks outside for a smoke without even acknowledging my thanks.
Bags secured.  Time for an adventure!
Left or Right?  Let's tryyy left!
The sun has just come over the hills to the left, awakening the quiet morning. Wisps of grey decorate the nearly cloudless sky.  I make a plea to the sky for rain.  Dryness plagues this landscape too.  The water tower stands above the hills; signs advertising bathtubs and things I'm not interested to read, plastered to its sides.
As I continue down the empty street, I see a man at the bottom of the hill that stretches up to the sidewalk. He is standing in the doorway of what appears to be his housing complex, smoking.  I nod to him from the sidewalk.  He waves.  He yells something incomprehensible to me.  I yell back that I can't hear.  He yells again.  I hop over the barrier and walk down the hill.
"What?"
"Where are you going?" he asks.
"That way," I point in the direction I'm walking.
"But where?  It's 7am and you're walking by yourself.  Nothing is open over there."
"I know.  I'm on an adventure!  Just going to see what happens," I say.
He is confused and surprised.  He seems fearful for my well being.  He asks more questions.  I answer them, explaining how I got to Sudbury, why, what i'm doing here.
I'm not afraid.  He makes it seem like I should be.
He looks at me as if I am crazy but the kind of crazy that needs his (or someone's) protection.  I appreciate his concern and don't let on that he is underestimating me.  I know my temperament makes me seem much younger and more vulnerable than I am. . .or perhaps it is exactly that which somehow protects me.  He invites me in to watch a movie.  I decline, I prefer adventures.  If I see him on the way back, he will invite me in.  I will probably still decline.
I continue in the same direction.  I get to an intersection and sense that I should turn.
Left or Right?  Right.
I walk past the mall.  The same one, I'm almost sure, that I went to when I lived in Sudbury for a summer as a kid.  Things have changed but the name is familiar, 'Hart'.
A middle-aged man crosses the street to talk to me.  He is smoking. He says something in French that I don't catch. He realizes I don't speak French and switches to English.
“I thought you were French.”
“No, sorry.” I always feel the need to apologize for not knowing the other national language.
He wears a baseball cap, white socks pulled up to his calves, a t-shirt and a pack around his waist. There is a water bottle holder and a pouch for money. His face is wrinkled from age, his body is stiff but his spirit is animated. Like a young knight trapped inside rusting armour. His name is Stephane, pronounced 'Ste-fan', the French way, not like a girl.
He introduces himself and asks me what I am doing in Sudbury. I explain the story. Sudbury is more on-the-way from Ottawa towards Iron Bridge than anywhere else my parents could have picked me up. We are going to my grandparent's cottage for a couple of weeks. I didn't think the bus would be so early, so now I have lots of time to hang out in Sudbury.
He tells me about himself. He has an injury, his leg. He fell off of a scaffolding or some kind of high structure on a job he was doing a number of years ago and injured himself badly. He is on disability and lives in subsidized housing. He takes medication for the pain twice a day but tries to walk around and get out of his apartment as much as possible when he's able. He's happy to have company, other than the folks that hang around the streets in the down town. He doesn't seem to be especially put off by the other people standing and sitting around smoking, but also doesn't especially fit in. He is visibly more coherent, alert, aware. He's travelled around a lot. Lived in the back of his truck for a few years. Fishing on Manitoulin Island, hanging out with people on the reserves. He's been married and has a son. He was the youngest of a family of four girls and himself. He tells me of his once long blonde curly hair that resulted in people teasing that it was actually a family of five girls.
We get up and walk around. I want to see some of Sudbury. I ask if there's a farmer's market, he takes me there. It's the first time he's been. I buy a pint of raspberries and we eat them and continue walking and talking.
He invites me to breakfast at the soup kitchen after the tour. I accept.
We walk past the police station, arena, fire station, a man sitting on a chair beside two kittens on leashes.
I motion to pet them but am dissuaded by Stephane's expression. Once we are out of earshot of the man, Stephane informs me that he is the biggest drug dealer in the city.
We walk up a hill and arrive at Stephane's apartment. He takes me inside his building, up the elevator to his room. He has a kitchen, a sitting room a bedroom. It's small, but he has made it into something comfortable and homely for himself.
A part of me thinks of my parents, probably on the road towards Sudbury by now, “why on earth would you follow a man you just met into his apartment?” They ask the inner me.
“He seems nice. And I'm curious.” the inner me replies.
The inner inner me thinks, 'If I have to be so afraid to open myself to other people on this planet, then I would prefer to die.' Compassion is a coping mechanism. And hope believes that love attracts love. No lightening bolts appear out of the sky to reckon my ultimatum, so, I'm good.
“But please, we worry about you.”

“I'm fine. Don't worry.”

We leave the apartment and walk up a trail to the top of a hill that overlooks the city. There is a monument and the stages of the cross represented on the other entrance to the mountain. We go backwards, from the crucifixion, at the top, down the stages to the road and walk towards the soup kitchen.
People are lined up for food that is spooned out by ladies behind a counter. There is conversation amongst some of those in line, sometimes heated, but the threats are mostly empty. Like the tough kids teasing each other on the playground. Stephane seems to know, or at least recognize everyone. He greets some of them, passes me a tray and we make our way to a table.
The soup kitchen is full of people. There are older people, families, most of them are white. We talk to a man in a cowboy hat who says he used to be a dentist. His teeth aren't very good. He says fluoride in the water has improved the quality of people's teeth greatly. . .maybe so.
We leave the soup kitchen, after finishing our meal and walk to the mall. There is a shop selling goods from Nepal, Tibet and India. We go in and talk to the man running the store. He is Nepali, from Kathmandu. We talk about Nepal, Tibet and Buddhism. He mentions that he just decided today that he would no longer ask the creator for anything material. He is happy to walk the path that has been laid out for him. Submission.
45 minutes pass. We head to the food court and sit down for a while and then walk back towards a coffee shop. We walk by a park to our right and decide to sit on one of the bright red metal benches since the weather is nice. Cloudy, but nice. Stephane tells me a story.
When he was 19 he was in a car accident. He was in a coma for a month.
I have never had any experience with comas and I ask him what it was like.

He doesn't remember the car accident actually happening. He doesn't remember the 2 whole weeks leading up to that car crash, what happened, who he talked to, how he got in the car crash, who's fault it was, nothing. He's pieced together some things from people telling him but has no first hand memory. During his coma, however, he dreamt. He was continually in very nice, pleasant situations. People invited him to feasts, palaces, utopias, but something always felt a bit off. He wasn't sure what, or why, but there was unrest underlying everything. Like the eye of a hurricane. They wanted him to stay. Begged him, pleaded. But it felt like a trap. He kept going, kept moving, he was always the distinguished guest, always well-revered. The situations got more and more comfortable, harder and harder to leave, but the unrest never went away, always made him uneasy and forced him to keep going until finally, he woke up.
I try to understand how it's possible to completely forget 2 weeks of your life. How unnerving that must feel. Like everything Stephane said just now, disappeared. Like I just wasn't there anymore. I have goosebumps.
The clouds rolling in are darker than before and we decide it might be better to wait for my parents inside a coffee shop. We buy coffee and cookies and sit in chairs in the front. I pull out my knitting and he reads a French newspaper. After about 20 minutes, he decides to go home for the day. He needs to take his medicine and rest. He puts his fist out for me to meet half-way. I do. Bitter-sweet.
On the way back to the bus station to meet my parents, I pass by the downtown and the apartment complex where I stopped to greet the man I met in the morning. He is nowhere to be found.

Later that day. . .

I prefer adventures anyway.

出会った： チェンナイからデリーへの電車で

Train from Chennai to Delhi. 36 hours. Fortunately we left at 7:15pm which meant two sleeps on the train. For practical reasons, I hate traveling during the day. At night, especially in India, especially as a woman, there is not much you can do outside anyways, so time spent traveling on a train, is not time wasted. Though traveling at night in most places can be more dangerous, this isn't so much of a concern with the train. It's pretty noisy, to be fair and can be hot. . .but it's great for catching up on reading, thinking, listening to music, chatting with friends you're traveling with, and meeting locals. . .because when you're sitting with people for 36 hours in India, curiosity WILL get the better of them.
After the first couple of stops, a man comes into the train and takes his seat in the lower berth across from our three. He chains his luggage under the seat (which myself and my 2 traveling companions from Manipur) haven't deemed necessary) and tries to make himself comfortable. He asks us where we're from. I tell him I'm from Canada but it takes a few repetitions to convey the message. He asks where my friends are from and I say Manipur. He doesn't seem to understand that they are also Indians, since they look quite different than North or even South Indians. In fact, I'm somewhat interested to see how this knowledge will be taken. On the train towards Chennai from Delhi the conductor (? The guy who goes through the train and checks the tickets) was quite blatantly rude to the 3 of us. We had a ticket and had been on the waiting list for confirmed seats earlier that day and before the train 2 of our seats had been confirmed which should have meant we were waiting for one more seat to come free. It's probable that we actually had 3 confirmed seats by the time the train left, however, a huge group of people got on the train at Delhi without confirmed seats (not an uncommon phenomenon)and we ended up with even less than 2 seats/berths between the 3 of us. When we tried to ask the conductor if we had a 3rd seat confirmed he replied rudely that there was "no chance for an extra seat". My friend tried to ask him when it might change (since most people would probably be getting off before Chennai). He said it wouldn't (Later on a different conductor came around and was more than able to find us a seat, even 3 seats together!). My friends were quite upset by the behaviour of this man. They kept referring to North Indians being "like this" because Manipuri people look different, they always treat them badly. I know that their feelings likely come from multiple experiences with this kind of treatment, and racism is always hurtful and should not be tolerated, but I still tried to say that certainly not all North Indians are like that and maybe this guy just had some bad curry today. . .or his child decided to be an artist instead of an engineer. . .or perhaps he has 7 daughters and can't afford to pay all of their dowries so he has to put other people down to make himself feel better. . .I wanted to go talk to him. My friends wouldn't let me.
Anyway, back to the journey back from Chennai. My friend starts trying to explain, "Manipur" and finally switches to Hindi to make himself better understood. He seems embarrassed and claims his Hindi is bad, but it's much better than mine, anyway. Besides, if you can already speak 3 languages fluently, you could be forgiven for some difficulty speaking your fourth. The man tells us he is from Agra but is going to Jaipur to see his daughter who is studying accounting at college there. The man seems satisfied for the time being knowing where we are from and soon after we all climbed into our respective berths to sleep.
The next day, on the way back from the bathroom I was accosted by another man who asked if he could talk to me for a few minutes. I found his formalities somewhat funny. He asked: "Where are you from?", "What are you doing in India", "How do you like India", commented on my answer saying that "even if you didn't like India, of course you would say that you liked it", "What do your parents do?", "What is your religion?". . .then he proceeded to try to convert me to Christianity by telling me about how he used to be a Hindu but realized that it was far better to put your faith in Christ. . . .*sigh*. I said that I thought it was important to love everyone and treat everyone how you would want to be treated (like in Christianity! he replied! Yes. and in Buddhism and Islam and Hinduism. . .etc) and that often times religions teach this rule, but at the same time teach that other religions are wrong or bad and cause hate between each other. . .which doesn't make sense to me. He didn't buy it. . .Eventually i got out of the conversation and headed back to my seat.
This had given the other man sitting across from us enough time to work up the courage to practice his English by asking me more questions. He asked similarly what I was doing in India, how many brothers and sisters I had, why I was in India? He asked me if I didn't love my parents. I said, of course I love my parents. He asked me why I would come to India when my parents are in Canada and why I would travel so much without thinking about staying close to them. He said that in India the sons always stay close to home. Parents take care of their children until they get married, they pay for everything until then. He was shocked that I paid for post secondary school by myself and that I was doing everything by myself. He said that in India families live together and usually the son brings his wife to live together with his parents to help take care of them. Daughters stay at home until they get married and then stay with their husband's family. He decided that it was just a difference in culture. I figured that there were also some other factors, namely that the younger generations tend to be moving out of their family homes and away to cities or foreign countries where there are more opportunities (for lots of reasons that I won't get into here)and leaving their families behind. I commented that families didn't used to separate as much in western countries either but it's been the trend for a number of years. He felt that I must be very smart, and broadminded from traveling so much. I felt that living in a smaller community and learning a more communal way of living wouldn't necessarily make you any less smart and could provide equally important, but certainly different experiences. . .
He asked me to talk to his daughter on the phone since he was so impressed that I was self-dependent. I talked to her for a few minutes, but it was of course, awkward since we don't know each other and difficult to hear because of the train. But in the end I really enjoyed the conversation I had with this man on the train.
Parental concern and love for their children is, I think, universal, though it sometimes shows itself in different ways, there is usually at least an element of awkward or "special"-ness in the ways parents show their love. Having children get in touch with random contacts of their parents' who they think can guide them and give them assistance (or possibly dissuade them from doing something their parents are afraid of them doing) is something my parents have done too. . .so I understand the awkwardness that his daughter was probably feeling. . .but at the same time, it was quite cute and endearing.
When we arrived in Agra, it was sad to see him go.

出会った： ベトナムのバスで

I was nearing the end of my solitary journey through Vietnam. As most "solitary" traveling experiences go, it ended up not being very solitary at all. Hue had been beautiful. Overgrown ruins of ancient tombs, palaces and Thien Mu Pagoda, site of Thich Quang Duc's self-immolation in 1963, as well as an unexpected trip to the beach, made for an eventful day on the back of a motorbike.

I had been sick for a number of days prior, and so the day began with a trip to the local doctor. I was given some medicine. The packaging and instructions for dosage were written in Vietnamese. I couldn't understand what the doctor said, but wasn't in a position to argue, with lack of language ability, severe gastrointestinal displeasure and an upcoming 12 hour bus ride to Hanoi.

So here I was at the bus terminal, finally leaving my guide who had been trying to woo me throughout the day. I boarded the bus and took my seat. A few minutes later a boy sat down beside me with a girl sitting beside him in Not muchthe other aisle seat. They were talking and laughing about something while sneaking smiling glances at me. They were shy, but intrigued.

As the driver started the engine and the bus rolled out of the station I closed my eyes and submitted myself to the noise and frequent honking of the bus. I settled in to the calamity around me. The sickness and lack of sleep of the last few days perhaps, made this easier than normal. I must have fallen asleep for a few hours. The next thing I knew, the bus had stopped at the first service centre for a food and bathroom break. I hadn't yet developed an appetite, though I had hardly eaten anything all day, but I got out of the bus anyway. There was a small restaurant with plastic tables and chairs. Each table was set with chopsticks and condiments for hungry customers, many from my bus, anticipating their last meal before Hanoi. I was disoriented. Without appetite or acquaintance to turn to, I sat alone outside watching the dusk descend the distant mountains. The driver, chatted amicably over cigarettes with another man and I couldn't identify the boy and girl in the occupied seats inside.

Thien Mu Pagoda

When people started boarding the bus again, the boy and girl resumed their seats beside me with new found confidence. After only a few minutes they attempted conversation with the very limited English they had. We got through a few name repetitions and basic questions before turning to my notebook for assistance. We attempted a make-shift game of pictionary to aid in the understanding of more difficult concepts. I determined that they were students from Saigon going to school in Hanoi but not much else. What was going on seemed quite funny to them and so I laughed too. I never did figure out if they were just having a good time or were actually laughing at me, but I got the feeling that it wasn't really important.

Eventually I slept again. The bus provided us with blankets and despite the uncomfortable seats, I slept soundly. A few times during the nite my blanket would slip down from my neck and I would drowsily notice the boy beside me gently lift it back in to place. I awoke a few times during the night. It seemed like our bus had been stopped for a long time, but maybe I was just hallucinating. I think because I was still recovering from my sickness, I wasn't very concerned and went back to sleep.

In the morning, after our bus had started to move again, we made a short stop at a small store just off of the highway. I opted to stay on the bus but the boy beside me left for a cigarette. When he got back on the bus he brought pastries filled with cream for the girl, himself and for me. The gesture was so natural, as if insignificant. Nothing in his action demanded, nor even suggested expecation of gratitude. I was really touched by this. The 12 hour bus ride had turned into 15 hours due to an accident on the highway (and hence our 3 hour stop on the highway, I found out later) which made the pastry the most delicious thing I could remember eating.

When we arrived in Hanoi I said goodbye to the girl and boy as the grumpy, tired travellers waded through the chaos of their belongings and the bus stop. I got my bags, found a cab and went to a nearby hostel.

I never saw or heard from the boy and girl from the bus again. It has been more than 3 years since my trip to Vietnam and although I remember much of my trip, some places, some events, some anecdotes, I often think about this boy and girl. Their laughs, their kindness.
Reminders that the impact of a simple and random act of kindness resonate no matter how seemingly inconsequential.