Have Faith in the Kindness of Strangers
A recent article in the National Geographic Traveler magazine reminded me of my fateful encounter with two strangers in a foreign land 30 years ago. It was a moving experience that taught me a priceless lesson — and something that I remember fondly to this day. ♦♦♦
For its October 2019 issue, National Geographic Traveler magazine published “The Adventure Issue.” The issue profiled 21 visionary women travelers in history, followed by essays written by “fearless female adventurers” of our time. The essays all had captivating titles, but one captured my attention right away: “Have Faith in the Kindness of Strangers” by Monisha Rajesh (the author of “Around the World in 80 Trains”). In her essay, she chronicles her journey through Xinjiang province in northwest China, a place that was deemed too dangerous for foreigners. Yet Monisha found the Muslim Uygur people “gentle and welcoming.” The story reminded me of an experience I had 30 years ago when I, too, was a foreigner, but welcomed by strangers in an unexpected way.
On Sunday morning, June 4, 1989, I landed in Melbourne, Australia on a flight that had left from Indonesia. It was my first trip abroad, and I was unsure of myself. To top it off, the host country had a special welcome for me: the police had been tipped off that somebody was coming with drugs on board, and being a young, lone, and disoriented guy, I became a suspect. They pulled me aside, asked me all kinds of questions (e.g. “Do you bring condoms?”), and searched through all my belongings — even going so far as to sniff my soap bar. (Don’t ask me why I brought a soap bar; I didn’t know what to expect in my first foray to a foreign country.) After a while, they apologized and let me go.
A bit shaken by the fuss, I trudged towards the airport exit. It was a foggy winter morning, and the 50 F (10 C) weather stung my tropical body. It would be eight more hours before my train departed to Sale in eastern Victoria, and I didn’t know what to do. Melbourne was completely foreign to me. Needless to say, I felt utterly alone.
As I mulled over my predicament, two young white Australian guys approached me. I knew the name of one of them, Steve, because we had chatted briefly in the airplane. He asked me what my plan for the day was, and after hearing my answer (or lack thereof), he asked, “Why don’t you come with us?” Pointing to his friend, he said, “We are going to his house.”
Steve had told me earlier that he worked in Malaysia, and that he had gone back to Australia to spend his vacation time. Beyond that, I knew nothing about him. Nor about his friend. In a split second, I had to decide, and my mind was racing. “Should I trust these guys?” I remember thinking that if something bad were to happen to me, I might quite literally just disappear from the face of the earth. Cellphones weren’t a thing back then, so I had no way of telling my parents or anybody else where I was.
Somehow, I said yes and hopped in their car. We drove through Melbourne streets, and as I gazed out the window at the unfamiliar landscape, three things stood in my mind: the fog, how eerily quiet the city was, and whether or not I had made the right decision.
After what I felt was a long drive, we pulled over to a modest one-story house in what I learned later to be Altona, a suburb in the southwestern outskirt of Melbourne. For the rest of the morning, Steve and his friend received me warmly in that house. The house belonged to Steve’s friend, Phil Sloane, and Phil’s brother Nicholas. Steve’s full name was Steve Hobson, and he was on the way to his hometown Adelaide. Steve and Phil were incredibly friendly, answering all my curiosities about Australia. When lunch time came, they treated me to a nice Malaysian restaurant in Melbourne (Malaysian food being the closest thing they could think of to Indonesian). Slightly after 3 PM, they dropped me at Melbourne train station at Flinders Street and made sure I boarded the right train to Sale.
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For the next seven weeks, I stayed at the home of Alan and Pam James in Sale, a peaceful town in the Gippsland region of Victoria. It was nicknamed “Oil City”, as it served as the base for oil exploration off the nearby coast. From Monday to Friday, I took an intensive English lesson with four other students (Thu Ta and Soen Naing from Myanmar, and Sonny Ibrahim and Nelson Marbun from Indonesia). It was the first part of a training program that our employer, an oil service company, had put together for its new employees. In fact, the class was taught by Carl Jenkins, a middle-aged Englishman who used to work for the company, and we met in a small classroom behind the company’s office.
I had a great time in Sale. Alan, Pam, and their daughter Antoinette, and Carl and his wife Ann were kind souls who gently introduced western culture and way of living to me. On several Saturdays, Carl took us to the nearby towns and parks, and even to go skiing at Mt. Baw Baw (we failed badly). Alan and Pam took me to see Antoinette’s high school improv performance, to attend church mass, and to a charming restaurant in the countryside (to name just a few of our adventures).
Inextricably, the same seven-week period also taught me that not everybody welcomed a foreigner in their land. On one Friday night, my classmates and I decided to check out a local bar. Before long, a young Australian guy derided us with “this is not your place” and “go home to your country.” Then on my second-to-last day in the country, as I was walking from Melbourne train station to my hotel, another young Australian guy taunted me, shouting “Go back to Vietnam!”
In the years that followed, I have taken numerous trips abroad — too many too count, but that first trip to Australia still stands out as the most memorable one, if not the best. It forged my view on people with different nationality and culture. Whenever somebody asked me, “How did you find Australians (or Nigerians, or Koreans)?”, I always answer, “Some are good, and some are bad…But most of them are good.”
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I have never again met Steve and Phil since that fateful encounter on June 4, 1989. My kids chuckled in disbelief when I told them that I went off with two strangers right after I stepped into a new country. Though I’m not sure if I would do it again (and I don’t think I would recommend my kids to do it, either), I do believe that for some divine reason, God nudged my heart to trust Steve and Phil that day, and I was rewarded with a priceless lesson: to have faith in the kindness of strangers.
I think Joseph and Mary would have empathized with me as well. As Christmas draws near, we will soon hear the story of their journey from Nazareth in Galilee to Bethlehem in Judea. It was probably a weeklong, 90-mile (144-km) journey by foot and donkey, and the last 16 miles (26 km) from Jericho to Bethlehem was an ascent of 3500 feet (1067 m). With Mary at the ninth month of pregnancy, it must have been an arduous journey, to say the least. Along the way, Joseph and Mary must have been welcomed and received help and kindness from strangers, including a peasant who offered them use of his cave stable in the hillside near Bethlehem.
And so, it is my hope that the same thing can be said of me when it is all said and done: that someday, somewhere, I was kind and bold enough to take the time to help a stranger in need — even if he/she looked very different from me.
May your Christmas season be full of kindness!
This story originally appeared at https://rsatrio.com/ on November 25, 2019.
