Understanding how people impact the travel experience
The airport lounge was packed. It seemed unusual to me, who believed that a Tuesday morning should not be busy at an airport like this. It was however not unusual for the dozens of workers and busy bodies who frequented terminal 1 in Addis Ababa. Sat down at a busy café, three of us watched the bustling of the bar and the inches between shoulders and bags. The impression of organized chaos was not lost on us. Neither was it lost on Clara our waiter who in one sweep expertly placed a bowl of hot soup and large round man at the free seat at the four top we occupied. While the soup didn’t lose a drop the man in front of us was spilling out of his new chair in a non-invasive manner. His broad smile and light eyebrows gave way to a deep southern accent that animated his voice higher than the murmur of incomprehensible languages around us. A name would do well but in the bustle of the unusually busy morning, all I caught was the title: Pastor.
The airport was non-descript and uniform except for it’s occupants. We found ourselves sticking out amongst travelers and business men. Our lumbering backpacks were visible over the stacks of grain and the plastic wrapped suitcases. Like much of our time in Eastern Africa, we stood out like sore very young, very pale thumbs. In all manners the Pastor should have been as obvious as we were. However his measured confidence, easy smile and endearing if overbearing nature was much similar to the dozen of nationalities which surrounded us. Of our own party we were anxious to get on a flight that was buried beneath a mass of bodies at a gate 100 meters away. The nervous countenance and the rushed behavior was not off-putting for the good Pastor as he regaled us with his tale. He was on a mission trip, had a love for the people of Zimbabwe and his wife, who was running the church down there. He frequently flew through the most obscure of continental African airports and he was not immune to dealing in harsh criticisms of those without faith. Despite all the years in and out of Africa he held reservations and views of a strong Georgian upbringing. He called each of us sweetheart in a way that was acceptable as a relic of a different age. The Pastor was a good man, if hard in his ways and stubborn with age, his ease was evident and contagious not just to us but with those all around him.
Our flight was being called, or at least we hoped it was from what we could decipher above the din. We anxiously looked to the waitress to get our bill. By the time we made eye contact and grabbed our bags she was swiftly departing again. In a speed unfitting to such a large man the Pastor had covered our bowls of hot soup. He stood to shake our hands, his stomach grinning with his eyes. With a wish of prosperity “We gotta keep passing on that abundance with the grace of God” we were absorbed into the crowd as our thank yous reached his ears.
The flight passed and soon he was forgotten as a minor character in the grand travels we pursued. The Ethiopian layover is long gone. The continents have continued to spread beneath my feet. The countries and generosities of many flashing through in a whirlwind of busses and airports and cafeterias. Still despite his face fading in sharpness and his words less certain in my mind I am reminded of the sincerity of the Pastor. Of the kind man who took in our travel jitters, our organized neuroticism and even our mundane stories and never asked for anything except the acceptance of abundance.
It slipped away in my memory to a catalog of faces. It was so short and so quick an encounter that for months, it seemed buried deep in the archives of my mind. Because of its unremarkable nature, the religious overtones, and the general chaos of the moment, it sifted to the bottom of my mind. The Pastor was just a fleeting experience that left no drastic impact on me for a couple of years. However, the draw towards one of the greater lessons of travel resurfaced like a warm tide on friendly shores. Two years later the chaos of gates and terminals washed away and new chaos was found on the sidewalks of Copacabana.
The beach could be heard from two blocks away. Not so much the waves as the heaving mass of bodies on a hot Saturday. The water trails from those on the hunt for cold beers reached our table. This chaos of vendors and scammers and families carrying everything but the roof of their house to the crowded beach was enjoyed with cold beers and no destination. It was shared with new faces across from me and with no thoughts of the Pastor.
Struggling in Portuguese is a right of passage and jokes are easily made with good humor. Often times insults will be taught and caricatures made. Every once in a while a phrase of English will weave its way into the ebb and flow of the ritual ridicule. Such was the case on a hot weekend with sounds of volleyball and samba in the air. The sun beat down on the Rio sidewalk. Beers were served by a skinny young man with an amicable face and dark brown eyes. He took our order slower than usual for him as the translations caused a headache. He made eye- contact with our neighbor whose watery grey eyes lifted in the joke transferred by the striking brown pair. The watery eyes belonged to a man much smaller than he once was. Age stooped his shoulders and dwindled his stature. Memories sketched themselves in knits and crosses on his brow. He was still and absorbed in what could have been his first or twenty-first pint of the long afternoon.
Predisposed to laugh his mouth turned into a smile as he asked in a crisp yet heavily accented English, “where are you from” . the response of Canada brought on his experience and knowledge of the CN tower, the only two cities: Vancouver and Toronto, and his love for hockey. naturally no more conversation could be salvaged and food came to distract us. fried seafood and fries accompanied by light beer and a stiff sea breeze, Copacabana expanded and contracted in the natural flow of a carioca weekend. another round was ordered and our new friend looked over at us. as if with new eyes he asked in that same clipped accent “where are you from?”, again came the schpeil and the answer of the CN tower and again came the city recognition. Just as quickly as it came it went and the watery eyes retracted to another space entirely. The old man seemed so forlorn and so exhausted, as if the forgetting took an inch out of him each time. Preparing to leave we asked to pay his bill, and with a final goodbye he asked us once again where we were from. In the sadness there was an amusement and the clarity that all that I could ever ask from him was to be accepting of our abundance. Not just the abundance of peat and ale, but that of the laughter and the time which he so diligently forgot and rediscovered.
The forgetful man of Copacabana may have no recollection of this incident, the same way the Pastor likely doesn’t realize his impact. The two figures stand as statues in my mind’s eye now. They are unassuming and not ordinary hallmarks of a great trip. They are not a mountain climbed or an icon snapped. The two men were just that, men. Two characters who come with their flaws and their strengths. In their own way they each instilled in me the value of pursuing and sharing abundance. In the genuine afterglow of these encounters I hold the two men accountable. For all the generosity I’ve been able to accept and to dole out it in part thanks to the Pastor with his easy smile and t the forgetful man with his watery eyes.
10000km away and 2 years prior, a man with kind eyes and listening smile had indulged me. Since then countless others had done so without ever asking for anything in return. and had I not also indulged in return the abundance of those who needed someone to listen or extra change for the bus. Not until the stifling hot chaos of a sidewalk in Rio was I reminded of the good Pastor. In the eyes of the forgetful man I recognized the circular nature of travel. I witnessed the same joviality and kindness in those watery pools as in the bright oasis of the Pastor’s.
In the revolving door of airports that blur and sidewalks that run into one another, the experiences of travel tend to circulate on the point of people. The good the bad and amusing, all my experiences in travel dwindle down to the people. The faces and the eyes whos lips part and give way to accents unknown and stories well-rehearsed. It is the people that inspire me to travel and it is the Pastor and the forgetful man of Copacabana who guide me. Without abundance there is nothing else. I mean it completely devoid of financial connotations, for in the time of my travels money was not an infinite fountain. Simply the abundance of time, of generosity and of silence. To sit and be spoken to, to slip an extra candy into the hand of a friend, to let the more flustered person ahead in a line. The abundance of being fully there for those around you, as they so willing do for you. It is what makes us not only better travelers but better people.
GO FURTHER TRAVELS 
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