Cross-Cultural Kindness
March 15, 2010
Everything seems to have changed since landing in France but my journey to arrive here demonstrated the human capacity for kindness endures across cultures.
The trip from Dayton, Ohio to Angers, France is a long and somewhat difficult one in which I encountered the kindness of others in many unexpected ways. Ironically, what should have been the simplest part of the journey was actually the most convoluted. My route was Dayton to Philadelphia with a long layover in the city and then on to Paris. But just getting out Dayton proved to be difficult.
Over the course of five hours my flight was delayed three times, first by a mechanical issue and later by snow closing the Philly airport. After about hour four still sitting in the Dayton terminal, kind is the last word I'd use to describe the people I encountered. Everyone was upset about missing connections or just being unable to get home. Slowly some people left for hotels or back to their homes while others, like me, continued to wait.
As we entered into our fifth hour together, people began to share their destinations and stories with the now dwindling group. I learned the young man sitting in front of me was a UD grad, trying to get home to his son in Rwanda. When we boarded the plan for the third and final time, five and a half hours after the scheduled departure time, only nine of us were on the flight. And in the time we had waited and shared our stories we had brought out some of the best in each other.
The ice of the sharp tempered and sharply dressed business woman melted as she talked to me about her time with her daughter in France. My image of the gum-smacking, cell-phone chattering woman sitting behind me evolved into that of a dedicated fianc? who was trying to reach the man she loved in the hospital. Even the stewardess whose big blond curls had slowly unfurled during the stress of the day ended up sitting and chatting with everyone on the ride and took the time to show me on a map the best way through the airport to make my connection.
A connection which I made with no trouble and the flight to Paris went smoothly. In France I encountered more kind individuals who attempted, in French of course, to explain to me among other things that the Paris airport terminals are not actually located in numerical order and that the letters of the alphabet actually do correlate with the seat assignments on the train. Another helped lift my huge roll behind into the luggage compartment on the bullet train and yet another reassured me that yes, I was indeed about to get off at the right stop.
But what made the biggest impression on me was the napkin slipped to me by the business woman as I hurried off the plane in snowy Philadelphia. "In case you miss your flight or it gets canceled and you need a place to stay" she said as she handed me her address and phone number. "I know how I would feel if it were my daughter." Such a kindness was striking but I don't think its endemic to any one place.
That said, life here is pretty different already so stay tuned for the truth about baguettes, myths about homesickness and my experience of what it really means to be lost in translation!
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