Wednesday, October 30, 2013

Kindness from Strangers

I have always maintained the belief that people in SVG are exceedingly welcoming and giving, friendly and just overall nice.  I was fortunate to experience an act of kindness that made my day. It was particularly noteworthy, as I had all but given up hope for dealing with people in general at this time.
About a week ago, I had a meeting in Town.  Naturally, I was running late.  Running late, coupled with the lack of vans running due to the road outage and subsequent detour, it takes much longer to reach Town now. When I got to the bus stop there were many school kids as school just let out. When a van came, all the school children rushed the van and filled it up before I could get on.  As they were determining how best to pack the van with so many people, there was an older woman already on the van who insisted to the conductor that they let “the white lady” on the van.  For a few minutes, the conductor ignored the woman’s commands, as the conductor moved people around somewhat unsuccessfully and tried to pack the van. Yet, the woman kept insisting that the “white lady” get on the van. After some time of the woman repeatedly telling the conductor to let me on, the conductor closed the door.  Just as the van was about to pull away, the woman again demanded that they let “the white lady” on the van.  The door opened and the conductor got out, and made a young man sitting in the second row get out and stand, in addition to the conductor, thereby letting me ride to Town.

I was so happy the woman kept insisting that they let me on the van, since I was already late and vans are so hard to come by now, and it takes much longer to reach Town with the detour.  Thank you, stranger, for your generous act of kindness.

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