Just a Layover

Sometimes, a chance meeting can stay with you your whole life.
By Matthew Miller

When the man at the table asked me to join him, I scarcely gave it a thought. After all, I was just passing time on a layover, waiting for the real trip to begin. I wanted to get a good meal and a good night's rest, and that's about all I expected to happen.

I was en route to Namibia, a sparsely populated country in southwestern Africa. A dedicated outdoors enthusiast, I wanted to experience the wildlife and culture of Namibia's wild backcountry, far away from civilization. I had read of safaris since I was a kid, and I could scarcely contain my excitement that I finally had the chance to do it.

I decided to make the trip solo--no family, no friends, no tour group. I would meet my guide in Windhoek, the capital. To get there I had to spend a night in Johannesburg.

I love seeing new places, but my travel agent put me up in a hotel right next to the airport so that I wouldn't have to go into the city itself. A lot of people were still concerned with the turmoil in South Africa. Apartheid had just ended three months before, and though the election process had gone peacefully, many still believed that dangerous conditions could develop.

So, as an unseasoned traveler, I took my agent's advice and treated the stop as just a place to get a rest before heading off to my real vacation. Nothing more.

When I arrived at my hotel room, I felt exhausted from the fourteen-hour plane trip, yet I was too hungry to sleep. So I figured I would go to the hotel lounge, have a drink, eat dinner and then prepare for the next day. I would be back in my room in an hour.

I was sitting at the lounge with some other travelers, no one saying much, when a man asked me to his table. Two other African men were seated there. I decided to join them. As I sat down, I noticed that all three smiled at me in amazement.

"I invited you on a whim. I don't know why," said the man, smiling. "We really didn't think you would sit with us."

They introduced themselves: David, Darius, and Monte. They had come here--into this place that would have been off-limits just a short while before--and had not known what to expect. Yes, apartheid had ended, but old habits, old prejudices, don't just go away with a new government.

"It is time to celebrate. It is a good time in this country, and a good time for friends," proclaimed David. "Let us show you to dinner."

I wish I could say I had no apprehensions about heading off to dinner with three men who I had just met in a city seventy-five hundred miles from home. But I did. We walked into a large banquet hall serving a tremendous buffet of seafood and lamb dishes. We got our food and headed to a table.

I couldn't help but notice a dividing line, not marked but visible nonetheless. On one side of the line sat the white patrons, and on the other, the black. In the large hall, there wasn't one table where the two races shared a meal.

My newfound companions didn't seem to mind. I sat down and quickly felt comfortable with them: David, gregarious and loud; Darius, quieter but full of insight; and Monte, who appeared to think everything over before responding.

Our talk focused on our two countries and more basic misperceptions of each other. It was the kind of talk that fills every conversation when you meet someone from a fresh new place.

Sometimes you can know people your whole life and never get past this talk. You can work with them and attend the same parties and invite them to dinner, and it never progresses beyond sharing the basic facts--small talk. But sometimes you get past the talk of this government and that popular music and move to something deeper. It happens seamlessly, as if you had always known this person. As if you had always been friends. As if you were always meant to be friends.

And so it was with these three men who had invited me into their group. Quickly we found ourselves discussing wildlife, the cycles of life and death, and how we might best fit in on the Earth. These subjects are my passion, and these men shared that passion.

David described what it was like to dig in the soil for their vegetables, to take kudu and springbok from their land to feed their families, to live with the land and not apart from it. I smiled, knowing he was talking about beliefs I myself held dear.

He smiled back, reached across the table and grabbed my shoulder, so hard it hurt.

"You are our brother!" he exclaimed, loudly and unself-consciously. The waitress flashed a smile, as if she thought all of us were crazy, but by that point it hardly mattered. We talked and laughed for hours, about serious things and funny things, about our families and the future, about all that mattered.

At first, when I entered the restaurant, the racial division bothered me. Apartheid is gone, but only officially, I had thought. Apartheid was over, my newfound friends told me, and that was reason enough to celebrate. But I realized that it went beyond that.

"People aren't going to change right away. They have lived this way a long, long time. They are full of these feelings; they know no other way," explained Darius. "But now we have hope. Things will change, maybe not right now, but they will. We can see a day when we can all be brothers and sisters, and that is reason to celebrate."

Soon, we had to go our separate ways, they to their families and I to my hotel room. When I attempted to help pay for the bill, David held up his hand and stopped me. As we departed, each of them hugged me, and David again grabbed me by the shoulder.

"No matter what, you will always be our brother. Thank you for sharing the evening and the conversation," he said.

And it was just supposed to be an uneventful layover, time to pass until my big trip. I've since tried to eliminate this layover attitude, both in travel and in life. While on our way to the great destinations, and while planning for the big events, we can sometimes pass over the moments of joy and grace that are part of the journey.

These three men, friends who I will probably never see again but who will remain a part of me always, taught me the real way to travel--mindfully. For when you travel mindfully, you never know what jewels you may discover along the way. A warm meal. A trusted friend. A newfound brother.

Reprinted of Matthew Miller (c) 1998 from Chicken Soup for the Traveler's Soul by Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen and Steve Zikman.