It’s my last day

On Facebook I looked at a post a friend of mine had shared: http://www.buzzfeed.com/expresident/pictures-that-will-restore-your-faith-in-humanity

This is about actions of kindness done by people to strangers.

Earlier today I was explaining about the amazing amount of kindness, generosity and trust I experienced in Australia while couchsurfing. Now, looking at the slides on the web site above, I remembered vividly another different and unexpected generosity.

It was the morning of Dashain festival in Nepal. It’s a national holiday and most people stay home with families. This means that there are much fewer dining places open and one of my favorite local run diners – Newa Momo – was pretty packed. 

I had ordered my Newari breakfast and was getting a bit nervous with the waiting time, because at 9AM I was meeting Milan and Gao to go to spend Dashain with Milan’s family. So there I was looking at my watch and thinking if I will make it at all and wondering how do I always end up coming back to this place although the service is so slow. But I knew it’s because they make such great food. It’s a lovely family business, prices are cheap and you pay no government and service tax.

Anyhow, in walked a Spanish guy and as the tables were full, he joined me. We started a conversation: where do you come from, what you did here in Nepal, how much time you have left, the usual. Meanwhile we both got our meals and continued chatting away. As I was preparing to leave to meet my friends nearby, I took out my wallet to leave the money for the bill to the Spanish guy. (In that diner settling the bill takes also very long time). As I’m taking out the cash, the guy is like “No, no, no, it’s my last day here in Nepal, I will pay for you!”

Wow. What? I could not convince him otherwise. I was so surprised by the gesture – how come he would even think of doing something like that? There was no hidden agenda here. We had not been flirting or something like that. Just a typical tourist situation, where you end up sharing a dining table and make the best of it by talking to each other.

Isn’t it wonderful? It’s not the free meal itself that I’m happy about, but that there exist people like him, people who come to the idea of buying a meal to a total stranger for the occasion of the last day of holiday.