So for about the past six weeks – ever since I hit Bosnia – I’ve only needed to stand around looking lost & foreign for a maximum of about three minutes for either a total stranger, or a friend of a friend of a friend who’s never met me before, to do one of the following:
– Offer me chai (Turkey). To the point where I’ve started making a conscious effort to say ‘no’ as I realised I’d managed to consume in excess of twenty sugar cubes in one day due to chai drinking & my teeth have started to hurt.
– Offer me Bosnian/Albanian/Greek/Turkish coffee. C’mon guys, it’s the same coffee.
– Take me in for the night out of the pouring rain, then leave me – a complete stranger – trusted alone in the house, happily curled up by the fire watching ‘Psychic Matchmaker’ on Sky & eating cheese, as the family were going out for the evening.
– Give me their socks (Albania), jewellery (also Albania), a carefully prepared snack bag of sesame rolls & chocolate milk for the road (shepherd in Greece) or ten packets of army-issue biscuits leftover from someone’s military service (Greece) (I managed to ‘accidentally’ forget to take these – they weighed about 10kg).
– Lend me their leather leggings & treat me to a Friday night on the town involving raki, fried chicken & Rita Ora (Albania).
– Take me out night-fishing, fry me a fish on deck at 11pm then sleep on the floor of their boat so I could have the cabin (Turkey) (Admittedly, the guy did ask for a kiss & write ‘I love Lorin’ in the condensation on the boat window, but he was very gracious when I declined).
Just a few instances of some amazing hospitality I’ve encountered over the past few weeks.
Now there’s kind of a double irony at play here.
Firstly: Yes, I’m often knackered, usually hungry, almost always grimy & in need of a shower, & it’s amazing having a bed when you’ve been wild camping for weeks. & I have been overwhelmed & am so grateful for the hospitality I’ve encountered from so many wonderful people. But I’ve almost never been in ‘need’ in the sense that my basic survival requirements – for food, water & shelter – can’t be met without help. Sure, I’m on a tight budget for this trip & have been roughing it fairly seriously (the night camping in a ditch by an industrial estate in Greece was a low point). But at the end of the day I’ve got a great tent & a ‘Made in Derbyshire’ sleeping bag, I can afford the odd night in a guesthouse or meal in a restaurant – & if things really go tits up, I know I can use a credit card to get a flight back to the UK, go on the dole, access some world-class free healthcare & sleep on my dad’s sofa or in my mum’s shed until I find a job.
Secondly: As a rule, the further East I’ve headed, the poorer each country has been. So there seems to be an inverse correlation between people’s willingness to be generous, & the resources they have to be generous. That’s not to say that everyone who’s helped me has been poor, though some have. But when someone can get paid one euro per hour in Albania, or a fisherman’s monthly wage in Turkey is about £600, it’s likely they have considerably less disposable income than many people living in the UK.
Now I don’t want to peddle some essentialised, Orientalist notion of ‘Eastern hospitality’ here. & I also don’t want to downplay the generosity I experienced from people in Austria, Germany & other Northern European countries on this trip – but they were kind of the exception that proved the rule.
Now let’s flip-reverse it for a second. What happens if you stand around in the UK looking lost & foreign? Especially if you’re brown, or God help you have a beard? Well if you’re lucky you might be ignored, or someone might call the police or tip off the Home Office (we’ve all been warned to look out for suspicious beards after all), or we might make you feel really welcome with one of Theresa May’s charming ‘GO HOME’ vans.
On the radio back in the UK a few months ago I listened to an interview with a woman who’d been driving from Calais & when she reached Dover found a stowaway young Afghan in the boot of her car. Now I fully appreciate that as a woman driving alone, I’d be shocked & scared to find a man in my boot. However, she describes this kid as a ‘boy,’ about fourteen, & when she discovered him he didn’t attack her or run – he said ‘I am an orphan’. So what did she do? Scream & call the police, & is subsequently interviewed as the ‘victim’ of this scenario. Meanwhile, a fourteen year old kid who’s escaped a godawful country & should be in social services care is now running scared from the police.
The point is, there’s something fundamentally wrong with a situation when someone like me, who’s essentially on a jolly, is bombarded with hospitality from people with the fewest resources to give it – whilst people travelling the same route as me, just the opposite direction – people actually in need because they’ve fled a hellish warzone like Syria, or because they are being exploited as migrant workers, or because they’ve just moved to a huge city like London & it’s lonely & intimidating & they don’t speak English – are as government policy made to feel un-welcome & basically told to GO HOME (nice one, Theresa).
And yes, of course I’m simplifying a complex situation – it might make sense for people be more hospitable to someone less ‘in need’ because you’re unlikely to become a ‘burden’, there are cultural dimensions to hospitality, people react differently to you if you’re on a bike etc etc. But whatever, the point that is we in the UK should pull our socks up & start offering cups of tea to people looking lost & foreign on our streets (& also decent accomodation, benefits above destitution level, specialist trauma therapy if needed… You get my drift). Bicycle or no bicycle.
One of the organisations that bucks the trend in the UK is the amazing Haringey Migrant Support Centre , which provides invaluable, high quality advice and support to migrants in London – many of whom are destitute and in desperate need of good legal advice. But one of the loveliest things about HMSC is it really is a place of welcome – people can come to the drop-in, sit down with a tasty hot meal and a cup of tea and be surrounded by friendly faces. This big old bike ride I’m doing is to raise much needed funds for HMSC, and I’ve nearly hit my £5000 target – so if you fancy getting into the spirit of welcome and genorosity and sponsoring me, please click here !
As a side note, we should perhaps be expecting more people arriving by bicycle, as the idea seems to have caught on: Refugees enter Norway by bicycle
Lauren is cycling from the UK to Lebanon to raise funds for the amazing Haringey Migrant Support Centre . If you would like to sponsor her, please click here. For route and highlights, click here.
migrantontwowheels 