I would like to share a story with you from my recent trip to New Caledonia (or Kanaky as the indigenous people call it).
I passed a group of drunks sitting in the midday sun with red cask wine and a joint. I sat down and said hello, a little nervous because of the money in my bumbag. We started conversing and one of the guys told me about how he had just lost his job because he had had no sick leave entitlements. When he called in sick, the boss told him to get to work or he would find someone else to do the job. So he was sacked. Within a few weeks he had wound up unable to pay the rent and out on the streets, not for the first time in his life.
They offered me wine and told me that I was the first person to ever stop and talk to them. I thought it was terrible that people could be so judgmental of these nice people. People are always so fearful that homeless people are monsters, rapists, pickpockets. We steer clear of them as though they have rabies or are psychotic killers. But often they are just ordinary people who have fallen on hard times.
We talked for hours. The aforementioned guy told me how he was born of the time his Tahitian mother was raped. He told me how his Faith in Jesus had saved him from a fatal illness. Jesus is kind, Jesus can save you, he told me. I asked him if he went to the church round the corner.
“Oh no, no, no, no. You mustn’t go to the church. There are nothing but hypocrites in there,” he told me. His church was the church in his mind. His sermons were in the Bible.
Not once did these guys ask me for money. Not once did they eye off my bumbag. When one guy said he was hungry I got out my baguette and gave him some. They were so grateful. They offered me some of the cheap wine but I refused it politely. One bloke told me “You’re a brother. If we see you in trouble, we’ll help you out. We will remember you for this kindness. You’re a brother.” And then he took his multicoloured scarf and wrapped it around my head as a headband. This bloke had nothing: no house, no food, just his clothes, some wine and the scarf. This was the only thing he had in the world, and he was giving it to me.
I wear that scarf every day as a reminder of how he had told me that even though he had nothing, he had his good friends, he had the sun and he was happy. He was genuinely happy. That's not something we generally think of when we think of people who are homeless. I wear the scarf to remind myself that it’s not consumer goods that will make me happy, but my relationships with other people, the kindness I show them and the joy I now take out of nature.
It’s because of Noumea that I take a renewed pleasure out of life, something that I was beginning to lose because my fellow Australians voted to live in an economy rather than a society. Noumea showed me something because it is so beautiful. The water is pristine blue. There are so many trees and shrubs everywhere. Throughout the country is beautiful, abundant bushland. Tribal communities survive on the millions of coconut trees, the yams and of course, all those fish. People are so ridiculously friendly that you can make friends very easily, and I did. People say hello in the streets, and one day when I was asking someone on the street if they knew where I could find some crutches to hire, they offered to lend me theirs!!!
It was this that made me simply sit back and say: my God, what a beautiful place this is. I would often sit in my friend’s car, driving along and just look and marvel at the beauty of nature.
Now I have come back and I have a renewed appreciation for simple things. The other day I just started laughing at how great it was that I was eating a juicy apple. Fruit, they’re so incredible. I mean, they’re just so pure and natural (forgetting about the chemicals). They’re not some product we mashed together, just genuine, pure food. And it’s great.
This morning as I walked to work, I delighted in the way water was falling from the sky and that I could feel it on my skin. Water. It’s beautiful. Trees in the garden, I can just stare at them for hours now. Creation is truly a wonderful thing.