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9) Tabletennis trilingual

I know, that it is a problematic topic every single time and in many aspects, but there are also so many positive stories in it: during the wave of refugees, that arrived in autumn 2015 in Europe, there were many acts of humanity on many sides. From some of his experiences reported a friend:

“Today I supported again the refugees on the fairground with the distribution of tea and food and what some people are thinking, about what is allegedly happening up their, is not true!

The most of them are so friendly, they try to learn our language and I wish I could learn some of these foreign words as fast as these kids! I am trying my best and try to speak a few words Arabic with them and then they are even friendlier to me. They help me with the words I do not know and ask me how I am, but they are even more surprised when I try to speak Arabic with them, because they simply cannot believe it.

If you see only the smile on their faces and the thankfulness for our help, you already know that it is worth to help!

Every day that I am there, I make new friendships and try to memorise unfamiliar names and faces and the best is when I can simply play table tennis with them! Try to announce the score in three languages, German, English and Arabic and concentrate on the game at the same time…

But my best experience so far was today: some of my friends had bought their own food (usually they get their food in the canteen) and invited me to eat with them. They, who had lost nearly everything, shared their lunch with me, simply unbelievable and truly rewarding!”

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8) Being there for me

“Humanity I experienced ten years ago, because of a cancer disease on my own. A colleague from work, to who I did not have an especially friendly relationship (but a normal relationship among colleagues), accompanied me during my chemotherapy, for that I had to go stationary to the hospital, completely altruistic for a whole week. She sacrificed her holidays and took affectionately care of me. In this time, she took 120 kilometres away from her home an accommodation, to be close to me. Her presence, care and encouraging words gave me in this hard time a lot of strength and support. For me, that was next to the support of my family and friends an intense experience, to see selfless humanity and being able to accept it. This experience has enriched my thinking and acting and inspired me. 🙏”

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7) Pilgrim in Japanese

The most frequently you meet humanity, at least that how it often seems to me, when you are travelling. As soon as you try, to get to know another country and the life there, people open up and show themselves from their most friendly side. Therefore, you can tell many stories of humanity from travels. These are some experiences of a friend, who has been travelling a lot, for example nearly without money to China and back, about where he found humanity:

“On my first journey to Japan, when I pilgrimed to the 88 Holy temples on the island Shikoku, I met already on the second day on the way a group of Japanese pilgrims. Those three ladies of “advanced age”, invited me to drive to the next four temples in their car. If I didn’t had open blisters on my feet, I would have probably declined. And if that wouldn’t have been enough, they got me a pilgrim bag and an accommodation for the night in a wonderful traditionell hotel, that I would not have found without their help.

And all of that, although I spoke only few words of Japanese.

On another typical pilgrims day, I woke up in the morning after a long sleep in my little room in an old temple hotel. I was not really hungry, so I decided to skip the breakfast and make myself on my way. But I did not calculate with the kindness of my hostess, who would not let anyone leave with an empty stomach.

So it knocked on my door (more like a scratching, because it was a paper door) and the wife of the monk entered. After a short moment Taboo (guess the word) I could explain her, that I was not really hungry and that I would leave soon again. She left and came back shortly after with a care package with egg, tofu and rice. Everything was packed thoughtful in a throwaway-bento-bowl.

Not even ten seconds later the next one entered. A tall Japanese in white pilgrims clothing and with a huge package dried pasta in his arm. At least ten litres. I started to doubt, whether I was still dreaming or whether I was sainted overnight, when someone else entered. A tiny woman,  in the beginning of her 30s, from Thailand. She spoke fluent English, explained me the situation and gave me additionally 9000 Yen, which is approximately 70 Euro.

There were many of these stories, that happened in Japan. From old women, that gave me clementines, car drivers that stop on a hot summer day to give me something to drink, crazy TV reporters and hoteliers, that let someone stay for free. Japan is for sure one of the most friendly countries that I had the luck to walk through.“

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6) No roof over your head: Indigo, cake and a homeless man

When things come to the issue of homeless people and begging, I have to admit that I have a divided opinion. Many gestures have reminded me that they are also humans and that some people do pay attention to them:

I am talking about small things, for example when a friend, who was waiting for us in the city, was having a conversation in front of the shop with the woman who was begging there. Another friend is always giving some of the fruits she is rescuing from the market to homeless people on her way home. And a while ago, when I was sitting at the train station and waited, the woman next to me was asked for some money- and she gave the asking one not only coins, but also her scarf.

From another friend I received this heart-warming story:

It is past midnight and we’re standing in some backroom of the Labour Club. A faint tune of music is still lingering in the air and the taste of poetry has not yet left our lips. It is well past midnight and we float suspended in time. It is easy to live on nights like that. Earlier that day there had been a different event here – one without music and poetry, probably without beer but with cake. And now we stand in front of the leftovers of that sweet feast already half on our way.

‘Take some cake with you’, somebody says. But we are unsure.

‘I don’t know. I don’t feel like cake right now’, one of us says.

‘Well, if you don’t take it, it’ll be thrown away.’

‘In that case, I guess we should take some’, I yield. ‘If we don’t eat it, the boys will be more than happy to get some cake.’

We are handed a box and load it to the edge. Then we’re out the door and in the not-quite-yet-warm night. There are hardly any cars on the streets and barely more people. Only ever so often the door of a pub opens releasing a handful of tipsy people who are moving in bubbles of space and time parallel to ours as we had to the market place and down the shopping street. The town is beautiful at night – the grey of the asphalt now reflects a spectrum of blues and purples and black, the sky reveals its endless depth flecked with the occasional star, the warm glow of the street lamps makes the shadows dance, makes them come alive and move oscillating between flamenco and a slow waltz.

There is more life down by the street where all the clubs are. There is a constant stream of flocks of people between the clubs and bars and the street. Like fragmented planets they spin through the night on their own small orbits almost oblivious of the world around them. And we move in our own little orbit past the party people to where the street splits in two. We’re almost on the street leading to the cab rank when Indigo stops and points down the other road.

‘Wait’, she exclaims. ‘There is a homeless person. I want to give him cake.’

And so, we turn on our heels and march down the other street and come to a halt next to the man sitting on the ground, leaning against the wall of the building, overlooked by the happy and the drunk all around him.

‘Hi, would you like some cake?’, Indigo asks, and the man looks up. He is younger than I expected, and I can see on his tired face that it takes him a while to register that Indigo was talking to him.

‘It was left over, and they would have thrown it away, so we took a whole box full of cake. Feel free to take as much as you like.’ His face lights up and I wonder, when was the last time he’d had cake? He takes a look into the box and carefully selects the slices of cake he likes best. He laughs and holds them up to his face and suddenly at least some of the tiredness is gone replaced by the pure joy of a child, the inner child most have lost on the way, and I see all the beauty of the world mirrored in his eyes.

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5) Water is a gift

It gets always said, water is life. And that it is one of the most important resources, that we have  and need as humans on earth. I personally have to think thankful to all the people, that gave me water and helped me through that.

Once in summer I underestimated the heat while running and I got really thirsty. I never miscalculated in that way and I still had a few kilometres to get back home. So I asked two cyclists, who came in the opposite direction, for water and they let me drink from their water bottles.

While hiking in Ireland, our water bottles were empty one day and we did not found anything on the way to fill them up. Then we also helped us out by asking and ringed the bell at a house in the next village. The friendly woman there did not only let us refill our bottles, but also invited us immediately for tea.

Also on our most recent cycling trip we asked people on the way, if we can refill our water bottles at their places. And even though it is often said, that Germans were withdrawn and unfriendly to strangers, my experience cannot confirm that. Since we did the first step towards them, everyone on our way helped us and also had a conversation with us about our journey. I often had the impression, that they liked to help us and did not only see it as obligation. Sharing with joy- isn’t that also a form of humanity- especially when it is about something as important as water?

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4) My friend Mustafa

In the summer 2013, I found myself and a group of fellow students on a plane towards Amman, Jordan. We were going to spend two weeks planning and attending a summer camp for young Red Cross/Red Crescent volunteers from Denmark, Jordan and Palestine with the overall goal of debating gender issues in our countries. Little did I know that my main lesson this summer would have much less to do with gender than humanity in general. 

I had never been to the Middle East before, and before landing in Jordan my naïve adventurous 20-year-old brain imagined delicately drawn deserts like in Walt Disney’s Aladdinwhile the slightly more rational soon-to-be-journalist side of me remembered news reports from the Arab Spring and revolutions in the neighbor countries. Real world-Jordan was peaceful and laid back but obviously not like the fairytale. Nevertheless, I had an experience worth a movie on that summer camp.

At the camp, I met a boy called Mustafa, and we became friends almost from day one. Almost. Mustafa was from Palestine and Muslim. I was from staunchly secular Denmark, where many people consider religion a bit old-fashioned and more like a target for jokes – especially the beliefs we do not understand. Mustafa had got to know this when a Danish illustrator’s satirical drawings of the Muslim Prophet Muhammad had caused a huge outrage all over the Middle East followed by a boycott of Denmark and Danish products.

Mustafa was a nice guy. He helped carrying out activities at the camp, he was a skilled artist, and his English was so good that he was one of our best translators for the participants who only spoke Arabic. What I remember most about my first impression of him is that he seemed rather shy. But in his own quiet way, he revealed his many talents and willingness to share them to make the camp a great experience for everyone. 

So, on the last night of the camp he really blew my mind.

We had a cultural party with Danish fashion show, Arabic dancing and loads of sweets from both sides of the world. We were sad about the upcoming goodbye the next day but also full of joy and candy from the party. By the end of the evening I was sitting outside and breathing in the Jordanian night with a couple of friends, including Mustafa. We were probably already reminiscing about the camp experiences and what we learned about each other’s countries, but in the middle of the conversation Mustafa looked shyly at me and with a “don’t be sad” he told me how much he had despised Denmark only one week ago. 

What he knew about my country was related to the Muhammad caricatures, and like many others he had been outraged. He had even been burning our flag on the streets of East Jerusalem. The reason he initially went on this summer camp was that he thought he was going to a camp for Arabic Red Crescent volunteers, and he had gotten a chock when one of my classmates had presented himself on the first day with a “nice to meet you. I am Martin from Denmark!”

I could not believe my own ears. Mustafa – the calm, nice friend I could never imagine doing harm to even a stray dog – was sitting there with me, telling me how he would once have hated me just because of the fact that I was from Denmark. “But now I see things differently,” Mustafa assured me. “I am really happy that I went to this camp because now I have seen that you Danes are awesome people.” I was giddy with joy. Not because he called my people “awesome” but because he – just like that, with these few words – had made the camp so much more meaningful than it already was. “And when I come home I will tell all my friends that I know some nice Danes,” continued Mustafa, and my cheeks started to hurt from all my smiling. “Then they will also know that you are good people, too.” 

Looking back, I always wondered what exactly we did that changed his mind. The truth is, we did not do anything specifically. We were all just a bunch of young people having fun, learning from each other and giggling over language mistakes. Cultural differences and religion did not take up much space in our minds. We Danes had been briefed from home about potential differences to be aware of – girls should cover their knees and shoulder, guys and girls should not hug or touch each other – and at the camp, the young Jordanians and Palestinians were just laughing at our attempts to be conscious. In the end, our ways of being young and having fun were not that different. 

I am not writing this story to paint a rosy picture of the world. I do not mean to deny the existence of religious extremism or insinuate that Westerners or Arabs, who never travelled or met foreigners, are automatically narrow-minded or racists. 

I am writing this down because it is a good story that always put a smile on my face. And we do indeed need smiles in times like these, when we close our eyes and borders to what we do not understand. Last but not least, I am writing the story because I cannot help but wonder whether Mustafa or good people like him are currently stuck in a refugee camp in Greece or being bombed in their own home. 

It is stories like this I want to remember and pass on for the rest of my life. Both in the middle of a humanitarian crisis but also in the daily life because a story like this hopefully can generate the smiles that will make us tear down the walls around our countries and our minds. 

(This story written down by Ida Scharla Løjmand)

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3) Gratitude Lost and Found

It happens now and then, that you lose something important, the keys, wallet or similar. And you  usually feel gratitude and relieve, if someone finds the lost things and brings them back. Not always although, as a friend experienced when he found someone’s passport and informed this person about it. The owner picked the passport up, with an attitude as if he was taking it for granted and the gesture was not worth any special thankfulness. My friend also did not see it as a special act, but because of this behaviour someone else stood put in a positive way for him. Not too long ago, he found the credit card of someone else and could identify and contact the owner. And this person was overjoyed and thanked him a lot, with chocolate and friendly words, that showed how much he appreciated this little act. And I believe, this is also a part of humanity: gratitude.

For many, the bringing back of lost things is already self-evident. And when my friend told me this story, it made me think that maybe especially nice people can think of less occasions that are outstanding enough to get told here, because they see these humane gestures as natural.

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2) Bus tickets for two

“That was super impressive: right now there is a woman in the bus and she thought, because the child is only three years it would not need a ticket. But then the bus driver came and said she needs to buy a ticket for 7 Euro for the child. The woman did not speak German properly and she called someone on the phone und you could hear from the conversation that she could not pay the ticket. And then there was a man, two rows behind her, who gave the driver 10 Euros and said he will pay for the child and he did not even want to have the change back from the woman 🙊🙈.”

Taking the bus is such an everyday experience, that I can imagine this situation very well. And this narration put a little smile on my face. It made me ask myself: does every single Euro always matter to me, when it is needed somewhere else?