Begging before the overnight bus to Pucon

My worst night’s sleep was on an overnight train from Delhi to Varanasi three years ago.  I rested my head in a coffin-shaped cot at the top of a three-person bunkbed in a semi-private room with eight people in total (three opposite our trio and another two perpendicular to us), plus train passenger traffic passing through the room regularly at all hours.  There was a man selling samosas on the hour through the night, calling out “samosa, samosa” about 20 times during his pass through our train car.

The messy details of that experience still bring a smile to my face even though it was a hard night.  And they remain my only points of context for overnight transit in general.

So, an overnight bus from Santiago to Pucon was ahead of me and I was barely ready for the feat.  I had a phone with about 20% power and I forgot to pack my earplugs in my backpack even though I had 10 pairs in my roller bag and I was too lazy to dig into the behemoth luggage piece to re-organize.  I also realized I had swapped out my better sunglasses, ones that I would need on snow fields at 10,000 feet, and I only had my aviators with me for the morning.  All these deficits realized at once and there wasn’t a decent place to get a salad in the bus station before hitting the road for nine hours.  Damn.

The woman was wearing a muted red top with jeans and sneakers, 3/4-length sleeves and decently kept hair.  She had clear blue eyes and an intentional, directive voice.  I would bet she was in her mid-20s and she appeared to be alone.  She asked if I had any change and I indicated I did not — even as my iPhone earbuds were in my ears and I was grasping at a flicker of free WiFi to text my boyfriend goodnight before going offline for awhile.  My puffy Patagonia jacket and three pieces of luggage gave me away.

Of course, I had change.

I was heartened and ashamed by her courage to beg.  I recognized that I probably would never fully recognize the bravery and self possession required to do such a thing repeatedly at a bus station.  And then I was reminded of all the other places I’ve been, all the other people I’ve passed by quickly who were in need with so much less than I have.  Too many to count.  I started to get in my head on whether to give money or not when encountering those less privileged, and that’s an internal debate that only leads farther afield into systemic oppression and inequity throughout the world.  And as much as we need to solve that together and immediately, I knew I didn’t have the head space to tackle that internal debate at that moment.  But this woman stayed with me.

At first glance, it may not seem obvious but transit stations offer some of the most meaningful moments to reflect on income inequality.  Trains stations, bus stations, subway stops.  Transit epicenters are where lives pass each other momentarily and provide escape hatches from awkward situations when levels of affluence rub up against each other.  All I needed was this woman’s request for money in the middle of a bus station to remember the importance of perspective and gratitude for what my privileged life offers.  Having won the “birth lottery” like many others from middle/upper middle class families in the U.S., I have built a career working in service to low income communities and traveling the world, my greatest teacher of all.  But it’s really been in the last 3-4 years that I have reconciled the difference between the “white savior complex” that I unintentionally espoused as a fresh graduate student with a few degrees and no work experience, and a mid-career, humble change agent focused on facilitating equity and closing the opportunity gap.

All this was happening in a bus station, amazingly, and in a few moments.  Before I knew it, it was time to board.

The overnight bus was seamless and fairly comfortable.  I had forgotten that I had booked the front seat of the upper level, which offered awesome visibility and first sight into the Lake District when we woke the next morning.  It felt like my vehicle since the two seats in the same row were empty.  Rare to find solitude on a bus.  But she was still on my mind scattered throughout the ride.

First peek of the Lake District in the early morning, Santiago to Pucon (credit: Lindsay Hower’s iPhone through bus windshield, 2017).