by Margaret Mair

Created on: June 11, 2008

G. K. Chesterton said "The traveler sees what he sees, the tourist sees what he has come to see."

And what the lady saw when she looked out of the bus and into our car was, as she proclaimed loudly to all her friends, some cute little natives. Which surprised us - we children had thought we were an ordinary family traveling in our ordinary car along an ordinary road in the bustling, hot and dusty city we called home. What we had obviously failed to realize was that she, a tourist, thought we were part of the spectacle. Our world, seemingly so different from hers, was unreal as a play. We had been seen, cast in our roles and filed away. And so had she, though she did not know it - she was "just a tourist".

"Just a tourist" - our childhood impressions were that these were visitors from other countries who were loud, brash and blind to the reality of our lives. Experience over the years confirmed those first impressions - we heard talk of foolish things that visitors had done, usually followed by the explanation, offered with a sigh and a shake of the head: "of course, they are just tourists." An explanation which suggested that such people had left their sensible selves at home. An explanation we did not want applied to ourselves when we were the ones visiting another country.

How could we travel and not be tourists? Our parents were happy to teach us. We must, we learned, be mindful and pay attention to the manners and customs of those we visited. We might have come to visit a place, but what mattered were the people there - those who had built its past and populated its present. In each place we visited we were expected to learn what was courteous and practice it, to recognize what was offensive and avoid it. We were taught to walk in new places with our eyes and ears open, and our hearts and minds as well, and to weigh everything seen and heard in the scales of common sense. Where the language fell foreign on our ears, we were expected to learn at least enough words for the most basic of courtesies, the greetings and civilities of daily life.

From these early lessons I came to my understanding of what it meant to be a traveler. I learned that travelers are mindful in their comings and goings. Wherever they go their desire is to see what is there, to meet who lives there, and to be immersed in that place. They may visit cathedrals and temples and forts and playing fields and local markets and homes. They may walk among fields and gardens, travel roads and tracks,

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