More Confessions of a Hostie (18 page)

That story had a real impact on me. It changed how I thought about the world and those less fortunate than me.

Today is the day of our trip. Dean sits in Seat 4J. Coincidentally, this is the same seat number Dean had sat on the first time we met. I am actually working down the back of the aircraft, so I won't be serving him. That suits me fine, although Dean is the definitive nice passenger. He really does have good manners – and he shows it not just with me, but with everyone. A simple ‘please' or ‘thank you' goes a long way truly.

On a recent flight, while I had been doing the meal service, a man, seated at the back of the aircraft, asked that he be given a vegetarian meal; he had not ordered a special vegetarian meal, but claimed to be vegetarian. I bent over backwards to search the aircraft and eventually made arrangements to give him a beautifully presented vegetarian meal from the front of the plane. I don't expect applause, but a simple ‘thank you' would have been nice. He didn't even make eye contact. On that flight we had a second service before landing. I did not go out of my way to help him again.

He asked rudely, ‘Where's my vegetarian meal?'

I replied, ‘The first meal was a crew meal, which a crew member kindly went without so you could have a meal of your choice. Unfortunately, this time, none of the crew members were prepared to go without a meal.'

I once read that the real test of good manners is to be able to put up with bad manners pleasantly. I was pleasant – overly so. I gave him a tray that included a hot meat dish. I placed the tray on his tray table, said, ‘I hope you can eat some of this meal, so bon appetit' and then moved to the next passenger.

Funnily enough, this so-called vegetarian ate all the meat.

If there is one thing I have been taught over the years it is that we all make mistakes, but we need to learn from those mistakes. This man fooled me once, but he didn't fool me again.

Some people are not just disrespectful to the crew but to the other passengers as well. When handing out meals we usually start with a cart from the front of a zone and work our way back. Anyone can understand how this system operates, yet a staggering number of people point out that they have not been given a meal yet while you pass then, pushing the cart along the aisle. You feel like stopping and explaining the impossibility of having four crew members and two carts serve over two hundred people simultaneously, but all I do is smile and politely say, ‘We will be coming to you shortly.'

We land in CGK (Jakarta). It is early in the evening, Indonesian time, when we land. I am tired and must not lose sight of the charitable reasons why I am doing this trip. Even so, when we arrive at the hotel, Dean and I decide to freshen up and go to a bar within the hotel. I've stayed in a number of hotels over the years in Indonesia and all of them have been splendid. The current hotel is two stars better than splendid.

One of the things I have noticed in many Asian countries is because labour costs are generally low, there are more staff. That excess of staff is noticeable in this hotel as well. The band playing at the hotel nightclub has fourteen musicians on stage – and they are as magnificent as the surroundings. Dean and I dance ourselves silly.

We don't stay up dancing for too long and wake up early the next morning. It seems almost ridiculous that we will go from the six-star decadence of our hotel to doing charity work for kids who have next to nothing within the span of a few hours.

The next morning, after a quick (six-star) breakfast, we meet the rest of the crew to begin our day of charity work.

I have been to this orphanage once before, and on that occasion we did physically challenging jobs, including construction work. This time, the building is complete and well-maintained. Therefore, today's exercise has to do more with doing administration-related work, small odd-jobs and spending time with the children. The kids are amazingly well-mannered and a delight to be around. They know how lucky they are to receive the charitable support we give, and we know how lucky we are to be able to help. For someone that doesn't want children himself, Dean is fantastic with the kids. We spend some of the day observing the children within their classroom. Although the lessons are in Indonesian, a language none of us understand, we still participate in a few exercises. These kids have had such hard lives, but their enthusiasm and cheerfulness is infectious.

One of the jobs Dean and I do together is to mount onto one of the walls a new television bought with the funds from donations. I am sure many of the children have not seen a TV before, so it is a rewarding experience to watch their excited and curious faces peering into the screen. The purpose of the television is not for entertainment, but for education, yet even watching an advertisement becomes entertainment for them.

By the end of the day I think the kids have touched our lives in a way that is hard to describe. The kind of situations that forced these children to end up in this place is too difficult and painful to imagine, yet it is amazing how much love and appreciation they have for life. The experience is truly awe-inspiring.

Often, those that have the least are the ones with the most to give.

Dean and I join the crew for dinner and drinks. Dean hasn't been to a city like Jakarta before. It is neither a classically elegant city nor a typical tourist destination. However, the crew more than make up for this. They are all warm and fantastic people. I could not have taken Dean away on a better trip.

We leave the hotel and go to a traditional Indonesian restaurant. I am not as fond of Indonesian food as I am of most other Asian cuisine, but it is all part of the experience and Dean really enjoys trying out some authentic local cuisine. Overall, it has been an extremely fruitful day and there is nothing nicer than sharing the experiences with great people.

The next day we visit an area in Jakarta where many of the children from the orphanage had been born. I have been to slums in various countries throughout Asia as well as Africa, and it is a humbling experience, especially watching the children who live there. In this area, the children are playing in a rubbish dump. The stench is overpowering, particularly as Jakarta has just experienced monsoonal flooding, as it often does. We take with us bags of clothing collected by many of the crew, including myself, prior to the trip. Those clothes will be cut up or adjusted and given to those in need. The Indonesians are quite ingenious in their tailoring skills and everything will be used and appreciated. The poverty and conditions are so extreme that even the smallest article of clothing will find a home.

The charitable work we do might be negligible in the bigger scheme of things, but when in doubt, I refer to the story of the starfish and realise that I have make a difference, and will continue to do so.

thank goodness not all people are the same same

For our return journey Dean is fortunate enough to sit at the front of the aircraft again, but this time he has missed out on Seat 4J. He's in Seat 2C. There is a saying throughout Asia that goes ‘Same same, but different'. In Dean's case, it is just ‘Same same', not different. When some retailers in Asia don't have what you want, they will often pick up something else that is in no way similar and say, ‘Same same, but different'. Most times when they say this, they are smiling.

It is good to have a sense of humor in the retail business. It is also good to have a sense of humor on an aircraft.

The back of the aircraft is full as it usually is. ‘Same same, but different,' I think to myself.

The passengers are a mix of Western business people, mostly men, and Indonesians. Most of those Indonesians are expatriates visiting their families or are wealthier Indonesians travelling abroad. Also, these people, the more privileged ones, can often can be very demanding and condescending, particularly the women.

Crew members can often be heard muttering ‘Asian Princess' under their breath. I have already identified several such princesses on this flight.

Since this is a night flight, after the meal service, we turn the lights down to allow the passengers the opportunity to sleep. I take the opportunity to walk up to the front of the plane to check on Dean's progress – I would put money on the fact that he is already asleep. As I walk down the aisle I notice an elderly Indonesian woman stand up and leave her seat. She looks very unsteady on her feet, so much so that she is staggering quite noticeably. I quicken my walk for she looks like she is about to fall over.

Just as I approach her, she collapses. I manage to catch her, but as her knees buckle she grabs hold of me and turns into me. It is really hard to hold a person when they are facing you. As I attempt to turn her, so I may hold her from behind, she starts vomiting profusely – all over me.

I muster all the strength I can, turn her quickly and lay her down in the aisle, which is not an easy thing to do in such a confined space. Her eyes are shut, but she is obviously conscious as she continues to vomit – and vomit copiously, she does. I roll her into the recovery position while yelling for passengers to get another crew member. The recovery position is where the body is laid down on its side, thus minimising the chances of choking, which is a real threat in this instance. There is not enough space for me to sit beside the woman, so the only way I can work on her is to put a knee either side of her head and bend over her. As she is continuing to vomit I am kneeling in that vomit. I wish there was a way for me to describe the gross nature of this scene without being overly graphic, but there isn't.

Her eyes have rolled back, and she looks as close to death as one could be. Being covered in vomit is soon becoming the least of my concerns. When another crew member arrives at the scene, I bark instructions to bring more help, an oxygen bottle, rubber gloves and a kit to clean up that vomit.

When the onboard manager arrives I tell him to get Dean – and quickly. In the meantime, the woman starts to come around. She continues to throw-up, but her eyes are beginning to focus. I try to talk to her so I might ascertain what is wrong with her. Between episodes of vomiting, she mumbles something but I am unable to understand her. I know she is Indonesian, and I vaguely remember serving her earlier. She had several glasses of wine and was one of the many Asian Princesses on this flight. I could not remember how good her English was, so the fact that I cannot understand her could be due to her illness as well as her language skills.

Fortunately one of the passengers seated near us is bilingual and offers to assist. I ask her to talk to the woman in Indonesian for me. I am desperate to find out what may have triggered this collapse, so I can help this woman and pass on that information to Dean.

‘My backside has something hard sticking into it,' the translator says.

What the vomiting woman is referring to is the metal support bar under the seat, against which her backside is resting. The aisle is not very wide, so when I had placed her in the recovery position, one leg was bent over the other, the geometrics of the situation means that she had rest herself against this bar.

Rest, not impale herself into the bar.

Here I am sitting with her, vomit dripping down the front of my uniform and my legs immersed in a pool of bile, and
she
is complaining that she is not comfortable.

Dean arrives. I really haven't found out too much about her condition, but another Indonesian-speaking passenger informs me that she heard this woman tell another passenger that she had recently been diagnosed as a diabetic. Her symptoms look consistent with diabetes, and Dean doesn't hesitate to get the necessary permission to use our onboard medical kit and inject the woman with insulin.

It works.

It's all very well and good that a simple injection cured the problem, however over thirty minutes have passed since the woman collapsed, and I can tell you, from my own selfish viewpoint, that thirty minutes is a long time to be kneeling in someone else's vomit.

Dean is again outstanding. He offers to stay with the woman to monitor her recovery, but I insist that we have everything under control and he should return to his seat. I spend at least another hour with the woman, and we place her on oxygen. She steadily improves. The woman manages to doze off, so I take the opportunity to go to the toilets and clean myself up.

I look at myself in the mirror, dripping in someone else's puke and think, ‘God, don't I look sexy – not.'

I have been thrown-up on a number of times. With each time I feel a little less violated, but only a little less. Funnily, I was telling Mary-go-round about the flight to Japan with the smelly passenger and the subsequent vomit-fest, and she told me that in all her years of flying she had never been thrown-up on. I found that astonishing.

Dean's brother, Danny, once told me that he too has had many close calls, but has managed to stay vomit-free so far. However, Danny has not managed to stay so lucky with other body fluids though.

On one of Danny's flights, a male passenger had obviously mixed drugs and alcohol to the extent that he was hallucinating – and rambling loudly.

This man was looking out the aircraft window and yelling, ‘There's a hurricane coming! There's a hurricane coming!' The sky was completely clear and sunny, and Danny had told the man as much. However, the man refused to be convinced and kept screaming out his hallucinations.

It was decided that this man was not a physical threat, so Danny was taken away from the service and the man was placed in one of our crew-rest seats so Danny could monitor and calm him down. All was going well until the man announced that he had to use the bathroom. Danny let the man go to the toilet and waited outside until he was finished. The trouble was the man opened the toilet door – and he wasn't quite finished.

The passenger urinated all over Danny's trousers and shoes. Danny's compassion for this man left him in that exact instance.