In chatting to Seán, a missionary colleague, the other evening I listened to him quite casually talk of his first mission assignment which like my own was to Tanzania, East Africa.

I knew one of the people he spoke of very well – Sr. Adelheid, a matron in a rural hospital and a force of nature if there was ever one. Matron was Dutch, spoke a little broken  English, a smattering of Swahili and had a few phrases of the local tribal language.   Every sentence she spoke had words from at least  three languages.   It worked most of the time and she made herself  understood – well more or less!   The local Tanzanian people spoke of “lugha ya Adelheid ” meaning the language of Matron!

Matatana was an interesting, if unusual,  mission.  All the expatriate missionaries there in the hospital,  nurse training school and Catholic mission were Dutch.  When Seán first arrived at this well-established mission he was one of between 24 & 27 expats and  the only Irishman in a Dutch enclave.  During his five years there,  several young Dutch doctors and their wives came to work in the hospital on rotation and there were some very young Dutch children in the compound all the time.  Everyone was learning Swahili, all were far from home, life was great – if challenging – and the customs were foreign for every one of them.

We talked for ages about our first years in Tanzania, our particular situations, how we coped and what we felt about things.  The conversation drifted, we then found other topics of mutual interest, landed into chatting away about the ongoing count of our general election here in Ireland  which had just taken place two days earlier.  That took time to discuss and again we found ourselves on common ground rejoicing at some recently elected politicians and wondering who would fill the remaining seats and how would the new government be formed.  We were silent for a while.

Then Seán said out of the blue:…”come to think if it I never heard a word of Dutch spoken in my company in the whole of my five years in Matatana.  Everyone, including the smallest children, spoke English, or Swahili if they knew it,  when I was around and even Adelheid spoke her own  form of lugha (language)!   In talking to you I  am only now realising the great kindness and courtesy of these people.   Not the most headline grabbing act of kindness,  not the stuff of populist heroism but definitely one of the most inclusive, generous things they could have done for me.  I am grateful – forever grateful”

Kindness comes in many forms, in many different guises and through a whole variety of people of all ages and cultures.  It is true we will always remember how we were made feel, even more than what was said.  Seán remembers the feelings and the words.  He felt welcome in a language he could always understand.  He was one of the team and comfortably at home in Matatana all those years ago.

Sometimes kindness is very unexpected, unrecognised, and unseen.   It is truly powerful.