Tom Belton was waiting for us pacing up and down at Toronto Pearson Airport, when we arrived late from an Ottawa flight to catch our next flight to Chennai, India. We rushed out of our flight and met Tom who jostled us to the next leg of our travel. With a storm in Ottawa, our taxi did not come to take us to the airport, and had to call our old friend Lynn Haggerty to take us out to the Ottawa Airport with our luggage. When we boarded, an announcement came on the speaker system that a crew will come soon but in the meantime, we’ll be de-iced. When that was finished, a computer problem was identified that had to be fixed. And then Air Canada forced a crew that just came from Vancouver and was at the Chateau Laurier to come back to the airport and take care of our flight. By the time the computer problem was fixed and the crew arrived, another de-icing had to take place and we were getting concerned that we may miss our next international flight in Toronto altho we had four hours between the flight. But we did arrive just in time, Tom waiting for us to shepherd us into the large Jet Airplane. Our adventure started six months before.
In the Fall of 2009, we were listening to a travel show by Rick Whiteford, one of many that he did to entice his clients to take his travel packages, in his office on Richmond Road, in Ottawa. Rick provided details of the places that he planned to visit in South-East Asia, then talked about the hotels he reserved, the food in the countries on the tour, and described that the typical day ended up with “cocktail hour”. Rick’s office was full of maybe twenty people sitting on closely packed chairs and coffee was also available with cookies. I enjoyed his shows not only for the information that he provided but also thinking ahead to a trip that I and Kathy might take soon.
When the show was over, we mingled with the people curious about their travel experiences. Next to me was a tall, athletic-looking man with grey hair and an affable discursive manner. We got engaged in a discussion about South-East Asia. He seemed knowledgeable about that part of the world and it turned out that he visited India many times. He asked us if we have ever been there. We have never traveled there. He asked us where we traveled and what was the type of travel that we did; did we use hotels, group tours, and so on. We told him we were more like backpackers and usually talked with Rick for advice and altho Rick arranged the flights and some hotels, we traveled by ourselves to get closer to the locals and engage with them. Our new friend was interested in us and he said that he was Tom Belton and did many trips with a charity called Sleeping Children Around the World (SCAW). So we started talking about SCAW and his experiences. The upshot of our friendly encounter was that he asked us if we would like to go to Chennai with him and his team in six months!
I never heard of Chennai until he explained that it was called Madras before; I have heard of Madras but did not know where it was except that it was in India. On the spur of the moment, we said that yes, we would be interested in going to Chennai! The trip sounded exotic to us and would take us to see a part of the world that we have not seen. That made Tom happy and said that we’ll have to follow up with a few items to become members of his team going to Chennai in six months.
The first item of business for him was to interview us and presuming that he judges us to have what it takes to join his team, he has his recommendation approved by the SCAW management team. So we thought that will be an interesting experience and subsequently, we had a long meeting with Tom during which he took copious notes on our previous travels, our way of traveling and our views towards India, the food eaten there, and if we have any problems with Indian folks. We must have come thru the interview with flying colors because Tom let us know in a few weeks that we were accepted by the Toronto SCAW management to be part of his team going to Chennai.
Tom related that the previous year when he went to India, he had some team members who were not in good enough physical shape to carry their suitcases and he wanted to be sure that in future trips he had able-bodied people and that we seemed to fit that mold. As well, Tom described SCAW is Toronto centric and most of the time the management team assembles a team from Toronto without his input and that he wanted to have people he knew, some from Ottawa, to be on the team.
But that was not the end of our introduction to the SCAW experience; we received requests from the Toronto office to have us complete a medical form by our family doctor and that we obtain a police record. We submitted both pieces of information to the Toronto office.
When we thought we completed all the info required, we tried to figure out the amount of money that we would require – SCAW is a hundred percent charity and we pay our trip as well the hotels and other expenditures and we wanted to know how much money we should take with us. Tom said that there is the hotel costs and the cost of the minibus that we would rent to travel around in India. After much discussion, we arrived at a rough daily cost for the trip. I understood his reticence when on the trip we discovered that some of the hotel costs were picked up by our local team members who were the elite of the Chennai community.
The next step was to get visas to India and since there is an Indian high commission in Ottawa, we got our visas ourselves, otherwise, Tom offered to do it for us as he has done for the other team members from the Toronto area.
After these initial steps, discussions, and activities, we received copies of correspondence between Tom and Chennai Rotary Club members who were going to assist us in our charity work in Chennai and surrounding areas. We received the name of the Rotary Club members, the itinerary, and details of our work in India. And that is how a snap and unexpected decision to visit Chennai as part of a team doing charity work in India started out.
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