Strangers sleep and eat in my house

I have been welcoming them since 1978

In 1977, my friend Susan invited me to a dinner that she was hosting for two visiting friends: Margaret from Sweden and Margaret’s friend Andy from England.

During the course of dinner conversation, I learned that Margaret and Andy were on quite a long trip around the world. At that point, though I had already traveled to every state in the USA, my only visits to countries outside of ours were short forays into Canada and Mexico. I was not only travel-deprived but intrigued about their journey.

Foremost in my mind during our talking was how it was possible to afford to travel for so long a time and so far a distance. Their response to my question not only surprised me but was instructive in changing my life:

“We stay for free almost everywhere we go.”

Whaaaaaaaaa? How is that even possible? I wanted to know.

That was how I first learned about Servas, an organization that had been founded in the aftermath of World War II [https://servas.org/].

In a nutshell: Servas was created as a peaceful attempt to facilitate enabling people from different countries to learn about each other firsthand and to forge friendships. The goal was for as many people as possible to have friends in as many countries as possible.

The idea behind it was that if you have a friend in Country X, you would be less likely to support your own government’s declaring war against Country X.

The method for initiating friendships was to arrange for free two-night visits during which a host would open his home to foreign travelers. These in-home visits were meant to create friendly relations, one-on-one, between each host and traveler. As a result, each side of the equation would gain a friend — or, at the very least, a friendly acquaintance after having an enjoyable visit— in the other country.

One-night visits were not allowed, as they were considered to be too short to have any meaningful dialogue. Stays longer than two nights were allowed, but it had to be the host who invited the visitor to stay longer; visitors were not allowed to ask for longer stays.

During those pre-Internet days, the process was cumbersome and slow. Yet, it seemed that the very tediousness of the process helped to weed out flaky people, as it was necessary for travelers to write letters to prospective hosts, including a photocopy of their letter of introduction, a document that they obtained after an in-person interview with a designated representative of Servas, and showing that they were approved by the interviewer to make their visits.

Hosts also needed to be interviewed as a means of being able to be included in the printed host booklets, which were updated only once a year. So, yes, that was tedious, and also unimaginable nowadays: getting interviewed, approved, and then waiting for upwards of an entire year to be included in the next printing of the host list!

I became a host as soon as I could!

I no sooner heard about it than I wanted to become a host. Once I was approved, I was included in the 1978 edition of the USA host list. I then was able to welcome travelers. In consulting my guest book, I see that my first visitors, starting in August of 1978, were from Germany, Netherlands, USA, France, Italy, Austria, and Israel. That was just the first year or two!

Most noteworthy were the people I began to meet with whom I not only stayed in touch but was able to make return visits: Will from New York became a friend with whom I was in contact and made many reciprocal visits until he died; Alexander from Germany is a friend to this day, with several visits to each other in the intervening years; Gianni from Milan stayed with me in 1979 and I visited him during my first visit to Italy in 1989.

In 1990, via Servas, I met some people during my second visit to France; I have come to call them my French family. I have been to France ten times since then. We have spent time together nine of those times, missing only one occasion because of illness.

Seriously, that’s just the tip of the Servas iceberg, as I have lost track of the number of people, now friends, whom I have met this way.

Traveling: the other side of the equation

In 1982, after I had hosted visitors for four years, and feeling that I had paid my dues, I became a traveler myself, with my first visit off the North American continent: Japan.

I planned a trip that lasted a bit more than five weeks, and it was heavily dependent on visiting local Servas hosts. That trip was amazing! I can’t imagine traveling in Japan without the assistance of those many welcoming Servas hosts who went all out to cook for me, house me, and drive me around. In short, they welcomed me into their families.

This was particularly instructive; I could now have a better sense of what it was like to be a stranger in other peoples’ homes. This understanding propelled me toward becoming an even better host once I got home.

Home hosting enters the age of the Internet

Servas, founded during the analog age and based on paper, was slow to embrace online meetings. But there were two Internet-based organizations that I joined as soon as I heard about them.

The first was called Hospitality Club [hospitalityclub.org]. Sadly, its website has recently become inoperable. I must say, however, that it was responsible for connecting me with some of the most wonderful people I have ever met.

When I first heard of Hospitality Club, I was serving in the Peace Corps in Mauritania. A huge advantage of the Internet was that I was able to sign up as a host the same day that I heard about it. No waiting for a year to be in a host book. When I joined it, I was the first and only member in Mauritania.

It was in 2004 that I welcomed my first Hospitality Club visitors: Halina and Rafał, from Poland. What wonderful people! We got along so well. Since that time, I have been to Poland four times and have visited them each time.

Hospitality Club has also brought me several other friendships, as has Couch Surfing [couchsurfing.org]. In 2012, I stayed with an American woman living in Muscat, Oman. On the last night of my visit with her, she hosted a gathering of Couch Surfers and people interested in Couch Surfing.

I met two of the brothers of what was to become my Omani family at this gathering. After chatting for a while, I asked one of them to help me make a phone call to a hotel to arrange my stay there for my last night. He dialed the number, chatted for a moment, and then hung up, saying, “They are full tomorrow night. You stay with us.”

I did, indeed, stay with them. I also visited them again the following year. One of the brothers visited me in 2016. All of us continue to be in touch.

“How can you let strangers visit you?” people want to know

Having been at this for 44 years, the most common response that I get from people has been the surprise, and sometimes shock, that I could manage to allow complete strangers into my home.

I understand their point of view, but I have to say that my response to their question is that I am not afraid.

I am not afraid that people will steal from me. I am not afraid that people will harm me in any way. I refuse to live my life in fear.

As a result of these relationships, my world has opened up. My passport is from the USA, but I am a citizen of the world.