The Table Is Always Set - Where Trust Begins

by Wendy Moore, Director of Communications, REI HQ

The first thing I remember wasn’t the food. It was the table. Every inch of it covered with plates, bowls, bread, fruit, tea, salads, sweets – far more than any family could reasonably eat.

I would learn there was a reason for that. In Kazakhstan, hospitality isn’t entertainment. It’s identity.

“The table is always set and ready for a guest,” the Kazakh proverb says. And that is who we are when we arrive in a new country with a vision to help. We are guests. And we have a lot to learn.

The rule of thumb in hospitality there is that the guests are the center of attention. This means the host doesn’t sit at the table and enjoy the meal with everyone. Instead, she seamlessly keeps the conversation flowing, a constant motion of pouring drinks, serving food and ensuring every morsel is eaten.

IT’S NOT ABOUT PERFECTION

The first time we were invited to our local friend’s home, our two-year-old toddler helped make this experience truly memorable – the whole experience painted in colors and perfumed in fragrances we will never forget.

The adults sat around the table in the tiny kitchen, lost in the magic of being served and eating, knowing that as long as we could hear shouting and laughing from the kids, all was well. Until it wasn’t.

Suddenly we smelled it. Perfume wafted into the kitchen and overpowered us. We all jumped to our feet and ran from the kitchen to find the two smallest children – one ours and the other our hosts – faces painted with mascara, little bodies doused in perfume. Mortified. That’s all I felt at that moment.

But our host quickly grabbed his camera and snapped a photo to memorialize the monumental moment. With a sigh of relief and laughter that brought tears we hugged a little bigger because of our newly formed bond.

I learned that hospitality isn’t about perfection. It’s about relationship. It’s the open door that invites us in to share life together, and sometimes a little vulnerability helps us bridge cultures faster than anything else.

LESSONS WORTH LEARNING

And extending hospitality to local friends provides its own lessons too. When inviting them to your home, don’t be surprised when they walk into your kitchen and take over how things are being done. They simply see themselves as your hosts whether in their own home or yours. I learned not to take it too personally, when my Kazakh friend took the teapot from me, made the tea and served it too.

In those moments, I realized something important. Humility is essential to building cross-cultural relationships. It’s a humbling experience to receive instruction in your own home, but it’s worth every awkward moment to forge that trust and build relationships.

One of the biggest surprises of living overseas was realizing how often you are the one being served. We sometimes imagine international work as bringing something valuable to another culture, but if we’re paying attention, we often receive far more than we give.

In my host country, hospitality was a way of life. For them, hosting guests is sacred and never viewed as a nuisance because guests are messengers from God to be treated with special honor.  I knew I wanted to learn to treat people this way too. Even when it’s inconvenient and unexpected, people matter.

While we may initially marvel at these mystifying customs of hospitality, they teach us significant lessons about building enduring partnerships. These generous hosts open our eyes to the significance of receiving from them before we’re able to give the help we came to offer.

WHERE TRUST BEGINS

At REI we often talk about training, partnership and capacity building. Beyond the invitations into classrooms, hospitals, businesses or government offices, trust truly begins when they invite us into their homes. Around tables like these.

Trust is rarely built in conference rooms first. It’s built over shared meals, long conversations and genuine curiosity about another person’s way of seeing the world.

The hospitality that comes so naturally to Kazakhs helped me learn the value in our exchange of mutual respect, that it can never be a one-sided generosity. This is what REI’s vision is all about as we aim to see people in emerging nations filled with hope as their countries are developed and their lives transformed.

Years later, I don’t remember every meal I shared in Kazakhstan, but I remember how those meals changed me. They taught me that meaningful cross-cultural work doesn’t begin with expertise; it begins with humility, accepting an invitation to sit at someone else’s table.

At REI, we believe lasting change is built through relationships. Looking back, I think many of those relationships began exactly where the Kazakh proverb promised they would – with a table already set, waiting for a guest.