Letter to the Editor, Tuesday August 25, 2015

Mercy, merci

I really felt sorry for the French girl backpacker that Anne and I helped the other day in Kerikeri.

We were walking in the vicinity of the Turner Centre, on the way back to our car. We had taken a brisk walk around the town, and also along the Wiroa Stream riverbank that Rotary and others are attempting to make walkable. On the footpath near the Turner Centre, this young woman backpacker came towards us and asked for help. In halting French.

She seemed to have no English at all. Which surprised me. Because the French education system has long made English an almost compulsory language to be learned. Just as French was compulsory for me at school.

Back to the lost young French woman. With my very poor third form French and her attempts at English, we were able to work out between us the name of a backpacker's lodge that she was booked in to. And in search of.

So we invited her to get in to our car. We had a rough idea where the lodge was.

Time to state that we have a dog. Rosie was not with us on that trip. But her bits and pieces were. When I opened the boot and invited the lost French woman to toss her baggage into it, so that we could take her to the lodge, she saw a coil of rope, leather straps, many towels, several stout sticks, a tarpaulin and a large container of water.

I cannot imagine what went through her mind on seeing that. Bravely, she decided to take the offered lift anyway, as she was clearly fatigued. We got a good feeling, because we had helped a visitor. Which is everyone's duty.

We've forgotten what the tarpaulin is for, and have since removed it.

PETER GILL

Kerikeri