Feeling Welcome
Six hours. Three hundred and sixty minutes on rickety boats and jam-packed ferry terminals. On the “final” boat—though based on how the day was going, I doubted it would be the last—I was tired. Sporadic sleep as the waves oscillated around the boat and my only meal a measly Seven-Eleven candy bar made me, unsurprisingly, done. I just wanted to land at Telunas, get into my room, and start my English class retreat. I hadn’t even pictured what reaching the dock would look like; my mind jumped to me on my top bunk—sleeping.
But when we approached the island, signaled by another wave jostling me out of my slumber, new sounds emerged. Sounds different from the cacophony of the waves sloshing against the boat’s hull. Sounds that were almost…pleasant? Attempting to locate the source of this unexpected ringing, I craned my neck to look outside the window, much to the displeasure of the crew. Flabby DOOMBS and rattly BLATS continued circulating the boat—I briefly looked around to see if any of my classmates had smuggled an inconspicuous drum on board. Soon, the island’s silhouette emerged from the blue expanse. I was hungry, tired, and sleepy—about two minutes away from my neck dragging me out the window. But I then noticed a smoggy shadow at the end of the dock.
It was the Telunas staff. Stood with drums of various sizes, their translucent, gray hands were hitting one drum and reloading for another beat. I wondered if perhaps another boat of students was approaching the Island, warranting such a gesture—a quick sweep of the perimeter revealed that we were the only boat in the entire ocean. The Telunas Resort staff were drumming a welcome song for us. Us. And only us.
I wanted nothing, just a bed to sleep on. But that first sight—that the dock wasn’t empty—made me feel welcome, feel like someone, even if I didn’t know them, cared.
The Telunas staff’s welcome reminded me of my journeys to India. I go there every summer, and much like our journey to Telunas, it is long: a six hour flight followed by an equally long car ride on the most bumpy roads known to man. When we reach my grandparents’ home, I’ve usually thrown up ten times, give or take, and probably cried even more from the endless delays—traffic, or a cow confidently blocking the road. Even so, I am delighted to see my grandparents come into view, standing on the road, waiting to welcome us.
My grandmother’s weak tendons mean she can’t stand for more than an hour a day. She spent that hour on me. In her own way, she has reciprocated my struggle of reaching there. She made me feel welcome. She delighted me.
My frustrations with the forty-five minute delay from my beauty sleep disappeared—the only forty-five minutes I imagined were the forty-five minutes where the staff stood right where they were, waiting for our boat to emerge from the forever expanding horizon. Their hands hovering over the drum, waiting to begin their routine the moment our boat came into view. The welcome sounds were unexpected, incredibly harmonious—especially compared to the harshness of the waters that I’d become accustomed to—and, perhaps selfishly, gratifying: someone else had to endure the same delays and hardship that we had to.
At the end of the day, those few sounds made a journey that I was praying to forget a journey that I can’t wait to be welcomed to again.