Life and Spirituality

Sometimes one builds a large home when not so old to meet various possible needs of a family.   As one ages, parents depart and children grow up to pursue their own lives visiting only in holidays. One is then left with a large home with a lot of vacant space, most of the time, in old age. Some old persons lock away parts of their homes most of the year to reduce cleaning and maintenance chores. I too have been doing that for the past several years. However, others have found an innovative use for their homes. They let out a room or two to visitors, students or tourists. It creates a homely facility for a tourist who might wish to skip the hustle and bustle of a city hotel and save money; for a student from a foreign land it is a great facility. I lived in one such all through my student years at UBC in Canada at highly affordable rates. It was the home of a dear old lady by the name of Mrs. Cuthbert. She not only gave me a furnished place to live in but also provide...

  F rom 1974 to 1978, I spent four years in Vancouver pursuing doctoral studies at the University of British Columbia. During this period, I stayed in a rented room near the university in the home of a Canadian Lady by the name of Olive Cuthbert. She was a retired nurse who had spent part of her younger days in Malaysia. She said the Malaysians had looked after her well and she wished to help students from developing countries to return the favor. She had since rented out two furnished rooms on the first floor of her Vancouver home to such students on very favorable terms. I stayed with her all through my four or so years of study while the occupant of the other room changed over the years. There was one from Fiji, then Kenya and finally from Nigeria. Since we shared the kitchen and much else in the home we all became good friends during our stay. The most interesting of my friendship in this home was with the Kenyan student. His name was Mwaghazi Mwachofi Mwashimb...