The story of an Esperantisto

I did not get to know him better because all my internal mails to him did not get a reply. I presumed most of the Esperantists who are busy will not entertain a beginner to practise the usage of Esperanto. Certainly this is unfair for many Esperantists who are helping many daily.

But, most of them do not able to use English, as a result, I have to look for someone who can use English for further discussion.

I was also curious to find him from the Philippines as we are in the same region and there would be more common items to talk about. However, I did not get to discuss with him.

 

His nick in the lernu is Patrick and I did not know much of him just a short history of him that left me with much impression.

I would just use one paragraph to talk about what he narrated in lernu.net. He walked for four hours from his village to town just to meet an Esperantist from Japan because he could not afford to pay for the bus fare.

Certainly, in my country is lucky that the petrol is subsided by the government as I knew that other ASEAN countries are not.

Walking four hours in the hot sun and after the meeting was another four hours walk to home. His intention was just to meet an Esperantist and practised his Esperanto as he learnt it online and did not know how it would be.

I salute him very much. I would not be doing so, perhaps, I might if I were younger as not wiser.

I did get some invitation to meet in Kuala Lumpur. But I turned down. My plight is not too far from Patrick. Certainly, four hours of walk cannot reach the capital, which is about 180 km from my house. The major problem is the bus fare. To and fro would cost me about RM70 by train. What is the concept of RM70 for others, it might be a few glasses of beer, a few meals of KFC. However, it would be 10 days of breakfast, lunch and supper for me. I am not looking for sympathy, do not get me wrong. I am just saying the situation of some poor Esperantists, am I an Esperantist?

Thus, my advise to the Esperantists would be ,try to know the location of the Esperantists in other country before insisting of meeting up. Sorry folks, I am too old to be naïve now. If you can, make few days trip to the place, if you cannot, just make a phone call. It would be good enough.

As most Esperantists know that Esperantists are scattering in various places and not certainly be in the cities or capital towns. All should be more compassionate and understanding. I turned down a few of them and I knew they were not too happy about it.

Whether you like it or not, I have own ways of life to go and your visit will certainly not going to change it a lot unless you are going to stay for months.

However, I still wish that Esperantists to begin speaking in bilingual at home even though you are from monolingual country to proof that Esperanto is a functional language afterall in future all human being would have to learn Esperanto for the future of the children, ain't they ?