There are times when we urban folk should really get out of town and go and experience more rural environments.

Not because that’s the real Malaysia, because urban living with all its problems and its joys is also real, but because sometimes we need to go see how other people live and discover whether they are the same or different from us.

Last week I spent several days in a small rural community with my colleagues on a teambuilding retreat.

In the course of this, we had to pedal down a river on a raft we built ourselves. Unfortunately, it had rained heavily the previous night so the river was far deeper and faster than our trainers anticipated.

Most of us were inexperienced in river rafting so all of us found the going hard, having to endure getting wet both from the rain and from being tossed into the river, the many bugs and leeches, and getting scratched from the bamboo groves we kept drifting into.

My team also had to tramp through a rubber estate after we landed our raft far beyond where we were supposed to stop.

Finally we emerged, six bedraggled creatures, at a small village where we stopped to ask for help to get back to our hotel. I can’t imagine anyone in the city being as calm when confronted with such weird looking strangers, holding life vests and raft pedals which could easily have been weapons, as the woman whose house we walked into.

She was about to drive her daughter to school to sit for year-end exams but she quickly realised what help we needed and graciously consented to take two of us in her little Kancil to get help. On the way, we found some of our other teammates so my colleague got out of the car while I continued with the woman to her daughter’s school.

So there I was in the back of a total stranger’s car, wet, dirty and tired. At one point I reached into my sleeve and pulled out a leech! I am proud that I managed not to get hysterical because I didn’t want to alarm the kind woman and cause her to have an accident.

After sending her daughter, she dropped me off where my colleague was waiting and actually got out of her car to shake hands and say goodbye. I never got her name, nor did she get mine, but if you’re reading this, kind lady in Sungkai, thanks so much!

While we were waiting at the petrol station to be picked up by our team mates, my colleague and I observed something else.

A young woman drew up in a little Kancil with her two toddler sons in the front passenger seat. Both kids were not secured by the seatbelt and what was more, she did not switch off the engine while the attendant was filling up her car with petrol. It crossed the mind of my colleague that after having survived the river and the jungle, we could now get blown up at this petrol station.

Such lack of concern for safety is not unique to small towns and rural areas. But as we stood there watching the potential tragedy, we were at a loss as to what to do. There were signs all over the station about switching off car engines while filling up. Yet neither the mother nor the female attendant heeded them. Should we have said something, or would we have been told off for not minding our own business?

Fortunately, nothing bad happened. But it does highlight the need to educate our people better about safety, especially when it concerns the lives of their loved ones. How many times can we explain away tragedies as simply fate? Surely, courting danger unnecessarily is not something we should do. If we can get upset about the silly things people do on Fear Factor, then surely we should get even more upset about the everyday dangerous things that a lot more people do.

It seemed ironic to me that one person was so hospitable that she put aside the possibility of danger from strangers while another simply didn’t seem to think about putting herself and her own children in danger.

We need to find a way to advise people about safety without being afraid of being told off because somehow we have made the other person lose face. We need to accept advice more openly, rather than seeing it as an indictment of our own ignorance or failing. I hope I never have to read about some terrible accident at a petrol station and wonder if it’s the same mother and children I saw.

It is so easy to stay within our comfort zones and imagine that everyone’s lives, and their attitudes towards people, are the same everywhere.

Going outside our usual environment can teach you about good things we have forgotten about, as well as new things we might not have thought of. That hospitable lady renewed my faith in us Malaysians.

The Star Online, October 20, 2004