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A Round-the-World Journey to Invite a Stranger Home
by Brad NewshamA book you'll want to read and recommend over and over. With poignancy and persuasion, Newsham demonstrates the power individuals have to make the world a better place.
A free trip to America? To many this either sounds like a scam or a dream come true. But to Brad Newsham it was a a promise he made to himself. Someday, when I am rich, I am going to invite someone from my travels to visit me in America. Newsham was only 22 when he scribbled this note in his journal, with "only an immature sense of the staying power of ideas." He had no idea that years later he would make it his mission to fulfill the promise so casually made to his younger self. Or, that he wouldn have to be "rich" to make good on his word.
Newsham's Take Me with You tells a story that changes his own, the life of a stranger he has yet to meet, and the lives of those who read this hopeful, heartwarming account. How often do you encounter such a the story of a traveler whose central purpose is to give a trip to someone else, someone he randomly meets on the road? The world, according to Newsham, is a place in which individual people matter, in which the dream of one may touch the life of another. Take Me with You is the true account of Newsham 100-day journey through the Philippines, India, Egypt, Kenya, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, and South Africa, all the while seeking someone very special to invite back to America.
Take Me with You is a book you'll want to read and recommend over and over. With poignancy and persuasion, Newsham demonstrates the power individuals have to make the world a better place.
Chapter 1.
ONE HUNDRED DAYS
When it is a question of money, everyone is of the same religion.
Voltaire
The cab driver glanced back at me. "You..." he said. "America?"
It was a Wednesday evening in early Novemberthe pleasant, dry season in the Philippinesand a breeze with the feel of warm coconut milk was pouring through my open window. Id studied a map on the plane: the blackness beyond the row of palm trees to our left would be Manila Bay. To our right a congregation of burlap lean-tos overflowed onto the sidewalk, and, between two of them, a woman was cooking something over a smoky fire.
"Yes," I said. "America. San Francisco."
"Ah, Cah-lee-for-nee-ah!" said the driver. "California best."
He slowed to acknowledge a red traffic signal, then, reassured, sailed through it. Above the meter were a license and photo identifying the taxi as Golden Cab Number Two (it was painted black) and the driver as Mr. Alfredo Errabo. At the airport ...
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