Story of a Tableby AsAd JAmAl mAlik And stepAn lAichter

incident report Form

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Story of a Tableby AsAd JAmAl mAlik And stepAn lAichter

Tables were first made by the Egyptians. The Greeks used tables a lot in early times. The table is quite an underrated invention. From eating to innovating and from socializing to changing the world, tables have been aiding humans in getting work done for centuries. Look at the table closest to you right now. Have you ever thought about the sto-ry behind its plain surface and sturdy legs? All tables go through a lot in their life-times and today we’re go-

ing to share a story about one such table.

During project week, along with 5 of our friends, we de-cided to work on the Social Entrepreneurship Incubator that we’ve started in the college. For this purpose, we decided to go to Amsterdam for a week with the intention of meeting entrepreneurs and visiting places which pro-mote social businesses. This ended up being an extreme-ly amazing experience which was not only exceptionally exciting but also very educational and inspiring. It was during this week that we met the table which changed the way we think about this invention.

We were walking in a cold Amsterdam street when we first saw it. “Hey! Look at that table!” Štěpán shouted in overflowing excitement. There it was resting upside down in the side of the street with its legs gracefully pointing

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towards the sky. One of the legs was slightly loose and it was thrown out there with a bunch of other broken things. “Love at first sight” was something we never believed in but something had happened.

As we approached the table the cracks on it told us a story, a story like no other. We pictured the life which this table had had. Images of the people that might have used it and all that it might have been through

popped up in our heads. Old tables like this one are thrown out of houses every day in big cities. They end up being used as firewood by homeless people. The thought of it being burnt and broken alarmed us. As the sun shown above it we felt as if it was trying to tell us something. It was as if it was desperately asking us to save its life.

“Guys hurry up! Let’s go.” Rafi shouted. Can we leave the table behind? What would happen to it? Would it survive? No. We felt a moral need to save it as we pictured it sit-ting in our room safe and sound. We brought it home.

Over the next few days we got very attached to this table. We would look at it every day as it sat there in our hosts’ house. When we would come back tired but inspired after days filled with meeting amazing people, we would look at it. As soon as we would see it, a smile would lighten up

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our faces because we knew it was in good hands and no one was ever going to harm it. We were emotionally at-tached to its dense wood and elegantly faded, vin-tage looking, varnish. We promised it that we would never lose hope and take on all challenges for its sake. We didn’t’ realize that very soon we’d be tested. Many challenges were wait-ing impatiently for us.

It was time for us to head back to Maastricht and we found ourselves standing with the rest of the group in Amsterdam Central Sta-tion. The table was there with us, but its magnificent weight made carrying it a wearing task. The last train to Maastricht was leaving in

5 minutes and there was a huge possibility of the group missing the train because of us. 4 minutes. Time was run-ning out and we realized that either now we can run to-wards the train leaving the table behind or spend another night in Amsterdam. It was impossible to take the table and get to the train on time. 3 minutes. “Guys hurry up! Should I buy tickets for you or not?” Rafi said anxiously. What do we do? We looked at each other and as soon as our gaze met we could see it in each other’s eyes that we wanted to stay. Having no other way to decide we ended up playing rock, paper and scissors on Elvis’ suggestion. “If Stepan wins you guys stay, if Asad wins you guys go.” Rafi announced as we quickly started shaking our hands to start the game. Rock. Rock. “That’s a draw. Again!” Scissors. Paper. Someone had won.

Twenty minutes later, while 5 UWC students were on a train from Amsterdam to Maastricht, we were standing near a construction site in Amsterdam looking for a place to hide the table for the night. As we took the ultimate risk of leaving it unattended, we realized that we should have informed the house parents that we’re staying. Since Stepan’s phone didn’t have any of the houseparents’ number we tried calling Zoe who had also been with us for project week. Her phone was off and we had already

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left our laptops and other valuable stuff locked safely in the station. Since there was no way of contacting the house parents we de-cided to move on with the hope that the group will tell the house parents that we stayed an extra night and would be back soon. The decision was made by des-tiny, through rock, paper and scissor, and we couldn’t do anything to change that.

We decided to use this op-portunity to do something worthwhile so we headed towards “The Eye” building to ad-

mire the architecture. As soon as we came out we started finding a place to sleep. We had sleeping bags with us and we had found some cardboard on the street. After more than an hour of walking we found ourselves in a dark park somewhere hidden behind hedges. After spreading the cardboard on the ground we got into our sleeping bags hoping that the Amsterdam skies wouldn’t pour on us as weather forecasts had predicted. Distressing dreams of the table being harmed haunted us throughout the icy cold and taciturn Amsterdam night as we tried to catch a wink.

We were woken up at 6:30 in the morning as the birds around us started singing and sunlight enlightened the land. It had been a harsh and uncomfortable night but surprisingly we had managed to sleep for more than 5

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hours. Amsterdam was still asleep. The streets which are usually crowded by tourists were as empty as our wallets. We were des-perate for food and man-aged to buy some breakfast at a café at 8. Since most of the city was still closed we kept walking around until we found an astoundingly beautiful canal where boats were parked and a typi-cal Dutch windmill stood proudly on the horizon. The water glittered as the sun came out of the clouds

above us and a beautiful reflection of the blue skies could be seen on the surface. The feeling of peacefulness which we experienced was not like anything we’d experience be-fore as we lay on the ground looking up to the sky. Even though our hands were freezing Štěpán couldn’t resist taking out his sketchbook and drawing the dreamy scene.

After spending sometime in the Amsterdam library we decided that it was time to head back. We started walk-ing towards the place where we had hid the table. With every step our heart beat became faster. Would it still be there? Would it be in the same condition? When we got close to the construction site we stopped and embraced each other as our faces illuminated with joy. We had seen it. It was waiting there for us looking as graceful as ever.

After 4 hours we were standing in, our houseparent,

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Colin’s office explaining all that happened. Although he was amused by the story, he told us that we’ll have to write a written statement about the whole incident since we had effectively gone missing for 12 hours. We were given an “incident form” to fill in and he advised us to be detailed if possible. We felt the form was incapable of conveying the story well so we produced this little book.

The table taught us things about life which a day in school can never teach. We were both from different parts of the world and so was the table, but still, the similarities in its constructions promoted international and intercul-tural understanding like nothing else had done before. We made decisions throughout the night which not only taught us about personal responsibility and integrity, but also about mutual responsibility and respect. When one of us was hungry and the other one didn’t want food we would still compromise for each other. Respect for the en-vironment was an important part of the whole adventure. Not only did we respect the table and wanted to save

it’s wood but we also slept outside in the protection of nature. The birds woke us up and for once our routine was in line with nature. The table to other people would be a piece of junk but be-cause of the personal chal-lenge we associated with it, it means the world to us. If we think about it all these things which we learned from falling in love with the table are UWC values. It re-minds us of all these things every day and motivates us to keep going forward as it sits peacefully in the mid-dle of our room.

This book is dedicated to every

person who has ever sat on a table and thought. We would specially like to thank Colin Kay who we troubled by not coming back that night and Satyadeep Srivastava

who will (hopefully) be kind enough to accept this book instead of the form. We would also like to thank Zoe Cremer, Rafi Hayat, Elvinas Jonaitis, Enrique Rodríguez Fernández and Shahar Sverdlov who, in one way or another, share our

love for this table.