Goodwill hunting

Mark Dickinson pulled it off.

After insisting to his students at Southwest Whitfield High School that people around the world are inherently good, Dickinson traveled to Europe on a wave of human kindness.

He was able to spend a month this summer in Turkey on a budget of about $560 in donations from others.

Though he spoke only a few Turkish phrases and had never previously met anyone actually living in the country, he managed to travel more than 2,000 miles and visit 15 cities in just over a month.

When he left Dalton for Europe in June, he had $354.54 in donations and the names and phone numbers of two potential couch-surfing hosts (both strangers) who would put him up for a couple of days. He did not take a cell phone or laptop computer, although he did take a credit card for emergencies.

He said he came away from the experience convinced of three things.

“First, I went there believing that the universe and people are good, and it only strengthened that belief,” he said.

“The second thing is I need to raise my expectations in life; and third, we all need to dream more, and we need to have bigger dreams.”

Dickinson, 45, teaches English as a second language at Southeast. He hatched his idea a little more than a year and a half ago while talking to his students about the basic goodness of humanity.

Through those discussions, he came up with the idea of traveling to another country relying on the kindness of others. He created a blog in August 2009 to spread word about his idea.

He asked blog readers to choose the country he would visit and, if they were so inclined, to make a donation.

For several months, his donations totaled $10. When all was said and done, he had received $553.95 from 15 people. Most came from people he knew or friends of people he knew who heard about his trip. Complete strangers donated $73.60.

“I didn’t put a cent into it,” he said.

Dickinson, a former Chattanooga News-Free Press and WTVC-TV 9 reporter, said he avoided having his students do fundraisers, and he did not go to the media to draw attention to his quest.

“I wanted it to be totally blog-driven,” he said.

Dickinson got his airline ticket donated by a high-school friend who shared her frequent-flyer miles. Meanwhile, a “friend of a friend” gave him a contact in Turkey who agreed to host him for a couple of days near the end of his stay.

Dickinson said no part of the trip was planned ahead of time except for the first day. Once abroad, he used Internet cafes or borrowed computers to access couchsurfing.com, a website that provides users a list of people around the world who will host travelers for a day or two at no charge.

“I knew I would fly into Istanbul (Turkey’s largest city) because that is where planes fly into, and my first couch-surfing host lived there,” he said. “After that I had no agenda. It was a trip of benevolence.”

All but four nights of his trip were spent staying with hosts.

“It wasn’t hard at all finding people who would host me,” he said. “I never went hungry or came close to being hungry.

“After a while, I got to the point where I expected good things to happen. I expected that people would come to my assistance, and I quickly learned that people are just great.”

His hosts introduced him to new foods, new people and new experiences (Turkish baths, anyone?). All along his travels, people helped him find bus stops, cafes, addresses, whatever he needed. They seemed amazed that he intentionally had not brought along a cell phone.

“I felt if I took a cell phone, to a certain degree, I would be autonomous,” he said. “I wanted to have to rely on other people to come to my assistance. I would borrow a phone from the bus driver or a stranger. I told my hosts, people who offered to pick me up at the bus station, ‘No, I will get to your place. Don’t come get me.’ ”

That attitude led to an experience that Dickinson said went from worrisome to awesome. Upon arriving by bus in Kayseri, a province in central Turkey, he showed the clerk a piece of paper with the phone number and address of his host. The clerk called and got no answer.

Over the next several hours, the clerk, who did not speak English, kept calling and got no answer.

“It’s starting to get dark, and I’m thinking I got the wrong number or the day wrong, and I’m making Plan B,” Dickinson said.

As he was about to give up and find a hotel, the clerk came over with his host on the phone. The host told him to go outside and take the shuttle bus. The driver told him to sit up front with him.

After a short ride, he got off the bus and went into a grocery, repeating his routine of showing the piece of paper with the address on it.

“A man came up and did the familiar ‘follow me’ with his hand, and we walked at least a mile winding through streets. We stopped in a bakery, and the owner got on the phone and turns out we were right around the corner from my host.

“I thanked the guy (who had walked with him), and he acted like I was doing him a favor.”

Dickinson said he believes a lesson he learned from one of his hosts early in the trip played a part in his positive experience.

“I don’t want to sound too New Agey, but she was a believer in that if you are positive and you give off positive vibes, you will attract other people with positive attitudes.

“She also said make sure you are always smiling.”