They were talking about walking the dog down their street, smiling at other people, and receiving back nothing but blank stares.

You know, I don’t think people are rude. As a taxidriver, I meet a LOT of people (one of the reasons someone who doesn’t know me well suggesting that I should “get out more” totally made my day), and most are friendly and polite.

So long as I am. I greet people with a smile and a “Good Morning”, “Good Evening”, “Good Heavens” as appropriate, make eye contact and take note of their needs. Someone elderly with a walking stick, for example, and I jump out of my seat to help them in, make sure they have enough legroom, close the door, etc. Younger folk, more spry of body if not mind, get Michael Jackson on the CD and they sing along.

I think it’s a matter of everyday life being superficial. Larry McMurtry noted in his book Roads : Driving America’s Great Highways that you can drive across the nation and speak not a surplus word to another soul, with self-serve petrol pumps and fast food restaurants. “Big Mac, medium fries and a bucket of root beer” does not make for a meaningful interaction, even if you add “please” at the end and the teenager instructs you to have a nice day as she hands over the rootbeer.

When we lived in smaller communities and knew everybody’s business, we could be closer to their hearts, if I may put it that way. Nowadays, the bus driver is someone on a random shift from the other side of a great city, the cabbie comes from a different continent, the news is broadcast by an anchorman instead of a town crier, and gossip is reserved for Facebook rather than a good old natter over the back fence with the minister’s wife.

Gone are the days when you sat on your front porch and waved to your neighbours as they walked by. One town council, seeking a return to friendly neighbourhoods, decreed that every new dwelling should have a porch. And so it was- the porches were built and secured with metal grilles to keep out intruders and the world.

I don’t have any easy answers. Smile at strangers and you could attract stalkers. Move to a small town and be unemployed?

Perhaps my best advice is something I follow myself. Imagine that, following your own advice!

Become a cabbie.

Trust me on this, you’ll get to know a lot of people, you’ll be a small but essential part of the community, and the pensioners will love you as you lug their groceries up the steps.

And at night, as you put on the soft music for the couple embracing in the back seat, you can sigh happily for the spirit of romance.

Cabbies might not have all the answers, but they know a lot more than they generally let on.

But there’s always time to crank the seat back, reach down for a book, and read a few pages before the next passenger shows up.

Lately the reading material has been a book on changing lives. An inspirational book talking of the beneficial impact of very small loans to the world’s poorest people. Muhammad Yunus, the founder of the Grameen Bank, was once a professor of economics, who looked out of his office window to a small village and wondered how the theories he was teaching related to the residents.

On investigation, he found that the poorest people in the village were very poor indeed, held back by poor access to money offered at usurious interest rates. A woman would work all day weaving intricate crafts for a profit of a few cents, which she spent on feeding her children. If she could gain just a small amount of money to escape the money-lenders who were also her raw material suppliers and the tied buyers of her work, she could prosper and profit.

From a small seed loan came a great organisation, breaking free of money-lenders, private banks and government corruption and ineptitude. Aimed at small loans to the very poorest, Grameen Bank prospered, spinning off programs and organisations across the globe.

His book, Banker to the Poor: Micro-Lending and the Battle Against World Poverty, has been my taxicab reading material for the past week.

He struck a chord with me. For too long the great charity organisations have thrived in the developed nations, growing platoons of well-paid executives in modern office towers who plan advertising campaigns for donation drives staffed by unpaid volunteers. The spokesmen for these groups are always immaculately dressed in business suits or tailored adventure kit, posing before the cameras, asking for yet more money. The donations with which they are entrusted are diluted by administration costs and advertising. Delivery is facilitated by payments to government officials. Consultants jet in, stay in business hotels, hire cars and dine in the best restaurants.

I’ve had the opportunity to study one of the more visible charity saints, and I have rarely seen a more horrid, selfish, bigoted and intolerant bastard in my life. Before the cameras he is sympathetic smiles. In private he is ruthless, vicious in eliminating competition and fiercely protective of his public image. Every inch the manipulative politician.

He gets the funds in, sure, but how much good does he do to those who need it most? I wonder.

In contrast, Grameen Bank executives are to be found riding bicycles to remote villages, sleeping on rush mats, sharing bowls of rice and vegetables with their clients, dodging attacks verbal and physical from the established political, financial, social and religious groups who depend on the status quo for their standing.

In particular, Grameen Bank helps women. In the poorest nations, women often carry the greatest load and have the lowest status. A mother will cut her own food short so that her children may grow and when food is very short indeed she will starve, but before that point she suffers the agony of being unable to breastfeed her baby.

Now, I’m not willing to cut back my own comfortable lifestyle too much. I could sell everything I owned, give it to the very poorest, and never make a dent in global poverty.

But I can help. My passengers sometimes give me tips. The businessmen and the government officials so rarely tip that it is a cause for wonder when they do. But those who pay the fare from their own pocket, those who are least able to afford a generous gesture, they are my best tippers.

From now on my tip money goes into microfinance loans. Not a huge strain on the resources, but a gesture that helps others, and makes me happy in the knowledge.

Kiva.org is one of those internet creations that enables people like me to lend money to those in need, with very little administrative costs, no huge organisation, no Business Class Saints. I can choose where my money is to go, and I can see how it is spent, right down to the individual receiving the loan.

Typically loans are small, for a few hundred dollars, repaid over a year or two, and aimed at gaining resources that can be turned to profit. A sewing machine, a second-hand fridge, a new engine for a taxi. Each loan is financed by multiple lenders giving twenty-five dollars each. Loans are often approved and disbursed, and then “backfilled” using the internet money. The borrower commences repayments immediately. Small regular repayments until the total is repaid. And when the money comes back home, it can be re-lent, gifted to Kiva, or withdrawn.

A brother cabbie

Lives are enriched. The world gets ever so slightly better off.

I’m starting small. I’m helping out a cabbie in Azerbaijan. My Kiva lender page is here. I’m feeling very warm and happy and positive about this.

And, for a night cabbie who has occasionally been roused from honest sleep by a collector for one of the glossy charities, and been mistaken by that collector for a snarling attack dog, this is good news indeed!

–Skyring

Bonus video: PBS story on Kiva

Saturday is the day when I go out there and give 1.00 percent.

After a long week of long shifts, Saturday is my day for not caring. I do random stuff, maybe go shopping with my wife, a little housework, a lot of napping, reading the papers, drinking tea and just winding waaaaay down.

Sunday I might have my energy levels back up again, but Saturday is me winding down and enjoying family life.

Actually, I was out and about at 1030, fresh and shaven and making passable conversation with folk from the School of Practical Philosophy. This is the mob I stop work for every Wednesday night for two hours or so, and they have gotten me thinking some deep thoughts. Today was a Saturday session. Tea and cake and philosophy at the Australian Centre for Christianity and Culture as we learnt about the founder of the school and discussed some of his teachings.

I staid awake long enough to do some serious thinking. Odd that philosophy would help a cabbie, but there it is. I find the stress just eases away. I keep my mind focused on the job in hand, concentrate on the driving, do my very best to keep the passenger happy, finish the fare with smiles all round.

Happy passenger equals happy cabbie. That’s my philosophy.

In odd moments, I registered yet another domain name and did some housework to set up a new site. Not sure how it will pan out yet, but it will involve me, my co-driver, Twitter and a Taxi and it may lead to a series of grand adventures.

Stay tuned!

–Skyring

Bonus video