REST IN PEACE KURT LESWING

It is with tears that I write this email. A fellow classmate was killed in a car accident while we were in Hong Kong. This is how I received the news:

It was about 9am on November 8th, and a group of 19 of us were sitting in the lobby of the Far East Youth Hostel in Beijing where we had stayed the night before. We were waiting for our tour guide to pick us up to take us to the Great Wall. Our guide called us at 830 saying they were running a little late and would be there within the half hour. Then we received another phone call from the tour agency saying that someone named Shalina Akins had called them trying to get a hold of a student named Vince, who they thought was in our group. Ben was on the phone with them, and all of the information he was told was Call Shalina at this number she wants to talk to you because one of the people on your ship died. That was the only thing we had. Immediately the two people who did have cell phones who we were traveling with tried contacting the ship. It is difficult because we only have contact information for when the ship is in port, and by this point it had already left Hong Kong and was en route to Shanghai. I bought a calling card and Ben and I tried about 5 phones, 5 different hotel lines, none of which were going through. We were able to get a hold of the tour guide and have him call the number, but that wasn't working either. Basically, we tried for about an hour, until the guide finally arrived , and were unsuccessful. Once on the bus that they picked us up in, all Serena (our guide) could tell us was that one of her friends who is a guide for the same agency called and told her that there were girls on her trip crying because of someone who died on our ship. She said she thought it was a girl, but didn't have any information. We finally found out around 1pm from a text message that Lauren, a girl in our group, got from her mom telling her that his name was Kurt Leswing and he was hit by a drunk driver the night our ship was in Hong Kong. At this point, I still could not put a face with a name. While we were in Beijing we ran into a few other SAS groups- either independent or sponsored trips, and all of the information was vague, rather unknown. We later ran into Kurt's roommate, Vince, who I know from the Sea Olympics committee. We saw them drinking and knew immediately that it would be a rough night for them. I'll write later about my China trip, which was nothing short of amazing despite this awful cold and cough that I am fighting. But to get to the details, everyone got back to the ship today, and at 8pm tonight they had an informal gathering to formally address the entire shipboard community of the happenings. The information is still vague...still eerily unknown. This is what they do know:

He was out with friends and was last seen at 1230am at a bar called the Happy Valley Sports Bar, which was about 6K from the ship. From then, his whereabouts are unknown. He apparently got in some sort of altercation with a taxi cab driver and a cop around 2am. It was nothing big, sounds as if they were just arguing over the cab fare, and a cop just walked over to make sure everything was OK. It was around 3am that the accident was reported. Kurt was hailing a cab and was in the street. A cab driver had swerved to avoid hitting Kurt, but the car following the cab did not see him and struck him. He was unconscious when someone approached him only seconds later and never regained consciousness. The driver was found to be intoxicated and the investigation is still underway with the Hong Kong police. The accident happened 3K from the ship. So seemingly he had been alone for about 2 and a half hours that night, and the only form of ID that was found on him was a credit card. It was not until later that morning around 530am when immigration officials were aboard our ship processing passports that our administration was told the news. As soon as Kurt's passport surfaced, the pieces of the puzzle began to fall into place. The official recognized the name and requested that our Dean of Students and our Head of Security go to the mortuary to identify the body. It was a few hours later when the ship began contacting those traveling throughout China as well as those that were aboard the ship, and news travels pretty fast, even through a huge country.

It was all so surreal, and it was the moment I stepped on the ship yesterday afternoon around 3pm that it really hit me. His picture was posted in Tymitz Square (where we board the ship) along with the letter that was sent to his parents and a biography of Kurt. I was finally able to connect the name and the face. Someone who I had never spoken to, yet knew exactly who he was. Every face is now a familiar face on this ship, it is only so big - there are only 700 of us who live, eat, sleep, study, travel all in a very small area. We are now a family, and this is a tragedy for all of us. I cannot imagine what his family is going through- his family in Milwaukee and his twin brother who was studying in New Zealand this semester. But our thoughts are with them, and we have the chance to send pictures, cards, thoughts, anything to his family from the ship. A commemorative service will also be held after we depart Yokohama, Japan in about a week to remember Kurt. It is hard to stomach, this whole situation, and I feel so much for his close friends on the ship. It is almost unbelievable the connections that we have made with people on this voyage so far. We have only been on here for 2 and a half months, and I feel like I have known some of my friends that I met in early September for so much longer than that. This tragedy will only bring us closer and hopefully open our eyes even more to the realities of life.

Apparently Kurt had been moved by Nobel Laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu while he was aboard the ship for a short visit while we were in Capetown, South Africa, and he used this quote quite frequently, "Take the anger from your hearts. Wipe the tears from God's eyes. And live a life of love." Rest In Peace Kurt Leswing November 7, 2008.