Guest Stories

Guests

Clifton Cox

Even after a challenging battle with cancer, Clifton Cox considers himself a lucky man. “I feel like I have two families: my own family and my Boston family,” says Cox, a Maryland man who spent two weeks in 2010 staying with Hospitality Homes hosts in the Boston area.

“I was a stranger, and they took me in,” says Cox, who came to Boston for specialized treatment of an eye disorder that was a side effect of his cancer treatment. “They gave me a key so I could come and go as needed. At the end of the day we would sit and talk about how our days were. It meant so much to me.”

Like so many Hospitality Homes guests, Cox says he never could have afforded to stay in a hotel for that length of time. “My hosts made it possible for me to get the treatment I needed,” says Cox. “If it weren’t for them, I just don’t know what I would have done.”

“They are very special people,” says Cox, who has kept in touch with his hosts. “And I will always be so grateful to them for their kindness to me.”

Indrouti Zaman

Indrouti Zaman puts it very simply: “My Hospitality Homes hosts were a gift from God.”

A Trinidad native and Brooklyn resident, Zaman needed to see a cancer specialist in Boston. “I didn’t know what to do,” she recalls. “I couldn’t afford a hotel, and I didn’t know anyone in Boston.” Then she learned about Hospitality Homes. “It was like a miracle,” she says., “ lifesaving, God-sent miracle.”

Zaman has been to Boston twice for care, staying with the same family for both visits. “They are my angels,” she says in her lilting Caribbean accent. “I can only say beautiful things about them. They made me feel at home, they gave me every comfort that I needed.”

A deeply religious woman, Zaman had worked as a home health aide before she got sick. She has seen and experienced what illness can do to the human spirit. “There are times in your life when everything seems dark,” she says. “Then God sends people into your life who give you a reason to hope. I have faith in God, and my hosts showed me to have faith in people, too.”

Now that she is healthy again, Zaman says she is thinking about how she might give to others what was given to her. “When you are given such a kindness, you must give a kindness of your own to someone else in need.”