Random

I had a lengthy conversation with a man from Zambia this evening.  From his accent when we exchanged greetings, I could tell that he was African, as opposed to African-American, and I soon learned that he had been educated in the U.K. but had lived in the U.S. for many years.  I initially guessed that he was from Kenya. He was gracious enough to tell me that I was close!  Zambia is just on the other side of Tanzania from Kenya, at least...as my family would say regarding the accuracy of my guess, “right church, wrong pew.”

I was standing at a local park watching Petunia’s soccer practice when he strolled by in the course of his evening constitutional.  As a side note, I strongly suspect that I could stand at that park for, oh, another 50 straight years or so without encountering another Zambian (one unrelated to him at any rate), this area not being a hotbed of any sort of diversity, but I digress.

Of course, I had to ask how he ended up in my neck of the woods.  He told me that he trained as a chemical engineer, and while in the U.K., received a six month contract to come to the US and help an American contracting firm with their design for a pharmaceutical facility to be built in Ireland.  Specifically, they needed him to make sure that the American units of measurement in the design were correctly converted to their metric equivalents for the benefit of the construction crews in Ireland!  If the fact that they had to bring in a contractor from the U.K. to do that isn’t a sweeping indictment of the American educational system, I don’t know what is, but regardless, he came to do the job.  Two weeks into the six months, he was done.  He asked his boss if he could now take a five and a half month vacation, and the boss laughed and gave him a small part of another project to manage.  One thing led to another, he was hired on permanently, and his youngest child just graduated from a nearby high school.

It was a lovely conversation, and not for the first time, I was grateful for whatever element in my looks or demeanor makes complete strangers comfortable talking to me.