Life 101

When I travel for work, I generally try to Uber or Lyft and avoid cabs. Apart from the obvious convenience and speed of those services, the people/drivers also tend to be hospitable, with interesting stories and life perspectives. Hence my preference.

But by divine orchestration, I got into the cab of this particular driver – and the conversation we had is the first one that I feel compelled to write down and share.

“I’m back in school,” he says. Studying English 101 and Math 201. “English is hard but Math I like, it’s very easy for me.”

Ah – totally – I related, saying that English is very difficult, what with its weird spellings and pronunciation. You can’t guess how to say the word! I say.

The gh in Although and Tough and Thorough and Plough – forget about it! He laughs.

I said English is my second language too and that I come from Indonesia.

“How did you learn?” He asks. Television, I say. He laughs again.

He says, “but math is very easy for me. I like math, calculus.” He says he wants to go into nursing after he gets his Bachelor’s. He wanted to do pharmacy, like what he was studying in Ethiopia, but had to stop because he ran out of funds. “And I got opportunity to come here to US!” That was 6 years ago.

I tell him he is very brave and tenacious to return to school after so long.  It can’t be easy. He says, it isn’t, he also has a wife to support, but he wants to be a nurse.

Are you from Ethiopia?

“No, I’m from Eritrea. Do you know it?” Other than it’s a tiny country in Africa, no, I say. What do you speak there? What is it like?

He says, “It’s very bad. You cannot do anything. They have to control everybody and tell you what to do. My father has been in military for 40 years, until today, and does not earn any money. You can do jobs they tell you to do and you don’t make money for yourself.

“So I decide to leave. I ran to Ethiopia. It was very hard, I lived in refugee area for 2 years. It was very hard but good, because I got to take pharmacy courses and worked for the UNHCR and made some money. Then like I told you, I got opportunity to come here.”

So you left, everybody? In Eritrea?

“Yes, I ran with a friend. They have a shoot to kill policy at the border. You know, out of 4.5 million people, 1 million of the people run away? It’s very bad there. I’m so thankful I got out. I haven’t seen my mother or my father in 12 years, they are still there. So it is hard, yea, but I had to leave, you know?”

Yes.

“You are from Indonesia! How did you come here?”

Sigh. I came here to attend university in the East Coast, after 18 years of private schooling and comfort and security of upper class Indonesia. I may also be a foreigner, but what worlds of difference between your reality and mine. Do you realize that it is by chance – divine orchestration, perhaps – that I am not you and you are not me?

See – I must admit that “refugees” to me serve as news stories and backdrop to much politicizing. Of course I read and cry over their plight. Of course I acknowledge they are very much actual people. But come across my cab driver, they become real and severe, true, normal yet heroic. Talk about school and English and Math and other “normal” life stuff but I have NO IDEA what it is like to choose literally between life and death by crossing a border.  Thankfully and mercifully that has not been my life – and MERCY is a humbling reality that I hope will stay with me far, far after this encounter.

Lord bless him and his amazing career as a nurse.