I really enjoy talking to people. I love getting the stupid stories of where they have been and what they have done. I am pretty good at engaging with them but terrible at coming away with a photo. In the decades of selfies, it really should be a lot easier for me! I will try to improve.
Naomi! Very young, maybe under 21. Found her in the kitchen of my Central Lagos Hostel. She had a mouth full, I think she was actually brushing her teeth in the kitchen sink? I was on my way to check that my bike, which I have IGNORED for 5 days was still at its resting place. It was. Naomi asked if where I had just been was a way out. Yes, but don’t use it. I did show her that I had a bike parked in this small access alley. From this short interaction, I was not at all sure if she spoke English comfortably but when asked, she said she had lived in the UK, Ireland and the US. A couple minutes later she mentioned that her first 6 years had been spent in Barcelona.
She arrived on a bus last night from Spain and is heading off this morning to walk the Portuguese coast. I just assumed she was going West toward Sagras. She said she had a reservation at a Hostel but her parents would be proud that she was claiming to forget where it was instead of provide more information to the lecherous old man who was questioning her.
Naomi had spend the last 2 months in a off the grid community in the Spanish desert. The group was trying to grow olives but not the mono-culture type that is using too much water in the rest of Spain. She had started this most recent trip back in January, flying to Madrid. Her mother was British and her father US, She had visited him for a month in Norfolk Virginia. My brain did not jump to it at the time, but Navy of course. He was probably based in Barcelona, Her mother was working there. Today she was off to find a map to help her get to the next hostel. I tried to insert myself into her quest but again she directly sidestepped my best efforts. Oh well, at least I got his much and a wonderful image of a young girl with some hair sticking straight up from a headband. When I met her, she was carrying a light pack. Given the above information, I know she had to have a much more substantial one and indeed this was just her day pack for errands around town.
Walmart and family. I have no name at all though I am sure the young man introduced himself. I did give him one of my famous business cards but I am sure that as in 100% of the previous cases of my trying to connect, this one will result in silence.
Walmart and wife both work at Walmart. They are both pharmacists. He works in a local distribution center and she is at corporate. They are piloting two children! I have seen them on the street about a block from my Lagos Central Hostel. The youngest child is stroller contained, under 8 months? The son is older, talks. I first get to observe the young man at the bar in my Belgium restaurant, La Esterella, I later see that they have an airbnb fairly near by. The night before, they ordered takeout from La Esterella. The cash register or whatever went down and so Walmart was back this evening to pay the 10 Euro he owed from that earlier interaction. This was also an example of the great husband escape. He has the son with him. The son is DEEP into Belgium Fries, NOT French Fries.
Walmart has a wonderful draft beer going. The other two players in the vinette, besides Antonio and Gretchen, the restaurant owners, are Gretchen’s father? and his? dog. He is a regular at the bar, maybe eating but mainly just being there. The dog is very well behaved. Anxious to take any attention and food you are offering but not at all aggressive. The young fries eater is at first a little shy about the dog. Wlamart explains that he has had a bad experience with a dog.
The image I take away is of the young fries eater moving seamlessly out on the street to visit Gretchen who is sitting on a wooden chair acrosss the street smoking and the restaurant. We are all watching somewhat for traffic, cars can come down the street but are not frequent. He is too young to later remember that at a restaurant in Lagos you can just move from inside to visiting the chef on a chair across the street and have a dog around.
I get onto my normal topic of good management and education. Walmart is proud that his company is offering unpaid leaves like he and his wife are on now to travel with the children. He says the employee centered corporate behavior is fairly new. We talk about grooming employees. He sys that he is fairly bad at helping low performers but that his wife is a lot better. I do wonder if I have an inflated belief of what can be done to help a low-performing employee. I was recently presented with a situation where a person serving me was failing. I realized, or at least thought, that my suggestions were not appreciated because she felt threatened. I thought that maybe an approach would be to have her train someone in the skill I was trying to impart to her. Take the “we are evaluating you” off her and put it on someone else. I guess I also thinik about this whole idea in education. Maybe a larger group of people than I think just can not be helped to develop self-motivated learning, active learning.
On to the next, Germany and Bar Harbor. This was a couple at breakfast. During my no riding week. Probably Thursday or Friday. I had been having breakfast at the fancy place near Baffi Bar Often I did take out, a chocolate croissant. Maybe Thursday I sat inside.
BUT, the next morning or so I ate at a different breakfast place, sat outside at a normal in the street table, and Germany and Bar Harbor sat at the table next to me. Of course, as usual, and as necessary to be on the faceless page, I did not take a picture!
Bar Harbor is younger than my 77 years. Germany is mainly bald and has put on some pounds. Who knows what wonderful simple seductive opening lines I used but Bar Harbor got around to telling me their origin story. She was on her way from Boston, where she was in nursing school, to her summer internship in Bar Harbor. She was using the wonderful Gray Hound network that took her first to Bangor and then a bus to Bar Harbor. Also on board were two young German boys with a Gray Hound Bus summer travel pass,traveling the USA. They actually had come over a couple months earlier and worked to get the money for this trip. You can imagine the rest. Somehow the two young men were not able to access their accommodations and so Bar Harbor was able to put them up in the Nursing Residence. If you have talked to people from Germany, you know about their “trades” system. Most young men enter an apprenticeship programs to learn a trade after high school. I am sure there is a “straight to college” track but many of the the very bright Germans I meet have first learned a trade and then returned to college. I am not sure what trade Germany was in but I think that is how he was making money in the US. Later, he went back to school and ended up counselling people in prison?
Fast forward a year or so. Germany and Bar Harbor are now a couple and traveling north from India, Napal and on. They have upgraded to a train. Germany is off talking somewhere. Bar Harbor is really into wonderful conversation with the people sitting near by. When she nexts looks up to check the back packs she is watching, they are gone. Germany and Bar Harbor have lost everything, passports, all money, even cloths.
Somehow, with the help of lots of strangers and officials they got to a city and embassies. The US offered Bar Harbor the chance to have someone wire money to them so they could help out. Germany embassie gave Germany the documents, money and support to get Bar Harbor and himself back to Germany. The least one can do after losing the luggage is marry the guy. So Bar Harbor did. And given the behavior of the embassies, you will not be surprised to learn they lived and raised their children in Germany.