Wednesday, October 6, 2010

Seriously...Seriously...

So not even a half an hour ago I had a very trange and uncomfortable conversation witha complete stranger.With any good story I'll start from the beginning.I went to an ice-cream parlor to get a brownie sundae because it's my new obsession and good baked goods are few and far between in Fiji.So I am sitting enjoying my sweet indulgence and doing some people watching in the store a man comes up to me and hits me in the arm. So alarmed by this I didn't know what to think or do.He then goes into an ever familiar line of questioning-Where you from? You from Fiji? You from Africa?Turns out he himself is from Ghana and gets VERY excited when he meets other Blacks in Fiji.He then invites himself to sit and tells me a snippet of his life story and how he is plans to go to California and India for his work and then come back.Here's the kicker, when I said I was Peace Corps volunteer he said he was surprised how Peace Corps was still around and that many countries in Africa decided not to have Peace corps since it was a supposed tool for the American government to start wars in Africa.The only silver lining in this whole craziness is that he mentioned without my own prompting that he met a lot of Jamaicans. Apparently they all are working for Digicel. Which I thought made tons of sense since Jamaica has Digicel and we've had that phone company in -country longer than Fiji.I did try to go on the Digicel Fiji website and look up a few names but tha didn't work out.
So I guess the moral of the story is that I get frustrated all the time when I have these run-ins especially since these people come out of nowhere and dive stright into the questions mentioned earlier and most times skip the formalities of trying to introduce themselves or saying hello.
Also, situtations like this have happened in the day time in a bustling street, I don't know how it will be if I am ever alone at night.But then I guess I should never be alone at night.