Regular People

You know what I like about the world? Everyone who lives on this big ball is just regular. That's why I love travelling to new places…to find out the same thing. It's a kind of personal research project I've had over the years, a longitudinal study.

Preliminary findings show that there's a handful of personality types that can be found the world over, but dressed in a myriad of colours, mindsets, and families. It’s a recipe for infinite and dynamic flavour!

People here are just regular, like you are, like me. Not to say that I don’t notice the skin colour differences (because I stick out), but often, if people didn’t notice me for my skin color, I could forget about it and I often do, kind of like the heat, until someone reminds me.

People here remind me of people I've worked with, grown up with, been neighbors with, people I have respected and wanted to get to know, people who annoy me, people who have an attitude about everything, people who are generous, people who try to keep things covered up, people who are whipping smart, other people with really simple processing, people who love where they live and people who have dreams of change.

One of the regular people that I've come to like is my driver. He is one of those great locals who knows the lay of the land and all the secrets of the town, and who has a few of his own. He is one of those dependable workers who will not assume what is not his responsibility, but will take reliable care of what is his work to do. He's given me some good advice in that regard. He's around the age of my oldest sister and he has a wife and three young daughters. I ply him with any curiosity that comes to my mind as we drive to and from the rural health centers. I have learned so much about how things work here, from him.

Over the hours, he has patiently adjusted to figuring out what I'm trying to ask or tell; that has served us well when I needed an assistant for delivering an already deceased premature baby in the back of the vehicle.

On days that other team members go to my two clinics, I let them sit up front, to give his ears a break from my broken French :)