Mar/070
Well Travelled
Today on the train I met a man named Mike. Mike is from Gambia, West Africa. He has skin black as night, a huge white smile, and is the friendliest person I’ve met in a long while.
Here’s how I met him:
I was sitting at the train stop, next to a Korean guy, waiting for a train.
Suddenly, Mike appeared and started talking in Korean to the Korean guy.
The Korean guy was as startled as I was – possibly more as he could understand what Mike was saying. It’s not like he just spoke bits and pieces of it either – he was as fluent as the Korean guy.
I interrupted their conversation after a while, and asked where in Africa Mike was from. Gambia. He spoke English just as fluently as Korean, of course.
I noticed his wedding ring about this time, and asked whether his wife is African or Korean.
Mike’s story goes like this:
He was born and raised in Gambia, Africa. He then moved to Korea, because it was a non-English speaking country, and he wanted a totally new cultural experience (they speak English in Gambia).
This is where he met his wife-to-be, who was teaching English in Korea. They fell in love and eventually, moved back to his then-girlfriends home in Australia to get married.
That was one year ago. Isn’t that beautiful?
I hope I meet Mike again so I can give him my number and invite him and his wife over for dinner with T and I sometime.
Still – can you imagine a black man, an African man, approaching a Korean guy and talking in Korean. It was quite startling!