My Grandma Ivy is
what one might call a social butterfly. She makes friends wherever she
goes, whether it be a trip half way around the world or a trip to the grocery
store. She talks to people, she charms people, she befriends EVERYONE.
In line at a movie
theater: “Oh, what beautiful hair you have.”
Walking through a
restaurant: “Oh, that dish looks delicious. Which was is it?”
Sitting on a bus: “It
sure is cold outside. Where are you headed?”
She finds a reason to talk to anyone and everyone and in
turn manages to coax the wildest stories out of even the most staunch hermits.
She emanates warmth and thus receives it back.
Some people say my grandmother and I are twins. We look
alike (if you could stretch your mind across the decades that divide us). We
act alike. We are certainly both social creatures. And I must say that I
learned a lot from her growing up. When
I was a child I was fortunately enough to be her travel companion on several
occasions. We went to New Hampshire, Boston, and Alaska together.
I watched her make friends everywhere we went. I watched how
people warmed to her simple friendly chatter. And I loved her and thought the
world of her. So it’s probably no surprise that a bit of her rubbed off on me.
I noticed the Grandma Ivy coming out in me on the train ride
to Mombasa. I love trains – rolling through the landscape, walking back and
forth through the cars, sitting in the dining car, feeling the wind in your
hair as you stick your head out the window, meeting all sorts of people… The
train to Mombasa is supposed to be an overnight train, arriving in Mombasa
around 10AM. But as the train stood perfectly still from around 1am to 4am
while I lay in my sleeper, it became more and more apparent that we would not
be arriving on time. Sure enough, at breakfast we were informed that the train
would be about 8 hours late. Time to get to work.
With nothing to do but stay on the train, I wandered the
halls looking for stories. I met an Australian builder traveling around Africa
for a year, a Finnish couple who just graduated high school and are volunteering
in Kenya, and a handful of Indian guys working on reconstructing the rundown
railroad we currently rode on. I chatted with an elderly British couple who
have lived all over southern Africa for the last 20 years and who were great at
spotting the elephants in the distance as we rolled through the national parks.
I had a long conversation about cervical and prostate cancers with a couple
middle-aged Kenyan men. I met a few Kenyan University student – one an aspiring
analytical chemist, the other an aspiring musician/businessman. I hung out with
a couple Red Cross volunteers and a few of the dining car staff. I debated
global health strategies with a Guinea Worm consultant in Southern Sudan. I got
a history lesson about the railroad from a retired Kenyan couple and sat down
with a Dutch couple visiting their daughter for a few weeks.
And of course, I stuck my head out the window, looking over
the rows upon rows of sisal plantations, the dry savannah spotted with acacia
trees, the dilapidated train stations with little kids running and waving, the
piles of burning trash littered with tin shacks an people presumably suffering
with all sorts of respiratory problems.
But mostly, I channeled my inner Grandma Ivy. I didn’t
notice just how much until I got off the train and started waving good-bye to
people at the train station My travel companion just looked as me and asked,
“Um, do you know EVERYONE on this train?” Well, maybe not EVERYONE. I can’t in
any way claim to be the elegant social butterfly that my Grandma Ivy is, but as
Joelle Ivy I guess I took a bit more than just her name.
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