Seatmates on long haul flights are a frequent source of people met. However, there is an unwritten code with seatmates, frequent travelers like myself often like to just hunker down and be completely anti-social (i.e. headphones in, nose in book) for fear of sitting next to someone who wants to talk to you the entire flight when all you want to do is sleep/watch movies/work. Even so, these seatmates are memorable too. Take the American travel agent seatmate I had from Johannesburg to DC who spilled water all over my pants (twice!) and proceeded to snore loudly throughout the majority of the 18 hour flight.
Some seatmates are remembered for their friendliness and for still being in touch years later! One fellow plane mate named Daniel and I met after sitting in the Nyerere International Airport for probably 4 hours when our flight was cancelled at midnight from Dar es Salaam. KLM airline put us up at the Holiday Inn in Dar for two days while we were re-booked. He and I and two other folks had quite an adventure that weekend trying desperately to find the fastest way home that ended up being the long way home from Dar to Joburg to Amsterdam to DC. Turns out Daniel was a co-worker of my then boyfriend’s roommate (got that?). Small world!
A few random meetings in airports (usually Amsterdam) include "coffee dates" in the KLM lounge with a grad school friend who was coming home from Uganda while I was heading out to Tanzania. Or the best unplanned meeting in Amsterdam airport was when my friend Dan from Portland, Oregon, was seated next to my co-worker, Sylvia, on a flight from Portland to Amsterdam. Sylvia was meeting me in Amsterdam and we were flying to Kenya. Dan was headed to work in England somewhere. Sylvia and Dan started talking on their flight and realized they both knew me and when Sylvia met me at my gate in Amsterdam, she said, "I have a surprise for you" and she brought me over to see Dan! What a small world again!
This trip to Rwanda in particular included a cast of characters that I will remember dearly. I’m a spiritual person, and I really feel that sometimes God brings people into your life when you need them most or to remind you of something. Here are some of the “people met” highlights from Rwanda:
· Terri. Terri and I met at my hotel in Gisenyi. She was visiting the hotel and taking advantage of the good internet connection. I went over and said hello as you do as a fellow young white (seemingly American) woman. Terri has an amazing story- she was diagnosed with breast cancer at 31, had chemo and then a double mastectomy. She’s now on a ‘round the world trip researching volunteer organizations to partner with for her start-up foundation, A Fresh Chapter. Her goal is for this foundation to link up cancer survivors with international volunteer opportunities. Terri was really inspiring. Travelling solo since January from her home in Vancouver, Canada, and fundraising all of her journey. In Rwanda she was volunteering at an orphanage that was home to 600 (!) orphans. She told me that her birthday was Thursday and I invited her to come have dinner with my Rwandese colleagues. She did, and I think the singing of Happy Birthday by her 7 new friends really was memorable for her. Please check out her website www.afreshchapter.com and make a donation if you feel so inclined to support her journey.
· While I didn’t get to know this next gentleman well, he’s representative of many a mzungu (white guy) that I often meet on these trips. This gentleman was a young South African guy travelling from Johannesburg to Morocco overland (mainly). Yet another white person utilizing the good internet at our hotel. He said hello to me one morning at breakfast and we exchanged some basic pleasantries and the “what do you do” questions. He was travelling solo on a budget from Johannesburg to Morocco with no real plan or deadline. He had hitchhiked much of the way already! I didn’t have much time to get more details as to the why’s of his trip, but interesting to say the least and a reminder to me that we’re all here on the planet on a different journey but likely looking for similar things.
· Small world #1 in Rwanda: A good grad school friend of mine Tisha is finishing up her dissertation research in Rwanda with Partners in Health (ww.pih.org)- a relatively famous NGO in the Global Health World (Paul Farmer/Jim Kim- the newly appointed World Bank President co-founded it). Tisha and I had dinner during my first week in Kigali. She and I used to meet up in Tanzania when I lived in DC and she in Geneva. We shared many a dinner there and I used to see her more than some of my DC friends and we lived thousands of miles apart!
· Small world #2: As I’m checking in at Kigali International Airport, I look to my right and see fellow JSI colleague Lisa checking in at the next ticket counter! Lisa is an amazing medical doctor and public health practitioner with appointments at Harvard Medical School, director of monitoring and evaluation at Partners in Health (she works with Tisha!), and part-time consultant with my company JSI. She and I rarely get to work together let alone visit and catch up. We hung out in the airport lounge charging our laptops, catching up on email, sharing work stories, and admiring one another’s “Out of Africa” Johannesburg airport jewelry purchases!
· Small world #3 in Rwanda: While sitting with Lisa in the lounge, I noticed another woman who looked so familiar! She came over a little while later asking me the same- “You look so familiar. Where do we know each other from?” Harvard School of Public Health! We were both students at the same time in different programs. Rachel is an ER physician working at Columbia and also leading a fellowship program on Forced Migration in Rwanda and elsewhere. Such a treat to run into her and exchange contact information after nearly 10 years from knowing each other peripherally at HSPH.
· This last meeting that I’ll recount is particularly sweet: Middle seats on a long haul flight are the worst. I let out a groan at the ticket counter when I checked in- really no window or aisle seats?!? Ok, 12 F it is. Middle seat in a bank of four in row 12 (D, E, F, G). Sat down and settled in for the first short leg to Entebbe, Uganda, where we would drop off and pick up more passengers. Seatmate arrived in a suit complaining of how the plane needed some more A/C (it was toasty on the plane). For whatever reason, I broke frequent traveler code and asked this man, after he was seated, if he was headed home and for whatever reason, 3 hours of conversation ensued! Turns out he had been at my first hotel in Kigali for two months along with a crew of other American military and African military. They had been conducting a training there. I had actually seen him at breakfast a few times in our hotel just didn’t say hello then. Marine Jon, as I’ll call him, grew up in Minnesota was adopted from Korea when he was 3 from an orphanage (which prompted me to tell him my story about Terri volunteering and also my story about my friend Anna- also adopted from Korea by a couple from Minnesota). Jon and I had so much in common and many similar interests, I think we probably could have talked all evening (our other seatmates would have killed us). But such a treat to have met a kindred spirit! And we’ve already been in touch since being home.
The best of part of my job is the people and how small it makes the world seem. And technology helps- with Skype and smart phones and cheap texting and calling. Being able to meet friends in faraway places for lunch or dinner isn’t a far-fetched dream but more often than not a common treat. Here’s to our small world!
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