random rides with random men...

some of the things i do here i would never do in the us. but then again, if i were in the us, i wouldn't be banned from driving like i am here. either way, it seems that i have become comfortable taking rides from from random men. i know this sounds really dodgy, but i promise it isn't. or maybe it is and i am just being silly. either way...

so it all started when the man in line behind me at the grocery store asked if i was heading home. i had met him before on my morning taxi to town and he works down the street from me. misinterpreting what he was asking, i said yes, thinking he wanted to walk to the taxi rank with me. as we walked outside, i realized that he had a car and was in fact offering to drive me home (he lives in my village). the car ride was fine, if not a bit awkward because of his limited english. he dropped me off at home and said he would pick me up the next day to take me to work. luckily he didn't show the next morning and i got out of what could have been an awkward situation.

this same type of thing happened again a couple weeks later as i was heading to work one morning. i was running late (as i often am now) and was waiting at the spot where i catch a taxi in the morning when a man drove by in his work vehicle. he stopped, reversed to me, asked me if i was going to be late to work, and then told me to get in. that particular day was when the nationwide strike was occurring, so we chatted about that, about how if he didn't go to work he wouldn't get paid, and about how he had a wife and family to support. he was nice enough, if a bit annoyed. was the fastest i ever got to work in my life.

following in my new trend, i was picked up this morning by the police. that's right. same situation, same driving past and then reversing back to me. there were two cops in the car and i wedged myself in between them. again, they were both very nice and asked me all the same questions that everyone asks me. the new twist in this trip was that the driver was blatantly hitting on me over and over again. he asked for my number and i told him i dropped my phone in a bucket of water. he told me i looked beautiful and i told him i doubted that since i hadn't showered in days. he was perfectly harmless with his flirtations and i laughed them off on the 15 min ride to town. what was funny about getting a ride with the cops was the reaction of some of my coworkers as i pulled up to the office in a the cop car. i think it surprised some of them... at least until i explained.

in other news, i recently finished a book about Mormonism that really impressed me. as many of you know, the organization that i work at is very very religious, so religion has been thrown into my life all of a sudden and it has been an interesting thing for me to deal with. i suppose that i am used to it all now and am somewhat numb to the daily religious routines that we go through here at work. anyways, there was a quote at the end of the book that i really appreciated.

"There are some ten thousand extant religious sects- each with its own cosmology, each with its own answer for the meaning of life and death. Most assert that the other 9,999 not only have it completely wrong but are instruments of evil, besides. None of the ten thousand has yet persuaded me to make the requisite leap of faith. In the absence of conviction, I've come to terms with the fact that uncertainty is an inescapable corollary of life. An abundance of mystery is simply part of the bargain... And if I remain in the dark about our purpose here, and the meaning of eternity, I have nevertheless arrived at an understanding of a few more modest truths: Most of us fear death. Most of us yearn to comprehend how we got here, and why- which is to say, most of us ache to know the love of our creator. And we will no doubt feel that ache, most of us, for as long as we happen to be alive."

interesting...

perhaps...

"perhaps as you went along you did learn something. i did not care what it was all about. all i wanted to know what how to live in it. maybe if you found out how to live in it you learned from that what it was all about." -hemingway


a friend sent me this quote and i find it very fitting. i still am no closer to figuring out what i am supposed to do here in middle of nowhere south africa, but i still learn things everyday. it may not be the right things or the most important things, but i learn nonetheless, and from the same same that is my life now, i am growing. i am trying to live in it.

♫