What Goes Around…

Feburary 9, 2008




Getting ready to head out to Mary yesterday for my weekly Friday morning trip I was on a rampage to find a taxi driver. Everyone was charging too much and as I stood in the cold arguing with several stubborn men over the cost of taking me into the city I heard a familiar voice.

“Angela!”

I turned around and it was a driver that I had ridden with once awhile back.

“SALAM!!!!!!!!!!!!” I screeched with joy, asking him how he was, complaining that I needed to get to Mary.

“Well let’s go!” he said with a smile and pointed to his car, which already had three other people inside, ready to go.

As we were driving he was chatting away with me and I wasn’t making much of an effort to listen and understand. I was tired, weary, and didn’t want to speak Turkmen. But then he lifted up his cell phone and I noticed he was describing my special REI alarm clock that I had lost in his car a month ago.

My head snapped up and I grabbed his shoulder in excitement.

“YOU FOUND IT???????? YOU FOUND MY CLOCK??????????? DID YOU REALLY FIND IT????????” I yelled.

“Yes but it is your present to me, no?” he said, laughing.

“Oh man I CRIED when I lost it! I was looking everywhere!”

“Alright, he said. You can have it back.” He explained to the other passengers what the excitement was about…how cool my little American invention was, and how it was lost when we skidded off the road that day almost completely over the snow bank.

So we drove to his house and he took me inside to meet his family and then produced my fabulous REI alarm clock/calculator/weather indicator/currency exchanger. He even taped up the area where it was broken before.

His wife then told me to come and eat with their family, but I had to get to Mary. Plus I don’t think the other passengers would’ve been too pleased to wait that long.

As we left Yoleten to head out to Mary he asked me why I didn’t just live with him and his family, since his kids go to my school and he could just drive us there every day.

“You could live with us for free!” he persisted. “You won’t have to walk to school!”

I laughed and thought about how humorous the situation was. A random taxi driver that had given me a ride once a month ago returns my alarm clock, takes me to his house to meet his family and wants me to move in with them.

But the funny thing is that he isn’t the first to ask me to move. One of my 8th form students asks all the time.

“Why, Angela? WHY can’t you live with me? I want you to live with me! I can just picture how it would be if you lived with me; oh it would be so good if we could live together…”

The truth is, I couldn’t have a better home than the one I’m in right now, and I couldn’t ask for a town with better people.

I’m one of the luckiest people I know.