>The other day, something impossible (yet, it would turn out, very possible) happened to me. I was with a coworker in a meeting at one of the fancy hotels in Accra and after lunch my coworker had to run an errend so I stayed in the restaurant and started talking to a French-speaking couple sitting next to me. It turned out they were from Senegal and when I said I work for IOM the man said,
-Oh, your deputy director general is Senegalese, Ndiaye.
-Yes, she came to Accra earlier this summer during the African summit, I said, but she never showed up at the office. I thought was too bad…
-Really? the man said, picked up his mobile phone and started looking for a number…
My mind was working on a high gear, not only because of that the conversation was carried out in French, but also beacuse…. he was joking, he wasn’t calling her up, was he? My newfound friend now seemed to get through and said with a smile,
– I’m sitting here with one of your staff in Accra and she is disappointed you never came by during the summit…
He put me on, cheeks glowing red, and Ndiaye, the second highest person in my organization, apologized to me, an intern in a field office!
It turned out the man I was talking to a sunny afternoon in Accra was a close friend of the deputy and, frankly, I don’t know if the morale of this story is to not speak your mind when with strangers, or to do open up. Well, it did give me a good story to tell.